freedom. Congress could abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories. Congress could use the Commerce Clause to end the interstate slave trade, thereby crippling the steady movement of slavery from the economically stagnant southeast to the growing southwest. Congress could recognize free blacks as full citizens and insist on due process rights to protect fugitive slaves from being captured and returned to bondage. Finally, the government could use patronage powers to promote the anti-slavery cause across the country, especially in the border states. Pro-slavery elements considered the Republican strategy to be much more dangerous to their cause than radical abolitionism, and Lincoln's election was met by secession. Indeed, the Republican strategy mapped the "crooked path to abolition" that prevailed during the Civil War. 1860 Republican presidential nomination The Republican Party was committed to restricting the growth of slavery, and its victory in the election of 1860 was the trigger for secession by Southern states. The debate before 1860 was mainly focused on the Western territories, especially Kansas and the popular sovereignty controversy. Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate for president in the election of 1860. Lincoln was opposed to the expansion of slavery into the territories, but agreed with nearly all Americans, including most radical abolitionists, that the federal government was prevented by the Constitution from abolishing slavery in states where it already existed. His plan was to halt the spread of slavery and to offer monetary compensation to slave owners in states that agreed to gradually end slavery (see Compensated emancipation). He was considered a moderate within the Republican party in taking the position that slavery should be put on a course of "ultimate extinction" with the help of the federal government. As President-elect in 1860 and 1861 In a letter to Senator Lyman Trumbull on December 10, 1860, Lincoln wrote, "Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery." In a letter to John A. Gilmer of North Carolina of December 15, 1860, which was soon published in newspapers, Lincoln wrote that the "only substantial difference" between North and South was that "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted." Lincoln repeated this statement in a letter to Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia on December 22, 1860. On December 15, 1860, Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden proposed the Crittenden Compromise,