p. 59.

No further noteworthy discussion occurred for a time, except the
declaration of Mr. Cobb, of Alabama, that if anything were done to save
his State it must be done immediately. The election for delegates to
the convention would take place on the 24th of that month, and the
convention would meet on the 7th of the next month. His State would not
remain in this Confederacy longer than the 15th of January unless
something were done.

[Sidenote] Ibid.

The House refused to excuse the several objecting members from serving
on the committee; and the temper in which they proceeded to the
discharge of their duty is perhaps best illustrated by the remarks of
Representative Reuben Davis, of Mississippi. He said he could "but
regard this committee as a tub thrown out to the whale, to amuse only,
until the 4th of March next, and thus arrest the present noble and
manly movements of the Southern States to provide by that day for their
security and safety out of the Union. With these views I take my place
on the committee for the purpose of preventing it being made a means of
deception by which the public mind is to be misled and misguided; yet
intending honestly and patriotically to entertain any fair proposition
for adjustment of pending evils which the Republican members may
submit."

On Wednesday, December 12, the morning hour was by agreement set apart
for receiving all bills and resolutions to be submitted to the
Committee of Thirty-three. They were duly read and referred, without
debate, to the number of twenty-three.[2] They came principally from
Northern members, though all four parties of the late Presidential
campaign were represented, the attitude of which they mainly reflected.
In substance, therefore, they embodied the same medley of affirmations
and denials, of charges and countercharges, of evasions and subterfuges
which party discussion had worn threadbare.

These twenty-three propositions, which were by subsequent additions
increased to forty or fifty, exhibit such a variety of legislative
plans that it is impossible to subject them to any classification. They
give us an abstract of the divergent views which Members of Congress
entertained concerning the cause of the crisis and its remedy. They
range in purport from a mere assertion of the duty of preserving and
administering the government as then existing, in its simple form and
symmetrical structure, to proposals to destroy and change it to a
comple