Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 07.djvu/366

358 I then said, "But there is yet one thing more to be considered. To use the phrase which was so much hackneyed with respect to the Northeastern boundary question of 'indemnity for the past and security for the future,' we can't ask, I know, indemnity for the past, but we must have security for the future. We cannot live hereafter in the state of harassment and excitement in which we have lived for some years past."

Then drawing his hand across a piece of paper lying upon the library-table, upon the opposite sides of which we were sitting, he said:

"Mr. Seward will allow you to write your own guarantees." I expressed my individual readiness to consent to those terms. I had been in favor of the Southern convention which South Carolina proposed through Mr. Memminger, her commissioner, believing as I did, in which I am now confirmed, that if all the Southern States met in convention, as proposed by South Carolina, such guarantees would be asked of the Northern people as they would grant, and which would protect us, and in that event there would be no secession, and I certainly did not wish secession if we could be protected in the enjoyment of our constitutional rights, and that I believe was the general sentiment of the South. I believe I have given you almost, if not exactly verbatim, these conversations to which I referred in my conversation with you. I will add that the day following the conversation with the French Minister, a large company of gentlemen dined with him at my house, and he left there after ten o'clock at night in a rain, in order, as he said, to send a dispatch to Norfolk to fire up a steamer which could take him or his dispatches, I forget which, to New York before the next Atlantic steamer sailed.

The battle of Cold Harbor and the other battles around Richmond occurred not long afterward, and I had no doubt of our acknowledgment by the French Government, and was very much surprised that it did not come.

Some time afterward the French Consul, Monsieur Paul, drove up to my house one Sunday afternoon, and very soon entered into conversation about the acknowledgment of the Confederate Government by the Emperor of the French, and asked me if we could not pass some bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in fifty or sixty years. Maybe it might do even if it was longer, and said that if that were done the Emperor would immediately acknowledge us, but that the French people would not be satisfied without