Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 29.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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‘Hampton Roads conference.’

One of the most interesting episodes of the war between the States was the informal conference that took place in Hampton Roads on the 3d of February, 1865. The conference was held on board of a steamer anchored near Fortress Monroe, and the participants were President Lincoln and William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United States, on the one hand, and Alexander H. Stephens, Robert M. T. Hunter and John A. Campbell, commissioners appointed by President Davis, on the other. There has long been considerable misapprehension in the public mind as to the origin, objects and results of that conference. As I was a member of the Confederate Congress at that time, and had to some extent an inside view of the situation, I propose to give my recollection of the incident referred to.

In the beginning of the year 1865, the prospects of the Southern Confederacy were gloomy indeed. Grant with his hosts had swung [181] around upon a new base, and was at City Point on the James river threatening Petersburg and Richmond, then defended by the Army of Northern Virginia under the incomparable Lee. That army during the preceding year had covered itself with imperishable glory in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania Courthouse and at Cold Harbor. Numbering less than sixty thousand men, it had inflicted a loss of more than fifty thousand upon the enemy in the campaign, resulting in Grant's change of base. But with inadequate supplies of food and clothing, it was then suffering all the discomforts and hardships of winter in the trenches around Petersburg and Richmond. Sheridan in the Valley of Virginia with a powerful and well-equipped army, had driven back Early with his little band of Confederates, and had completely devasted that beautiful and fertile region. Sherman, after destroying Atlanta and laying waste the surrounding country, was at Savannah with an army of sixty-five thousand men, prepared to march through the Carolinas and form a junction with Grant in Virginia. Such was the military situation when in the early part of January, 1865, Mr. Francis P. Blair, Sr., a gentleman of great ability and acknowledged influence with the Administration at Washington, made his appearance at Richmond. He brought with him no credentials, but exhibited to Mr. Davis the following card: