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At the request of General Grant, Butler was relieved from command, and Major General Ord assigned to the department of Virginia and North Carolina. *

During the winter of 1865, there were unofficial, and unauthorized movements looking towards peace. Before Mr. Blair's visit to Richmond, an earnest friend of peace-honest, perhaps, but mistaken-approached Mr. Lincoln, and said in substance: "Assuming that Grant is baffled and delayed in his efforts to take Richmond, will it not be better to accept. peace on favorable terms than to prolong the war? Have not nearly four years of war demonstrated that, as against a divided North, a united South can make a successful defence? The South is a unit, made so, it is conceded, by despotic power. We of the North cannot afford to secure unity by giving up our constitutional government; we cannot secure unity without despotism." The rebels, said this advocate for peace, "will fill up their exhausted armies by 300,000 negroes; these negroes, under the training and discipline of white officers, and with freedom as their reward, will fight for them. The Union armies will be very greatly reduced next year by the expiration of the term of service of many of the men. How will you fill up the ranks? The people are divided; one-third or more, as the elections show, are positively and unalterably against the war; one-third or more positively and unalterably for carrying it on until the rebellion is thoroughly subjugated; the remainder of the people-when the clouds gather black and threatening again, when another draft comes, and increased taxation, the peace men, and the timid, facile, doubtful men, will go over to the opposition and make it a majority. can now secure any terms you please, by granting to the rebels recognition. You can fix your own boundary. You can hold all within your lines-the Mississippi River, and all west of it, and Louisiana. You can retain Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee. Take this-make peace.

You

* When the intelligence of the capture of Fort Fisher reached Washington, General Butler was being examined by the committee on the conduct of the war, in regard to the failure of his expedition. When the news was announced, "Thank God for that," exclaimed he.

Is not this as much territory, which was formerly slave territory, as the Republic can digest and assimilate to freedom at once? Make this a homogeneous country-make it free, and then improve and develop the mighty empire you have left. If you succeed in subduing the entire territory in rebellion, can the nation assimilate it, and make it homogeneous? Are the people in the Gulf States sufficiently intelligent to make freedom a blessing? You can people, educate, and bring up to the capability of self-government the territory you have within your lines, but taking it all— with its people accustomed to slavery, with the ignorance and vice resulting therefrom, is it clear that it is worth the blood and treasure it may cost?"

The President was unmoved by these representations. His reply was brief, and emphatic: "There are," said he, "just two indispensable conditions to peace-national unity, and national liberty. The national authority must be restored through all the States, and I will never recede from the position I have taken on the slavery question."* "The people," said he, "have the courage, self-denial, the persistence, to go through, and before another year goes by, it is reasonably certain, we shall bring all the rebel territory within our lines. We are neither exhausted, nor in process of exhaustion. We are really stronger than when we began the war. The purpose of the people to maintain the integrity of the Republic has never been shaken."

Mr. Lincoln justly regarded the November election as deciding that there should be no peace without union; no peace until the supremacy of the national authority should be everywhere recognized; no peace without liberty to all. For the purpose of learning the views of the Confederate leaders, F. P. Blair, sen., a private citizen, but a man of large political experience, and great influence, with many family and personal friends among the rebels, on the 28th day of December, 1864, obtained from the President permission to pass through the military lines South, and return. The President was informed that he intended to use the pass as a means of getting to Richmond, but no authority to

*See Mr. Lincoln's instructions to Mr. Seward, when sent to meet Stephens and Hunter at Fortress Monroe.

speak or act for the Government was conferred upon him. On his return he brought Mr. Lincoln a letter from Jefferson Davis, addressed to himself, the contents of which he had been authorized by Davis to communicate to the President, in which Davis stated he was now, as he always had been, willing to send commissioners, or receive them, and "to enter into a conference with a view to secure peace to the 'two countries.'" Thereupon the President addressed a note to Mr. Blair, dated January 18th, 1865, in which, after stating that he had read the note of Davis, he said he had been, was now, and should continue, ready to receive any agent whom Davis, or other influential person resisting the national authority might informally send to him with a view of securing peace to the people of "our common country." This note was delivered by Mr. Blair to Jefferson Davis. The visit of Mr. Blair resulted in the appointment by Davis of Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, and John A. Campbell, to confer with the President on the subject of peace, on the basis of his letter to Mr. Blair. When their arrival at the camp of General Grant was announced, Secretary Seward was charged by the President with representing the Government at the proposed informal conference. With the frankness which was characteristic of Mr. Lincoln, he instructed Mr. Seward to make known to Messrs., Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell that three things were indispensable, to wit:

1. The restoration of the national authority throughout all the States.

2. No receding by the Executive of the United States on the slavery question, from the position assumed thereon in the late annual message to Congress, and in preceding ⚫ documents.

