If, then, proposals cannot be made through envoys because the enemy would not receive them, how is it possible to communicate our desire for peace otherwise than by the public announcements contained in almost every message I ever sent to Congress. I cannot recall, at this time, one instance in which I have failed to announce that our only desire was peace, and the only terms which formed a sine qua non, were precisely those that you suggest, namely, ‘a demand only to be let alone.’
But suppose it were practicable to obtain a conference through commissioners, with the Government of President Lincoln, is it at this moment that we are to consider it desirable, or even at all practical? Have we not just been apprised by that despot that we can only expect his gracious pardon by emancipating all our slaves, swearing allegiance and obedience to him and his proclamations, and becoming in point of fact the slaves of our own negroes? Can there be in North Carolina one citizen so fallen beneath the dignity of his ancestors as to accept or enter into conference on the basis of these terms? That there are a few traitors in the State who would be willing to betray their fellow-citizens to such a degraded position in the hope of being rewarded for treachery by an escape from the common doom may be true. But I do not believe the vilest wretch would accept such terms for himself.
I cannot conceive how the people of your State, than which none has sent nobler or more gallant soldiers to the field of battle (one of whom it is your honor to be), can have been deceived by anything to which you refer in the recent action of the Federal House of Representatives. I have seen no action of the house that does not indicate by a very decided majority the purpose of the enemy to refuse all terms to the South except absolute, unconditional subjugation or extermination. But if it were otherwise, how are we to treat with the House of Representatives? It is with Lincoln alone that we could confer, and his own partisans at the North avow unequivocally that his purpose, as his message and proclamation was to shut out all hope that he would ever treat with us on any terms If we will break up our government, dissolve the Confederacy, disband our armies, emancipate our slaves, and take an oath of allegiance binding ourselves to obedience to him, and to disloyalty to our own States, he proposes to pardon us, and not to plunder us of anything more than the property already stolen from us and such slaves as still
