Despite its unfairness as a measure of settlement, and its great injustice to the South, Mr. Davis would have accepted it, as would a large majority of Southern Senators, as a _finality_, if the Republican Senators had tendered it. This, however, the latter were determined not to do, nor did a single Republican Senator, at any time during the session, express even a desire that any action, conciliatory to the South, should be adopted.[18] Insolent, dictatorial, and defiant, they proclaimed their purpose, at all hazards, to assert the authority of the Government, and their acts clearly indicated their stern purpose to refuse every proposition contemplating concession or compromise. In substitution of the Crittenden adjustment, they voted solidly for the amendment of Senator Clarke, of New Hampshire, which denied the necessity of amendments to the Constitution, which ought to be obeyed rather than amended, and declared that the remedy for present difficulties was to be sought in a stern enforcement of the laws, rather than in assurances to peculiar ideas and guarantees to peculiar interests. This palpable defiance, and emphatic avowal of a purpose to concede nothing to Southern demands, was indorsed by the action of Republican caucusses of both houses of Congress, by resolutions of State Legislatures, and by tenders of men and means to compel the submission of the South. The entire Republican party were clearly committed to the purpose, avowed by Mr. Salmon P. Chase, in a letter from the Peace Congress, to Portsmouth, Ohio, to "use the power while they had it, and prevent a settlement."[19] On the 31st December, 1860, the Committee of Thirteen reported to the Senate their inability to "agree upon any general plan of adjustment," and thus, with the arrival of the new year, had vanished the last hope of preserving the peace of the country. The failure of the Crittenden proposition was decisive of the question of pacification; no other plan of adjustment, that was presented, having either its merits or its practical features. Southern resistance came none too soon for Northern power, hate, and lust, but far too late for the precious goal of independence. Delay had been fatal, and the golden opportunity long since lost. But there was still time to emulate the glorious examples of the past. With marvelous calmness and dauntless intrepidity, a heroic race prepared an exhibition of noble devotion and willing sacrifice, the contemplation of which revives the memories of Thermopylæ.