Feb. 5, 1865. |
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| The Union Generals. George W. Childs Pobilisher 628 & 630 Chestnut St. Philadhlphia |
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doubtless be ratified by the requisite number of States,1 for the prohibition of slavery throughout the Republic.
The conference had no other result than that of the efforts made in July, which was to more clearly define the views of the Government and the Conspirators.2 The commissioners returned to Richmond, when Davis laid
their report, submitted to him, before the “Congress.”
On the following day a great meeting was held in Richmond, which was addressed by Davis and the Governor of Virginia.
The former said, in reference to Mr. Lincoln's expression “our common country” : “Sooner than we should ever be united again, I would be willing to yield up every thing I have on earth, and, if it were possible, would sacrifice my life a thousand times before I would succumb.”
Then, with his usual pretense of confidence in final victory, he called upon the people to unite with those already in arms, “in repelling the foe, believing,” he said, “that thereby we will compel the Yankees, in less than twelve months, to petition us for peace upon our own terms.”
3 The meeting passed resolutions spurning with indignation the terms offered by the President, as “a gross insult” and “premeditated indignity” to the people of the “Confederate States.”
And at a great war-meeting held on the 9th, at which R. M. T. Hunter presided, it was resolved they would never lay down their arms until their independence was won. They expressed a belief that their resources were sufficient for the purpose, and they invoked the people, “in the name of the holiest of all causes, to spare neither their blood nor their treasure in its support.”
It has transpired that at that time, Davis and his fellow-Conspirators had strong hopes of the support of foreign armies.4 But the speech of Benjamin
1 See page 454.
2 At that conference, it is related that Mr. Lincoln insisted that the States had never separated from the Union, and consequently he could not recognize another Government inside the one of which he alone was President, nor admit the separate independence of States that were a part of the Union. “That,” he said to Mr. Hunter, who had urged him to treat with Davis as the head of a Government de facto, “would be doing what you so long asked Europe to do, in vain, and be resigning the only thing the armies of the Union are fighting for.” Hunter made a long reply, insisting that the recognition of Davis's power to make a treaty was the first and indispensable step to peace, and cited, as a precedent, the correspondence of Charles the First with the Parliament — a constitutional ruler treating with rebels. “Mr. Lincoln's face,” says the narrator (said to be Alexander II. Stephens), “then wore that indescribable expression which generally preceded his hardest hits, and he remarked: ‘ Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don't profess to be. But my only distinct recollection of the matter is, that Charles lost his head.’ That settled Mr. Hunter for awhile.” From the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, cited in Raymond's Life, Public Services, and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln, page 668.
3 Davis appears to have spoken with much folly and arrogance. He denounced the President as “His Majesty, Abraham the First,” and said that “before the campaign was over, he and Seward might find they had been speaking to their masters, when demanding unconditional submission.” --A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, Feb. 7, 1865.
4 Jones, in his Rebel War Clerk's Diary, under date of January 24th, 1865, in recording the presence of Blair, in Richmond, says:--“The Northern papers say he is authorized to offer an amnesty, including all persons, with the ‘Union as it was — the Constitution as it is,’ my old motto in the Southern Monitor in 1857); but gradual emancipation. No doubt some of the people here would be glad to accept this; but the President will fight more, and desperately yet, still hoping for foreign assistance.”
Henry S. Foote, a member of the Confederate Congress (once United States Senator), says:--“The fact was well known to me that Mr. Davis and his friends were confidently looking for foreign aid, and from several quarters. It was stated, in my hearing, by several special friends of the Confederate President, that one hundred thousand French soldiers were expected to arrive within the limits of the Confederate States, by way of Mexico; and it was more than rumored that a secret compact, wholly unauthorized by the Confederate Constitution, with certain Polish commissioners, who had lately been on a visit to Richmond, had been effected, by means of which Mr. Davis would soon be supplied with some twenty or thirty thousand additional troops, then refugees from Poland, and sojourning in several European States, which would be completely at the command of the President for any purpose whatever.” He adds, in that connection, that he was satisfied that Mr. Davis would, in sending peace commissioners, “so manacle their hands by instructions as to render impossible all attempts at successful. negotiation.” --War of the Rebellion, &c., by Henry S. Foote.
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