Hon. S. S. Cox, for several years an able and eloquent member of Congress from Ohio, has made a most interesting statement upon this subject: The vote on the Crittenden proposition was well defined, but is not so well understood. From the frequency of inquiries since the war as to this latter vote, the people were eager to know upon whom to fix the responsibility of its failure. It may as well be stated that all other propositions, whether of the Peace Convention or the Border State _project_, or the measures of the committees, were comparatively of no moment; for the Crittenden proposition was the only one which could have arrested the struggle. It would have received a larger vote than any other. It would have had more effect in moderating Southern excitement. Even Davis, Toombs, and others of the Gulf States, would have accepted it. I have talked with Mr. Crittenden frequently on this point. Not only has he confirmed the public declarations of Douglas and Pugh, and the speech of Toombs himself, to this effect, but he said it was so understood in committee. At one time, while the committee was in session, he said: "Mr. Toombs, will this compromise, as a remedy for all wrongs and apprehensions, be acceptable to you?" Mr. Toombs, with some profanity, replied: "Not by a good deal; but my State will accept it, and I will follow my State to ----." And he did. I will not open the question whether it was wise then to offer accommodations. It may not be profitable now to ask whether the millions of young men whose bodies are maimed, or whose bones are decaying under the sod of the South, and the heavy load of public debt under which we sweat and toil, have their compensation in black liberty. Nor will I discuss whether the blacks have been bettered by their precipitate freedom, passing, as so many have, from slavery, through starvation and suffering, to death. There is no comfort in the reflection that the negroes will be exterminated with the extermination of slavery. The real point is, could not this Union have been made permanent by timely settlement, instead of cemented by fraternal blood and military rule? By an equitable partition of the territory this was possible. We had then 1,200,000 square miles. The Crittenden proposition would have given the North 900,000 of these square miles, and applied the Chicago doctrines to that quantity. It would have left the remaining fourth substantially to be carved out as free or slave States, at the option of the people when the States were admitted. This proposition the radicals denounced. It has been stated, to rid the Republicans of the odium of not averting the war when that was possible, that the Northern members tendered to the Southern the Crittenden compromise, which the South rejected. This is untrue.