Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/595

Rh the Thirteenth amendment be added to the Constitution, or at least be fairly voted upon by all the States; that the Federal civil authority be completely restored in all respects everywhere; that the seceded States repeal for legal reasons the ordinances of secession and resume fully by their own immediate action their constitutional relations in the Union; that general amnesty be proclaimed and all minor legal questions be remanded to the judiciary for adjustment. Whether these terms would have been agreed to so that they could have been satisfactorily executed is not known, yet if they had been sincerely agreed on and honorably carried out by the rapid method of State conventions, the political as well as the military disturbances between the sections would have ended within a few months. But they were not offered.

Upon several of these questions intimations were made which very nearly approached all that the Confederate commissioners could have demanded. As to the abandonment of secession that was positively required by the President. The ratification by the States of the Thirteenth amendment was taken into discussion during which the President with caution expressed an individual willingness on his own part to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for their slaves and that he should be in favor individually of the government paying a fair indemnity for the loss to the owners. He knew of some persons who favored an appropriation of four hundred millions for that purpose. But he declared that he would give no assurance and make no stipulation. Mr. Seward accepted this general intimation of the President that the Northern people would be willing to pay about the amount as an indemnity to the owners of emancipated slaves, which would be required to continue the war. To this extent and no farther went even the hint of compensated emancipation. There was no offer either express or implied by the President and his secretary of state to guarantee such a result, and the commissioners under-