[Non-Sequitur]

Douglas was a shameless opportunist who re-opened a literal can of worms with his detested Kansas-Nebraska Act. He sold his soul for a railroad that would go through Chicago and tried to cut a deal that would make Kansas a Slave State.

And yet you have more respect for him than the other two.

Crittenden authored the heroic Crittenden Compromise that Seward supported and Lincoln quashed.

You have an odd choice of heroes. The Crittenden Compromise was an absolute disaster and died a well deserved death. It guaranteed the expansion of slavery into the territories and the 6th article prohibiting any attempts to interfere with slavery in an fashion through Constitutional means basically took the power to amend the Constitution away from the states.

[AlanD]

“It guaranteed the expansion of slavery into the territories”

Honestly, there was nowhere left in the continental United States that slavery could be economically instituted. A slave economy in Nevada or Arizona or Utah? Impossible.

(Now South of the Border, maybe . . . but that would have taken approval from the North . .and that sure ain’t wasn’t going to happen.)

So Crittenden Compromise was mainly for symbolism only, do kick the can down the road, and avoid a war. The South was game, but Lincoln was opposed to any concessions to the South, symbolic or not.