damaging operations at Niagara Falls (to be mentioned below), Greeley addressed the following letter to the Governors of the loyal States (a call for 500,000 troops being then but partially answered): Hon. : NEW YORK, Sept. 2, 1864. YOUR EXCELLENCY: The undersigned have been requested by a body of influential Unionists to communicate with the loyal Governors for the purpose of eliciting replies to the following queries: 1. In your judgment, is the re-election of Mr. Lincoln a probability? 2. In your judgment, can your own State be carried for Mr. Lincoln ? 3. In your judgment, do the interests of the Union party, and so of the country, require the substitution of another candidate in place of Mr. Lincoln ? In these queries, we give no opinion of our own, and request yours only for the most private and confidential use. Yours truly, HORACE GREELEY, This device failed entirely, except as it may have served to retard the recruiting of troops in some of the States. If the answers to this letter had afforded any encouragement to their purpose, there is no telling what new coup d'etat this "influential body of Unionists" might have sprung upon the country. GREELEY'S NIAGARA FALLS EXPLOIT. It was during the summer of 1864, about a month after Lincoln had been renominated, that Greeley— pretending to be friendly to the President-attempted to draw him into a proposition to the Rebel Government for peace. We will give the history of this operation of Greeley's in the language of another, who has epitomized it in a manner suitable to our purpose: So late as the 23d day of February, 1864, he reiterated in the New York Tribune, in this language, his views concerning the right of the South to secede : "We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, is sound and just, and that if the slave States, the cotton States, or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear, moral right to do so. * * Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of the Southern peo. ple have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views." Recognized by the South as a leading Republican, it is not strange that Mr. Greeley should be regarded by them as the most fitting person to whom to address peace propositions. His views differed in no essential particular from theirs. Every failure of the Union armies was continually magnified by him. His views of the situation were most gloomy and despondent, and he took good care that through the columns of his paper they should be widely circulated. Early in July, 1864, correspondence was opened with Mr. Greeley by an irresponsible and half crazy adventurer known as "Colorado Jewett." On the 5th of July, Jewett writes Greeley, in reply to a note previously received from him, in which he says: "I am authorized to state to you, for our use only, not the public, that two embassadors of Davis & Co. are now in Caneda, with full and complete powers for a peace, and Mr. Sanders requests that you come on immediately to me at Cataract House, to have a private interview, or if you will send the President's protection for him and two friends they will come on and meet you." On the next day Jewett telegraphed Greeley as follows: "Will you come here? Parties have full power." On the 7th of July Greeley inclosed Jewett's letter and telegram to the President, accompanied by a letter of his own, in which occurs this remarkable passage: “And, therefore, I venture to remind you that our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country, also longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscrip tion, of further wholesale devastation, and of new river of human blood; and a widespread conviction that the government and its prominent supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the approaching elections." [In this letter were also embodied the terms on which Greeley proposed to effect a peace. Among these conditions were the payment of $400,000,000 to the Slave States, rebel and loyal alike, for the value of slaves emancipated, and the concession to them of the right to be represented in Congress according to their "total, instead of their federal population." The bonds for the $400,000,000 were to be paid over to each State" upon the ratification by its legislature of this adjustment!"] "To this letter Mr. Lincoln at once, on the 9th of July, replied, saying to Greeley: "If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, for peace, embracing the restor ation of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me with you, and that if he really brings such proposition, he shall at the least have safe conduct with the paper (and without publicity if he chooses) to the point where you shall have met him. The same if there be two or more persons." On the 10th of July, Greeley wrote the President suggesting that the rebel envoys would decline to exhibit their credentials to him, and on the 13th advised the President that he then had information on which he could rely, that Clay and Thompson were then in Canada, duly commissioned and empowered to negotiate for peace. "Hearing nothing further from Greeley, Mr. Lincoln, on the 15th, wrote him that he had sent Mr. Hay, his private Secretary, to him, and said to him: 'I am disappointed that you have not already reached here with those commissioners. If they would consent to come on being shown my letter to you of the 19th inst., show that and this to them, and if they will come on the terms stated in the former, bring them. I not only intend a sincere effort for peace, but I intend that you shall be a personal witness that it is made.' 64 Mr. Hay reached New York on the morning of the 16th, met Greeley, who promised to start on his mission immediately if he could have an absolute safe conduct for four persons to be named by him, whereupon, under the direction of the President, Hay wrote for the safe conduct, and Greeley started for Niagara Falls. Arriving there on the 17th, he addressed a note to the supposed rebel commissioners, in which he stated that he had been informed that they are duly accredited from Richmond as the bearers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace, and that they desired to visit Washington in fulfillment. He then adds: If my information be thus far substantially correct, I am authorized by the President of the United States to tender you his safe conduct on the journey proposed, and to accompany you at the earliest time that will be agreeable to you.' 44 THE NEGOTIATIONS FAIL. "And here occurred the first hitch in these extraordinary negotiations. |