Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 24.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

After the failure of the Conference Governor Graham gave notice in the Confederate Senate that he would soon introduce a resolution in favor of opening negotiations with the United States upon the basis of a return to the Union by the States of the Confederacy. But the notice was not favorably received, and the Confederacy went down to its doom. When the crash came he was the same calm, conservative statesman that he had ever been, and was chosen by Governor Vance to accompany Governor Swain as an ambassador of peace to meet the incoming army of General Sherman. They surrendered the city of Raleigh to him and secured from him a promise of protection, which promise was, as a rule, observed. It was also through their efforts on this mission that the University was protected from vandalism. Besides this mission Governor Swain was one of the North Carolinians who was invited to Washington by President Johnson in the spring of 1865, to consult on the ways of restoring the State to the Union. B. F. Moore (A. B., 1820) and Robert P. Dick (A. B., 1843) were also members of this committee.

It must be kept in mind also that the consent of the Federal administration to the Hampton Roads Conference, the last ray of hope of the Confederacy, had been brought about largely through the influence of Francis P. Blair, who had been a student here.¹ Perhaps no student of this University has had a more remarkable career. He was at first a free soiler; then a Republican. He was the one leader of the unconditional Union men in Missouri, and fused former Democrats and former Republicans into a single strong body of unconditional Union men. The governor of the State and both houses of the assembly were Southern in sentiment, but Blair organized the German companies, which had been known as Wide-awakes in the presidential campaign, into companies of home guards, drilled them, armed them as he found means, and with them began to dominate the State. It was largely due to the influence of the Home Guards that a majority of 80,000 was given for the Union in February, 1861.