Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[94] from twenty States, composing a “Peace conference,” held at the request of the Legislature of Virginia, met in Washington on the 4th of February, and adjourned February 27th. All the Border Slave States were represented. Most of the delegates from these States were willing to accept the few and feeble guaranties of the Crittenden proposition. The ultimate result was the recommendation of a project to Congress which, in detail, was less favourable to the South than that contained in Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, but generally identical with it in respect of running a geographical line between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding territories, and enforcing the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. One curious additional feature was that no territory should in the future be acquired by the United States, without the concurrence of the Senators from the Southern States and those from the Northern States. But it is useless to go into the details of the report of the Peace Commissioners; for it never received any steady or respectful consideration in either house of Congress. In the Senate it was summarily voted down by a vote of twenty-eight to seven; and the House, on a call of yeas and nays, actually refused to receive it.

There was an evident disposition on the part of the so-called Border Slave States to avoid a decisive step. To this hesitation the North gave a significance which it did not really possess. It is true that Tennessee and North Carolina decided against calling a State Convention; but this action implied simply that they were awaiting the results of the peace propositions to which they had committed themselves. The State of Virginia, which had distinguished herself by a conspicuous effort to save the Union--for it was on the unanimous invitation of her Legislature that the Peace Conference had been assembled-had called a State Convention in the month of January. It was elected on the 4th of February; and the Northern party found singular gratification in the circumstance that a majority of Union men was returned to an assembly so critical.

There is no doubt the Convention of Virginia was sincerely anxious by every means in its power to restore the Union. But the party in favour of secession was steadily strengthening in view of the obstinate front presented by the Black Republican party in Congress. Delegates who had been returned as Union men, were afterwards instructed to vote otherwise. Petersburg, Culpepper, Cumberland, Prince Edward, Botetourt, Wythe, and many other towns and counties, held meetings and urged prompt secession. The action of the Federal authorities was daily becoming more irritating and alarming. A garrison was thrown into Fort Washington on the Potomac; and it was observed that guns were being mounted on the parapet of Fortress Monroe, and turned inland upon the very bosom of Virginia.

However Virginia might have lingered, in the hope that the breach