Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/382

344 nished by the resolutions offered in the Senate and also to the committee of thirteen by the venerable Crittenden. This Senate committee of thirteen unfortunately met late in December, not assembling until action had been taken by South Carolina. In fact not only the preceding three weeks of the congressional session, but months of irritating canvass for the presidency, had been employed more in facilitating the disruption, than in efforts to restore the distracted country to a state of harmony. The President next waited for Congress, and Congress on assembling threw the responsibility upon the Northern States, without considering that these States had already acted and could not now be brought to consider a compromise early enough to arrest the movement of secession which was necessarily swift.

The Senate committee of thirteen was composed of five Republicans from the North, three Northern Democrats and five senators from the South, eight members of the committee being from the North, three from the border States of Kentucky and Virginia and the other two from the Cotton States, Georgia and Mississippi. Only three of the committee were from the States which united in the Confederacy. Thus it may be seen that the committee as appointed by Breckinridge was constituted to prevent secession. Upon assembling the committee agreed that the sanction of at least a majority of five Republican committeemen was absolutely required to any report. It was therefore &quot; resolved that no proposition shall be reported as adopted unless sustained by a majority of each of the classes of the committee. &quot; This resolution placed the responsibility together with the power of controlling the action of the committee on only three Republican supporters of the President-elect.

Mr. Crittenden submitted to the committee the same joint resolution which he had presented to the Senate, and which is known in the history of the times as the Crittenden Compromise. The resolutions &quot; proposed