The committee first met on the 21st December, 1860, and preliminary to any other proceeding, they “resolved that no proposition shall be reported as adopted, unless sustained by a majority of each of the classes of the committee; Senators of the Republican party to constitute one class, and Senators of the other parties to constitute the other class.” This resolution was passed, because any report they might make to the Senate would be in vain unless sanctioned by at least a majority of the five Republican Senators. On the next day (the 22d), Mr. Crittenden submitted to the committee “A Joint Resolution” (the same which he had two days before presented to the Senate), “proposing certain amendments to the Constitution of the United States,” now known as the Crittenden Compromise. This was truly a compromise of conflicting claims, because it proposed that the South should surrender their adjudged right to take slaves into all our Territories, provided the North would recognize this right in the Territories south of the old Missouri Compromise line. The committee rejected this compromise, every one of its five Republican members, together with Messrs. Davis and Toombs, from the cotton States, having voted against it. Indeed, not one of all the Republicans in the Senate, at any period or in any form, voted in its favor. The committee, having failed to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, reported their disagreement to the Senate on the 31st December, 1860, in a resolution declaring that they had “not been able to agree upon any general plan of adjustment.” Mr. Crittenden did not despair of ultimate success, notwithstanding his defeat before the Committee of Thirteen. After this, indeed, he could no longer expect to carry his compromise as an amendment to the Constitution by the necessary two-thirds vote of Congress. It was, therefore, postponed by the Senate on his own motion. As a substitute for it he submitted to the Senate, on the 3d January, 1861, a joint resolution, which might be passed by a majority of both Houses. This was to refer his rejected amendment, by an ordinary act of Congress, to a direct vote of the people of the several States.