The winter of 1860 arrived with a sense of pressure that no one in Washington could quite hide. The Union was splintering. South Carolina had taken the first step toward secession, and other states were close behind. The halls of Congress echoed with the polite conversations of people who knew that something far larger than politics was beginning to slip out of their control. It was a moment when the old tools of negotiation were being tested against a crisis that seemed to grow sharper every day.

Into this uneasy season stepped Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. He belonged to an older political tradition that believed the Union could always be saved if the right compromise could be found. With calm determination, he introduced a sweeping plan that he hoped might hold the country together. It promised to solve the sectional crisis in a permanent way and to reassure both North and South that the nation still had room for agreement.

This video will explore why that proposal rose, why it fell, and what its failure tells us about a country that was trying to cling to peace while standing on the edge of war.