convened for work. The informal propositions and
discussions of the day previous were renewed, but resulted only in
calling out views and schemes too vague on the one hand or too extreme
on the other. The subject was about to be laid over to the following
Saturday, when Albert Rust, of Arkansas, startled the committee with
the information that the extremists were obtaining signatures to a
paper to announce to the South that no further concession was expected
from the North, and that any adjustment of pending difficulties had
become impossible. He, therefore, offered a resolution to meet this
unexpected crisis, but accepted the following substitute, offered by
William McKee Dunn, of Indiana:

_Resolved_, That in the opinion of this Committee, the existing
discontent among the Southern people and the growing hostility
among them to the Federal Government are greatly to be regretted,
and that whether such discontent and hostility are without just
cause or not, any reasonable, proper, and constitutional remedies
and effectual guarantees of their peculiar rights and interests,
as recognized by the Constitution, necessary to preserve the peace
of the country and the perpetuation of the Union, should be
promptly and cheerfully granted.

[Sidenote] Proceedings of the committee and card of Hon. Reuben Davis,
"National Intelligencer," Dec. 14 and 15, 1860.

[Sidenote] Gen. Scott, "Autobiography," Vol. II., p. 613.

Other amendments were voted down, and this proposition was adopted by a
vote of twenty-two to eight, and thus, in good faith, a tender of
reasonable concession and honorable and satisfactory compromise was
made by the North to the South. But the peace-offering was a waste of
patience and good-will. Caucus after caucus of the secession leaders
had only grown more aggressive, and deepened and strengthened their
inflexible purpose to push the country into disunion. The presence of
General Scott, who after a long illness had come from New York to
Washington, on December 12, to give his urgent advice to the work of
counteracting secession by vigorous military preparation, did not
disconcert or hinder the secession leaders. His patriotic appeal to the
Secretary of War on the 13th naturally fell without effect upon the
ears of one of their active confederates. Neither the temporizing
concession of the President nor the conciliatory and half-apologetic
resolution of the Committee o