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.

It was doubtless calculated by President Davis that the issue of the Fortress Monroe Conference would give a flat answer to the party in the Confederacy that had been clamouring for peace negotiations, and make an opportunity to excite anew the spirit and indignation of the Southern people. It was indeed a powerful appeal to the heart of the South; it had displayed the real consequences of subjugation; it had declared what would be its pains and penalties and humiliation; it was the ultimatum of an enemy calculated to nerve the resolution of a people fighting for liberty, and to make them devote anew labour and life for the great cause of their redemption. It was thought in Richmond that the last attempt at negotiation would date a new era of resolution and devotion in the war. On the return of the commissioners a day was appointed for an imposing expression of public opinion on the event of the conference; all business was suspended in Richmond; at high noon processions were formed to the different places of meeting; and no less than twenty different orators, composed of the most effective speakers in Congress and the Cabinet, and the most eloquent divines of Richmond, took their stands in the halls of legislation, in the churches and the theatres, and swelled the eloquence of this last and grand appeal to the people and armies of the South. Two of the returned commissioners, Messrs. Hunter and Campbell, were among the orators of the day. Mr. Stephens had been urged to speak; but he had a demagogue's instinct of danger in the matter; it was an awkward occasion in which he might say too much or too little; and so he plead ill-health, and escaped to Georgia. It was an extraordinary day in Richmond; vast crowds huddled around the stands of the speakers or lined the streets; and the air was vocal with the efforts of the orator and the responses of his audience. It appeared indeed that the blood of the people had again been kindled. But it was only the sickly glare of an expiring fame; there was no steadiness in the excitement; there was no virtue in