Congressional efforts to quell secession through a sectional compromise collapsed in December. As Northerners debated ways to deal with secession, President James Buchanan, a Democrat who had long sympathized with Southern grievances, lost credibility on both sides when he declared secession to be an unconstitutional act that he was powerless to put down. Following the departure of House members from the Lower South and South Carolina’s secession on December 20, a Senate committee proposed the Crittenden Compromise, a package of constitutional amendments guaranteeing the protection of slavery, including the recognition of slavery in all present and future territories south of the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30'. Lincoln emphatically rejected the territorial feature on the expansion of slavery, and the Republicans backed him by scuttling the compromise. At the same time, the governors in the Lower South denounced the surprise move by Major Robert Anderson of his federal garrison from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor as a hostile act portending a new aggressive federal policy against secession. In what amounted to de facto secession, the governors ordered the seizure of federal forts and possessions in their states. War over Fort Sumter was averted when Buchanan and the South Carolina governor agreed to maintain the status quo in the wake of the firing on a poorly planned relief effort to resupply the fort.
