[158] Greeley, of New York. Through him they sought a safe conduct to Washington. Mr. Lincoln at first appeared to favor an interview, but finally refused, on the ground that the Commissioners were not authorized to treat for peace.Mr. Davis makes no further mention of this mission in his book, and he says not one word, anywhere, of the alleged scheme for releasing the prisoners and establishing a Northwestern Confederacy. It is true that there was a scheme gotten up, perhaps in the Fall of 1864, by some escaped Confederate prisoners, who had made their way into Canada, for the release of the Confederate prisoners at Johnson's Island; but that scheme proved an abortion, as the means for carrying it out were wholly inadequate. There was, also, a raid into Vermont, for the purpose of plundering some bank or banks; but none of these schemes had any connection whatever with my movement on Washington. Permit me, in conclusion, Mr. Editor, to express my surprise that any respectable Northern journal should publish so absurd a story as the one I have thus noticed, and my still greater surprise that it should be copied into a respectable Southern journal.
J. A. Early. February 23, 1882.
