After appealing to Lincoln to beg the South to return; after appealing to the Republican Party to repudiate its Chicago platform; after appealing to Congress to pass the Crittenden resolution or submit it to the States, the _Herald_ appealed to the South. On Jan. 4, railing at the imbecility of Congress and the indifference of President-elect Lincoln, it proposed that the Southern States arrange a Constitutional Convention for their own section alone. Let this body adopt amendments to the Constitution embodying guarantees of the return of fugitive slaves, of the validity of the Dred Scott decision, and of universal tolerance of opinion respecting slavery as a social institution. “Let them submit these different amendments to the different Northern States, earnestly inviting their acceptance of them, and assigning a period, similar to that which was appointed for the ratification of the Constitution of 1787, when all States which should have agreed to their proposition should be considered as thenceforth forming the future United States of America.” The whole nation, said the _Herald_, would join such a Union, save New England. Probably the Yankee States would stay out. Good riddance to them. The rest of the country is sick and tired of New England. It has had too much “of the provincial meanness, bigotry, self-conceit, love for ‘isms,’ hypercritical opposition to anything and everything, universal fault-finding, hard bargaining, and systematic home lawlessness ... which are covering their section of the country with odium.” This was not a shabby offer to the South--to take any conditions it made and kick the Yankees out. But the _Herald_ waxed more generous still. On March 20, a month after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, it had found the solution of the great problem: let the new Congress, when it met at Lincoln’s call, adopt the Confederate Constitution, and submit it to the nation for ratification by three-fourths of the States. “This would settle the question and restore peace and harmony to a troubled nation, while at the same time every statesman and every man of common sense must admit that the new Constitution is a decided improvement on the old.” The _Herald_ enumerated its merits: the restriction of the President to one six-year term, the budget system of appropriations, the interdiction of internal improvements at the expense of the national treasury, and so on. “Let Mr. Lincoln call Congress together for the purpose, and he will have taken the first step of a statesman since he came to power.” The _Herald_ did not say who it believed should be President under the new constitution, but it could hardly avoid concluding that Jefferson Davis ought to be accepted along with the Confederate system of government. All the while, the _Journal of Commerce_, _Express_, and _News_ were imperturbably declaring that the South should be allowed to depart amicably.