The House of Representatives gathered for the "lame duck" session and immediately determined to form a committee, one member from each state to immediately explore ways to moderate and mediate the sectional crisis.  Called very quickly "The Committee of Thirty-Three," it was approved 145 to 38, with almost all the "nays" coming from southern members, and Ohio Republican Thomas Corwin named as chair.  It reported on January 14, 1860 it had agreed on a constitutional amendment to protect slavery where it existed.  (By John Osborne)

Senator Judah Benjamin of Louisiana gave a speech in support of secession on the floor of the United States Senate.  The galleries were filled with secessionist supporters who cheered noisily his concluding words that the South will never be subjugated and that "you can never degrade them to a servile and inferior race; never, never, never!"  Benjamin resigned his seat on February 4, 1861 when Louisiana completed its break with the Union.  (By John Osborne)

Excitement had been running high in Pittsburgh for several days after rumors of War Department orders that transferred heavy ordinance from the local Alleghany Arsenal to southern or south-western states.  Local citizens had threatened to prevent any such movement and in the evening of this day a large public meeting was held.  General William Robinson was in the chair and resolutions were passed supporting the Union and calling on President Buchanan to purge from his Cabinet all men, like Secretary of War John Floyd, who were no longer loyal.  (By John Osborne)

Southern commissioners had been pressuring Delaware, as a nominal slave state, to make a decision concerning secession.  On January 3, 1861, the Delaware state legislature voted overwhelmingly to remain in the Union, stating famously that "as Delaware was the first to adopt so will she be the last to abandon the Federal Constitution."  State leaders, among them Willard Saulsbury, the junior U.S. senator and Dickinson College class of 1842, then began to support efforts at compromise.  (By John Osborne)    

At her royal residence of Frogmore, near Windsor Castle, Maria Louisa Victoria, the Duchess of Kent and the mother of Queen Victoria died at age seventy-four, from the effects of cancer.  A widowed German princess, she had married a younger son of George III in 1818 and the following year gave birth to the daughter who would become Queen Victoria.  She was buried in the royal vault at Windsor Castle.  (By John Osborne)  

Francis "Fanny" Longfellow, wife of poet and Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, suffered fatal burns when her dress caught fire at their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She died the next morning.  Longfellow was also burned about the hands and face while trying to save her and resorted later to growing his famous beard to cover these wounds.  Fanny was Longfellow's second wife, the love of his life, and the mother of his six children.  (By John Osborne)