The House Committee of Thirty-three had been organized by the selection of Thomas Corwin as its chairman, and had entered hopefully upon the task confided to it.  A caucus of active conspirators was said to have been held the week previous, to intimidate the members from the Cotton States and induce them to refuse to serve on the committee, but this coercive movement only partly succeeded.  The Committee of Thirty-three held a long meeting on December 12, and now, on the morning of the 13th, was once more 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 of Thirty-three for one instant changed or affected the determination to destroy the Government and dissolve the Union.