Harold Pease, Ph.D.A strange eerie silence stalks the land somewhat similar to that after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The nation had already divided choosing sides. Everyone knew that electing Lincoln would be too much for the South and an impending crisis would break any time. It was on everyone’s mind just below the surface and no one wanted to admit that it existed, but it did.Senator John J. Crittenden had two sons, each a general on each side of the Mason-Dixon Line who stood on opposite sides. They would be fighting each other. In Congress he offered the Crittenden Compromise dividing the nation on that line and extending it west with slavery permitted south and prohibited north. No one cared.Northern newspapers censored the southern view and the South the no
