Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/543

Rh recusants who might desire to secure peace contrary to the policy of the administration. It was definitely settled that slavery would be abolished without compensation to the owners of negroes, and whatever else might be done under the war power was left to conjecture of no pleasing kind. Whether there would be any public exchange of prisoners, or how hostilities would be conducted, depended wholly upon the preponderance of power. With the political questions or war policy of the Washington administration the Confederates had nothing to confront except their armies. These questions had been in review before both nations for three years and decision had been made by Presidential proclamation, congressional legislation, military orders, and even judicial decisions against the Confederate States.

There was left, however, the faint hope that the election against the administration, and bring the people of the United States to consideration of the terms of peace. Speeches were therefore made by President Davis, Vice-President Stephens, and Governor Letcher, of Virginia, and various editorials were published in Southern news papers, to arouse the people to make the most resolute resistance until these questions could be passed upon at the ballot box by the people of the United States. An amendment of the Constitution of the United States was proposed January n, 1864, to abolish slavery in all the States, which failed to pass the U. S. Senate, and became one of the main issues in the ensuing presidential election. A resolution declaring the constitutional objects of the war to be simply the restoration of the Union on the basis of the Constitution, and requesting President Lincoln to issue a proclamation inviting the revolted States to repudiate their secession ordinance upon the pledge of restoration to all their rights under the Constitution, was merely ordered to be printed, and another resolution in February, 1864, requesting the President to appoint.