In this crisis, when the last fingerings of hope seemed to have departed, that an amicable adjustment of the question would be effected, all eyes were turned towards Mr. Clay, as the only person who could avert the calamities which seemed suspended over the nation. He reached Washington on the sixteenth of January 1821, and found congress in the greatest scene of confusion imaginable. Legislation was absolutely terminated. The most envenomed feelings of hatred rankled in the bosoms of the two parties, who, frowning darkly on each other, bore a stronger resemblance to two belligerent armies, with their weapons in their hands, impatiently waiting for the word to rush into the maddening conflict, than to companies of grave and sober legislators. He was immediately waited on by both parties, who expressed the strongest anxiety that the _vexed question_ might be settled and entreated him to devise some method by which it might be consummated. He expressed his views freely, and urged them to select some common ground on which both parties could meet and harmonize their opinions. On the second day of February, he made a motion to commit the question to a committee of thirteen, to be chosen from both parties, a number suggested by the original states of the union, which was accepted. Mr. Clay, in a report submitted to the house on the tenth of February, by him as chairman of the committee of thirteen, introduced a resolution for the admission of Missouri, on the following conditions: