February 25 1861 Monday
CSA. Henry Thomas Ellet was appointed provisional Postmaster-General of the Confederate States but declined the position. The position was later accepted by John Henninger Reagan.
CSA. Judah Philip Benjamin was appointed provisional Attorney-General of the Confederate States.
District of Columbia. The Peace Conference or Peace Convention approached its conclusion without reaching any effectual proposals to avert the secession crisis. The meeting of 131 leading American politicians was held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, in an attempt to avoid the secession of the eight slave states from the upper and border South that had not yet seceded. The seven states that had already seceded (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas) did not attend. No delegates were sent by Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, or Oregon. Fourteen free states and seven slave states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) were represented.
The conference convened on 4 February 1861. Many of the delegates came in the belief that they could be successful in averting the crisis, but many came simply as observers and advocates of their sectional interests. The delegates included “six former cabinet members, nineteen ex-governors, fourteen former senators, fifty former representatives, twelve state supreme court justices, and one former president“, and the meeting was frequently referred to derisively as the Old Gentleman’s Convention.
The convention met for three weeks, and its final product was a proposed seven-point constitutional amendment that differed little from the Crittenden Compromise. The key issue of slavery was addressed simply by extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, with no provision for newly acquired territory. That section passed by a 9–8 vote of the states, each with one vote. Other features of the proposed constitutional amendment were the requirement for the acquisition of all future territories to be approved by a majority of both the slave states and the free states, a prohibition on Congress passing any legislation that would affect the status of slavery where it currently existed, a prohibition on state legislatures from passing laws that would restrict the ability of officials to apprehend and return fugitive slaves, a permanent prohibition on the foreign slave trade, and 100% compensation to any master whose fugitive slave was freed by illegal mob action or intimidation of officials required to administer the Fugitive Slave Act. Key sections of this amendment could be further amended only with the unanimous concurrence of all states.
Since it did not pledge to limit the expansion of slavery in new territories, the compromise failed to satisfy most Republicans. In not committing to permit and protect slavery in the territories, the compromise failed to address the issue that had divided the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions in the 1860 presidential elections. The convention’s work was completed with only a few days left in the final session of Congress. The proposal was rejected in the Senate in a 28 to 7 vote and never came to a vote in the House.
The Committee of Thirty-Three finally submitted the Corwin Amendment, a less-encompassing constitutional amendment, which Congress passed. The proposed amendment protected slavery where it currently existed, which most members of both parties already believed was a state right protected by the existing US Constitution. A final convention of only the slave states in the Union scheduled for June 1861 never occurred because hostilites had already broken out,
Union Organisation
Commander in Chief: President James Buchanan
Vice-President: John Cabell Breckinridge
Secretary of War: Joseph Holt
Secretary of the Navy: Isaac Toucey
African Squadron: William Inman
Brazil Squadron: Joshua Ratoon Sands
East Indian (Asiatic) Squadron: Cornelius Kinchiloe Stribling
European Squadron: vacant
Home Squadron: Garrett J Prendergast
Mediterranean Squadron: Charles H Bell
Pacific Squadron: John Berrien Montgomery
General–in-Chief: Winfield Scott
Department of the East: John Ellis Wool
Department of New Mexico: Thomas Turner Fauntleroy interim, William Wing Loring awaited
Department of the Pacific: Albert Sidney Johnston
- District of Oregon: George Wright
Department of Texas: Carlos Adolphus Waite temporary
Department of Utah: Philip St George Cooke
Department of the West: William Selby Harney
Confederate Organisation
President: Jefferson Finis Davis
Vice-President: Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Secretary of War: Leroy Pope Walker
Secretary of the Navy: Stephen Russell Mallory
“Department of Louisiana”: Braxton Bragg
- “Forces in New Orleans” “Army of Louisiana”: Braxton Bragg
Union Generals
Major-General USA
Winfield Scott
Brigadier-General USA
John Ellis Wool
David Emanuel Twiggs
William Selby Harney
Brigadier-General USA (Staff)
Joseph Eggleston Johnston
American Civil War High Command 