3. No cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the Government.

He was further instructed to inform them that all propositions of theirs not inconsistent with the above, would be considered and passed upon, in a spirit of sincere liberality. He was further instructed "to hear and report, but not to consummate anything."

However, before any conference was had, the President joined Secretary Seward at Fortress Monroe; and on the 3d

of February, Messrs. Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell came on board the steamer of the President, and had an interview of several hours with him.

The conditions as contained in the President's instructions to Mr. Seward were stated and insisted upon. Those conditions, it will be observed, contained an explicit statement that the Executive would not recede from the Emancipation Proclamation, nor from any of the positions which he had taken in regard to the abolition of slavery. The agents of Davis were also informed, that Congress had by a constitutional majority, adopted the joint resolution, submitting to the States the proposition to abolish slavery throughout the Union, and that there was every reason to believe it would be adopted by three-fourths of the States, so as to become a part of the constitution. The rebel agents earnestly desired a temporary cessation of hostilities, and a postponement of the questions, but to this the President would not listen. So far from this, Mr. Lincoln said to General Grant: "Let nothing that is transpiring change, hinder, or delay your military movements or plans.' The conference ended without result. *

* Mr. Stephens is stated by a Georgia paper, to have repeated the following characteristic anecdote, as having occurred during the interview: "The three Southern gentlemen met Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, and after some preliminary remarks, the subject of peace was opened. Mr. Stephens, well aware that one who asks much may get more than he who confesses to humble wishes at the outset, urged the claims of his section with that skill and address for which the Northern papers have given him credit. Mr. Lincoln, holding the vantage-ground of conscious power, was, however, perfectly frank, and submitted his views almost in the form of an agreement.

*Davis had on this occasion, as on that of Mr. Stephen's visit to Washington, made it a condition that no conference should be had, unless his rank as commander or President should first be recognized. Mr. Lincoln declared that the only ground on which he could rest the justice of war-either with his own people or with foreign powers-was that it was not a war for conquest, for that the States had never been separated from the Union. Consequently, he could not recognize another government inside of the one of which he alone was President; nor admit the separate independence of States, that were yet a part of the Union. 'That,' said he, would be doing what you have so long 'asked Europe to do in vain, and be resigning the only thing the armies of the Union have been fighting for.'

"Mr. Hunter made a long reply to this, insisting that the recognition of Davis' power to make a treaty was the first and indispensable step to peace, and referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and his Parliament, as a trustworthy precedent of a constitutional ruler treating with rebels. Mr. Lincoln's face then wore that indiscribable expression which generally preceded his hardest hits, and he remarked: Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don't pretend to be bright. My only distinct recollection of the matter is, that Charles lost his head.' That settled Mr. Hunter for a while."

It appears from a statement of Mr. Hunter, one of the persons appointed by Davis to represent the Confederacy at this conference, that Mr. Lincoln was very explicit upon a most important point in regard to reconstruction as it is called. Mr. Hunter, before the rebellion, had been Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senator of the United States, and was one of the ablest men of the Confederates. In a carefully prepared speech made at Richmond on his return from the peace conference, he said: "Whenever we go into the United States as a conquered people, we give up the laws of the United States, and must take such as they choose to make for us; and we go in without representation in making those laws; for," said he, "Mr. Lincoln told us, told me, that while we could send Representatives to the Yankee Congress, yet it rested with that Congress to say whether they would admit them or not."* If Mr. Hunter tells the truth, here is another expression of opinion by Mr. Lincoln, directly upon the point that it rested with Congress exclusively to determine whether Representatives from the rebellious States should be admitted. statement, made directly after the conference, upon a point upon which Mr. Hunter would naturally feel peculiarly solicitous, may be regarded as entitled to consideration; especially, as it is in harmony with the statements and positions of Mr. Lincoln upon other occasions.

This

Mr. Lincoln, might now well feel confident of early, and decisive success. Grant held the forces of Lee so that they could not safely leave their fortifications. Thomas, with a victorious army, was in the West; Sherman, with his invincible army in the South, and it only remained for the comprehensive mind of Grant, after destroying some additional outposts, to close in, and crush the waning military power of the rebels. The army of Hood, having been defeated and nearly destroyed, General Grant directed General Thomas to send General Schofield, with his corps to the East; it was promptly sent, reaching Washington on the 23d of February, and was immediately dispatched to North Carolina. That State was now constituted a military Department,

*This speech will be found quoted in Appleton's Encyclopedia of 1865, p. 191.

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