ognized by several
extreme representatives. The names were announced on Thursday, December
6;[1] and at the close of the day's session the House adjourned to the
following Monday, the 10th, on which day the general discussion was
fairly launched on the request of Mr. Hawkins, of Florida, to be
excused from serving on the committee. He said he had asked the
opinions of many Southern Members, and, with one or two exceptions,
they most cordially agreed with the course he had taken. To serve on
the committee would place him in a false position. Florida had taken
the initiative; her Legislature had ordered an election to choose
members to a convention to be convened on the 3d day of January, 1861.
The committee was a Trojan horse to gain time and demoralize the South;
he regretted that it emanated from a Virginia Representative. He would
tell the North that Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South
Carolina were certain to secede from the Union within a short period.
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were certain to follow within the
ensuing six months.

Three Democratic Representatives responded to this outburst, the
Republican members of the House, as in the Senate, remaining discreetly
silent. These Democratic speakers alleged an unfair composition of the
committee, and joined in denouncing the Republican party. But upon the
vital and practical question of disunion their utterances were widely
divergent. As the name of each of them will assume a degree of
historical prominence in the further development of the rebellion,
short quotations from their remarks made at that early period will be
read with interest. Daniel E. Sickles, of New York, said:

[Sidenote] "Globe," Dec. 10, 1860, pp. 40, 41.

The city of New York will cling to the Union to the last; while
she will look upon the last hour of its existence as we would upon
the setting sun if we were never to see it more, yet when the call
for force comes--let it come when it may--no man will ever pass
the boundaries of the city of New York for the purpose of waging
war against any State of this Union which, through its constituted
authorities and sustained by the voice of its people, solemnly
declares its rights, its interests, and its honor demand that it
should seek safety in a separate existence.... The city of New
York is now a subjugated dependency of a fanatical and puritanical
State government that never thinks