July 5, 1864. |
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camps;1 and ultimately, as circumstantial evidence seems to show, for the assassination of the President and his Cabinet, and other leading men near the head of the Government.
These agents were visited by members of the Peace Faction; and when the Opposition Convention met at Chicago, that city swarmed with the enemies of the Republic, who dared to openly express sympathy with the Confederates.
Meanwhile, the Confederate agents, at the suggestion, it is said, of a conspicuous leader of the Peace Faction, arranged a scheme for making the great majority of the loyal people, who were earnestly yearning for an end of war, dissatisfied with the Administration, by placing the President and his friends in an attitude of hostility to measures calculated to insure peace.
If that could be done, the election of the Chicago nominee might be secured, and the way would be thus opened for the independence of the “Confederate States,” and the permanent dissolution of the Union.
To do this, a letter was addressed
to Horace Greeley, of New York, from the “Clifton House,” Canada, by George N. Sanders, a politician of the baser sort,2 and then high in the confidence of the Conspirators, who said that himself and C. C. Clay, of Alabama, and J. P. Holcombe, of Virginia, were authorized to go to Washington City, in the interest of peace, if full protection should be guarantied to them.
This letter was sent by Mr. Greeley to the President, together with a “Plan of adjustment” 3 drawn up by the former, and he urged Mr. Lincoln to respond to it. The sagacious President was satisfied that not only was there no hope for any adjustment with the Conspirators on terms compatible with the dignity of the Government and the integrity of the Union, but that there was a covered trick in the matter.
Yet he was unwilling to seem heedless of any proposition for peace, and he deputed Mr. Greeley to bring to him any person or persons “professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery,” with an assurance of safe conduct for him or them, each way. Considerable correspondence ensued.
Mr. Greeley went to Niagara Falls.
Then there was, on the part of Davis's agents, real or pretended misunderstanding.
The matter became vexatious, and the President put an end to the unofficial negotiations by sending instructions to Mr. Greeley, explicitly prescribing what kind of a proposition he would receive
1 A physician, named Blackburn, was employed in gathering up clothing taken from the victims of small-pox and yellow fever, and sending them to National camps. Some of these were sent to New Berne, North Carolina, and produced great mortality among the soldiers and citizens. Jacob Thompson (see page 367, volume 1.), seems to have been more directly concerned in this part of the business of the Confederate agents, than any of the others.
2 See page 840, volume I.
3 This plan contemplated a restoration of the Union; the abolition of slavery; a complete amnesty for all political offenses, and a restoration of all the inhabitants in States wherein rebellion existed, to all privileges, as if rebellion had never occurred; the payment by the Government of $400,000,000 to the owners of the emancipated slaves; a change in representation of the slave-labor States; and a National Convention to ratify and settle in detail, such adjustment.
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