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 536 Failure of the negotiations. Lee's overtures. [i865 came " with a view of securing peace to the people of our one common country." The Commissioners finally transcended their instructions and yielded the point; and, under these explicit terms, President Lincoln and Secretary Seward held a four hours' informal conference with them in the cabin of a steamer lying in Hampton Roads, on the morning of February 3, 1865. The discussion was long and earnest, and brought out a great variety of suggestions and propositions ; but we have the concurring reports of the Commissioners that, throughout the whole, President Lincoln, with that clearness and logic of which he was a master, adhered politely but inflexibly to the three conditions upon which alone he would consent to temporary armistice or permanent peace first, the complete restoration of the Union; second, the main- tenance of the emancipation proclamation and other government action on slavery ; third, no cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the government. On other points he was ready to be liberal in the exercise of any executive authority confided to him by the Constitution. Blair's visit and the departure of the Commissioners had excited feverish hopes in Richmond. Their return, and the official announce- ment of their failure strongly accentuated the prevailing despondency. The Confederate President made an extraordinarily defiant and bellicose public address, to re-inspirit his partisans ; but the leaders never rallied from their discouragement, and Vice-President Stephens gave up hope and went home to Georgia to await the catastrophe and endure his fate. A serious conference between Lee and Davis had taken place early in March at Richmond, in which the desperate straits of the Confederacy were frankly discussed. Although the Confederate Congress had virtually given Lee a dictatorship by making him General-in-Chief, he had assumed the command, on February 9, in loyal subordination to the civil authority represented by Davis. The details of their consultation never became known. The necessity of abandoning Richmond and forming a junction with Johnston's army to the south and west was squarely looked in the face; and the friends of each claim that he advised, while the other opposed, its immediate execution. As it was easier to suggest than to perform such a task, nothing was done till Grant forced the beginning. It may have been due to this or some such consultation that General Lee, seizing upon a phrase of a Confederate officer's conversation with General Ord under a flag of truce, wrote a letter on March 2 to General Grant, proposing that the two commanders should meet " with the hope that upon an interchange of views it may be found practicable to submit the subjects of controversy between the belligerents" to a military convention. When the telegram containing this proposal was handed to President Lincoln at Washington, he immediately and without a word took up a pen and wrote this reply to be sent by the Secretary of War: