and had, on the 29th, made a thorough reconnoisance of the defenses of the place, with the view of our advance upon it, a step which every man in the division contemplated with eagerness, and which was to have been executed on the 30th." Ewell, therefore, must have known that the river was fordable above and below the city, and something of the number and quality of the troops defending it.

With these lights to guide us, it seems probable that General Lee, with his communications safe, would not have called off Ewell from before Harrisburg, but rather pressed him forward to its capture, and after the capture, it may be to turn back to the assistance of Hill, possibly to cross over the river and meet Meade on the line of the Susquehannah, a condition that appeared so alarming to Senator Cameron, or even to hasten to the capture of Philadelphia, trusting to his ability, with the two corps of Longstreet and Hill, to hold Meade's army in check in the mountain passes—an expectation that does not appear so unreasonable, since he, with but little more than two-thirds of his present army, at Chancellorsville, had defeated the Army of the Potomac, stronger in numbers and morale than at this time. General Meade could not possibly have moved upon the gap in rear of Cashtown before July 1st, and he states that he proposed to make that a day of rest and to bring up his supply there. On the 29th, Hill was at Fayetteville, on the road from Chambersburg to Cashtown, and in his report, writes (p. 606): "I was directed to move on this road in the direction of York, and to cross the Susquehannah, menacing the communications of Harrisburg with Philadelphia, and to co-operate with General Ewell, acting as circumstances might require. Accordingly, on the 29th, I moved Heth's division to Cashtown, some eight miles from Gettysburg, following on the morning of the 30th with the division of Pender." This order, under which Hill was acting, was evidently the one for the general advance upon Harrisburg and the line of the Susquehannah, issued on the 28th, under the impression that the army of the Potomac was still in Virginia.

NOT UNFAVORABLE CONDITIONS.

It so happened that Hill was just where he should have been to observe the movements of Meade's army and to guard the passes through the mountains. Longstreet at Chambersburg, midway between the two wings, was in easy supporting distance of either of them. Stuart, with his three brigades of cavalry, would have re

joined the army on July 1st, for on the morning of that day he reached Dover and in the afternoon Carlisle. It must have been, however, with great reluctance that General Lee would adopt a line of action predicated upon Stuart, for it might be for aught he knew that he had met with a disaster, or been driven back into Virginia.

Because General Lee preferred to operate with his army in Pennsylvania until compelled to accept defensive battle with the Army of the Potomac, it by no means follows that an aggressive battle, in which he attacked the enemy as they were assembling, must be unsuccessful, or even that the conditions were necessarily favorable to the enemy. The results of the first and second days' fighting establish this fact; for, though lacking the important qualities of rapidity of movements and promptness of action, they were so favorable to General Lee as to warrant the belief that the third day would result in the total defeat of the enemy. By the light of facts now known from the records, reasonable promptness of action and better co-ordination between the two wings of the army would have secured a complete victory on the second day. The responsibility for the (as it proved to be) fatal delays has led to much crimination and recrimination. The third day's fighting on the right was a miserable failure, because it was so conducted that, in fact, it was divided into two separate and distinct battles, the first fought by artillery without any infantry, and the second by infantry without any artillery. And yet, in spite of the unnecessary delays and want of co-operation on the second day, and the gross mismanagement of the fighting on the third day, the killed, wounded and missing on the Confederate side were not as great as that on the Union side, and the disparity between the numbers in the two armies at the beginning had been almost obliterated by the fighting, for General Meade reported July 4th that the strength of his army (infantry and artillery), equipped, was only 55,000, and General Lee's numbers could not have been much less. ROBERT M. STRIBLING.

Markham, Va., June 4, 1897.

[From the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, July 27, 1897.]

THE TRUTH OF HISTORY.

Judge Reagan on the Hampton Roads Conference.

A REPLY TO WATTERSON.

No Offer Made to Pay for the Slaves-The Testimony of President Davis, Vice-President Stephens and Others.

To the Editor of the Dispatch:

AUSTIN, TEXAS, July 20, 1897.

In the address delivered by me at the annual reunion of Confederate veterans at Nashville, Tenn., on the 22d of June, discussing the question as to why the war was not brought to an end sooner than it was by a compromise, it became necessary for me to refer to a story often told, that President Lincoln, at the Hampton Roads Conference, February 3, 1865, offered to pay $400,000,000 for the slaves of the South to secure peace and a restoration of the Union. This statement has been often made for the purpose of showing that the Southern people might have been paid that sum for their slaves, and that the war might have been terminated and its sacrifices avoided, if President Davis and the Confederate authorities had accepted this offer from President Lincoln. I felt that it was due to the Confederate authorities, due to truth, and necessary as a historic fact, that I should declare, on that great occasion, "that no such offer in any form was made."

The Nashville American newspaper, of the 26th of June, 1897, published a communication from Mr. R. H. Baker, of Watertown, Tenn., under the head lines, "Judge Reagan in Error," in which he took issue with me on that question, thereby necessarily assuming that President Lincoln had made such an offer.

The day on which Mr. Baker's article was published I sent a note to the American, stating that on my return home I would send to that paper a statement of the authorities on which I made the denial that any such offer had been made.

Pursuant to that promise, on the 7th day of July, 1897, I sent my letter of that date to the American, giving some of the authorities on which I based my denial that President Lincoln had offered

$400,000,000 to pay for the loss of the slaves. I quoted what was said by the five members of the Hampton Roads Conference, the only persons who were present and knew what was said in that Conference; and by them showed that no such offer was made, and that no terms were offered the Confederates but unconditional submission to Federal authority. I will not go over that presentation of facts again, but will add to it two more statements-one by President Davis and one by President Lincoln.

PRESIDENT DAVIS'S STATEMENT.

In submitting to the Confederate Congress the report of our commissioners to the Hampton Roads conference, President Davis said: "I herewith transmit, for the information of Congress, the report of the eminent citizens above named (Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell), showing that the enemy refused to enter into negotiations with the Confederate States, or any one of them separately, or to give to our people any other terms or guarantees than those which the conquerer may grant, or to permit us to have peace on any other basis than our unconditional submission to their rule, coupled with the acceptance of their recent legislation on the subject of the relations between the white and black populations of each State. Such is, as I understand it, the effect of the amendment to the Constitution, which has been adopted by the Congress of the United States."

In response to a resolution adopted by the Congress of the United States, on the 8th of February, 1865, requesting information from President Lincoln in relation to what occurred in the conference held at Hampton Roads, Mr. Lincoln said:

"On my part, the whole substance af the instructions to the Secretary of State, hereinbefore recited, was stated and insisted upon, and nothing was said inconsistent therewith."

In the above, reference is made to the instructions given by President Lincoln, to Secretary of State Seward, on the 31st of January, 1865, as to what he was authorized to do in the conference with the Confederate commissioners. Mr. Lincoln said:

"You will make known to them that three things are indispensible -to-wit: First, the restoration of the national authority throughout all the States; second, 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 the preceding documents;

third, no cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all the forces hostile to the government."

The reference in the second of the above propositions, was to Mr. Lincoln's annual message to Congress, of December, 1864, and his reference to documents, is to his emancipation proclamations of September 22, 1862, and of January 1, 1863.

It was the policy indicated in these proclamations and in this message, which he informed the Confederate commissioners he would not recede from.

CONCLUSIVE PROOF.

And are not these two authorities conclusive proof, independently of all the other proofs presented in my letter of July 7th, that no proposition was made by Mr. Lincoln to the Confederate commissioners to pay $400,000,000 for the slaves to secure peace and union?

Now I will add that of all the persons who met in that conference, no one of them has ever said that such an offer was made; but all of them show a state of facts absolutely inconsistent with the making of such an offer. Henceforward, any one who may assume that such an offer was made, must do so in the face of, and in defiance of, all the facts connected with that conference. The only interest I feel in this matter is to see to it that the historic facts connected with that conference shall not be perverted and misrepresented, so as to throw on President Davis and the Confederate authorities the responsibility of having rejected such a proposition.

The Hon. Henry Watterson, editor of the Courier-Journal, gave to the public in that paper, on the 12th of July, under the display heading, "The Truth of History," over four columns' criticism and reply to my letter of the 7th of July.

I cannot descend from the consideration of an important historical question to a reply to what he says about my vehemence" and "volubility" and a number of other merely ill-natured and ungracious personal flings at me. I am only concerned in the settlement of the historical question.

Replying to my denial that President Lincoln, at the Hampton Roads conference, offered to the Confederate commissioners $400,000,000 to pay for the slaves, to secure peace and the return of the Southern States to the Union, Mr. Watterson says:

"Since no one that we have ever heard of has intimated that Mr. Lincoln did, it is difficult to understand just why Judge Reagan should be so inconsistent."