hem_ to make a positive and affirmative declaration of
their purposes.

Mr. Seward, of New York, as we have seen, was a member of that
Committee--the man who, in 1858, had announced the "irrepressible
conflict," and who, in the same year, speaking of and for abolitionism,
had said: "It has driven you back in California and in Kansas; it will
invade your soil." He was to be the Secretary of State in the incoming
Administration, and was very generally regarded as the "power behind the
throne," greater than the throne itself. He was present in the Senate,
but made no response to Mr. Douglas's demand for a declaration of
policy.

Meantime the efforts for an adjustment made in the House of
Representatives had been equally fruitless. Conspicuous among these
efforts had been the appointment of a committee of thirty-three
members--one from each State of the Union--charged with a duty similar
to that imposed upon the Committee of Thirteen in the Senate, but they
had been alike unsuccessful in coming to any agreement. It is true that,
a few days afterward, they submitted a majority and two minority
reports, and that the report of the majority was ultimately adopted by
the House; but, even if this action had been unanimous, and had been
taken in due time, it would have been practically futile on account of
its absolute failure to provide or suggest any solution of the
territorial question, which was the vital point in controversy.

No wonder, then, that, under the shadow of the failure of every effort
in Congress to find any common ground on which the sections could be
restored to amity, the close of the year should have been darkened by a
cloud in the firmament, which had lost even the silver lining so long
seen, or thought to be seen, by the hopeful.

[Footnote 19: The following extract from a letter of the Hon. O. R.
Singleton, then a Representative of Mississippi in the United States
Congress, in regard to the subject treated, is herewith annexed:

"Canton, Mississippi, _July 14, 1877_.

"In 1860, about the time the ordinance of secession was passed
by the South Carolina Convention, and while Mississippi,
Alabama, and other Southern States were making active
preparations to follow her example, a conference of the
Mississippi delegation in Congress, Senators and
Representatives, was asked for by Governor J. J. Pettus, for
consultation as to the course Mississippi ought to take in the