What abolitionists feared far more than secession was that to save the Union some compromise would be made which would fasten slavery on the nation. Susan agreed with Garrison when he declared in the _Liberator_, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last 'the covenant with death' is annulled, 'the agreement with Hell' broken--at least by the action of South Carolina and ere long by all the slave-holding states, for their doom is one."[126]
Compromise, however, was in the air. The people were appalled and confused by the breaking up of the Union and the possibility of civil war, and the government fumbled. Powerful Republicans, among them Thurlow Weed, speaking for eastern financial interests, favored the Crittenden Compromise which would re-establish the Mason-Dixon line, protect slavery in the states where it was now legal, sanction the domestic slave trade, guarantee payment by the United States for escaped slaves, and forbid Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland. Even Seward suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in the slave states for all time. In such an atmosphere as this, Susan gloried in Wendell Phillips's impetuous declarations against compromise.
While the whole country marked time, waiting for the inauguration of President Lincoln, abolitionists sent out their speakers, Susan heading a group in western New York which included Samuel J. May, Stephen S. Foster, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "All are united," she wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "that good faith and honor demand us to go forward and leave the responsibility of free speech or its suppression with the people of the places we visit." Then showing that she well understood the temper of the times, she added, "I trust ... no personal harm may come to you or Phillips or any of the little band of the true and faithful who shall defend the right...."[127]
Feeling was running high in Buffalo when Susan arrived with her antislavery contingent in January 1861, expecting disturbances but unprepared for the animosity of audiences which hissed, yelled, and stamped so that not a speaker could be heard. The police made no effort to keep order and finally the mob surged over the platform and the lights went out. Nevertheless, Susan who was presiding held her ground until lights were brought in and she could dimly see the milling crowd.