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.

[105] than the text of Mr. Lincoln's speech. In every department of the public service there had been placed by the new President violent abolitionists and men whose hatred of the South was notorious and unrelenting. The Pennsylvanian, a newspaper published in Philadelphia, said: “Mr. Lincoln stands to-day where he stood on the 6th of November last, on the Chicago Platform. He has not receded a single hair's breadth. He has appointed a Cabinet in which there is no slaveholder — a thing that has never before happened since the formation of the Government; and in which there are but two nominally Southern men, and both bitter Black Republicans of the radical dye. Let the Border States ignominiously submit to the Abolition rule of this Lincoln Administration, if they like; but don't let the miserable submissionists pretend to be deceived. Make any base or cowardly excuse but this.”

But whatever may have been the just apprehensions of the Confederate Government at Montgomery, it exhibited no violent or tumultuous spirit, and made the most sedulous efforts to resist the consequence of war. There can be no doubt of the sincerity and zeal of its efforts to effect a peaceable secession, and to avoid a war which it officially deplored as “a policy detrimental to the civilized world.”

As early as February, prior even to the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, the Confederate Congress had passed a resolution expressive of their desire for the appointment of commissioners to be sent to the Government of the United States, “for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith.”

In pursuance of this resolution, and in furtherance of his own views, Mr. Davis deputed an embassy of commissioners to Washington, authorized to negotiate for the removal of the Federal garrisons from Forts Pickens and Sumter, and to provide for the settlement of all claims of public property arising out of the separation of the States from the Union. Two of the commissioners, Martin Crawford of Georgia, and John Forsythe of Alabama, attended in Washington, arriving there on the 5th of March. They gave only an informal notice of their arrival, with a view to afford time to the President, who had just been inaugurated, for the discharge of other pressing official duties in the organization of his administration, before engaging his attention in the object of their mission. On the 12th of March, they addressed an official communication to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, explaining the functions of the embassy and its purposes.

Mr. Seward declined to make any official recognition of the commissioners, but very readily consented, for purposes which the sequel demonstrated, to hold verbal conferences with them, through the friendly inter