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 A Visit to Beauvoir. 453

every swamp along his proposed route, but he was turned aside by information that a band of robbers were about to attack his family, who were traveling on a different line.

He gave deeply interesting details of the foreign relations of the Confederacy, and of how near we were several times to recognition by England and France. He spoke in the highest terms of praise of Captain Bullock's " Secret Service of the Confederacy in Europe" — a book which he thinks should be in every library — and said that the Confederacy had nothing to fear from the publication of all of its official correspondence.

He spoke in strong terms ol the double dealings of Louis Napo- leon, who, after inviting Mr. Slidell, the Confederate commissioner, to have Confederate vessels built in France, and assuring him that there would be no obstacle to their going out afterwards, went square back on his word (because of certain representations of Mr. Day- ton, the United States Minister), and refused to allow them to go out. When he was in France, after the war, the Emperor sent him word, that " If he desired an interview with him he would be glad to grant it." "But," said the grand old chief of the Confederacy, "I wanted no interview with the man who had played us false, and so I promptly replied that I did not desire it."

He spoke of General Lee's high opinion of the ability of General Early as a soldier, and of his own emphatic endorsation of that opinion, and said many other things of deep interest which I may not write now.

He and his family were evidently deeply touched by the grand ovation accorded him at Montgomery, Atlanta, Savannah, etc., last spring, and I assured him that if he would accept the invitation which I bore him from Governor Lee to be present at the laying of the corner-stone of the Lee monument next October we would give him in the last capital of the Confederacy a welcome equally as warm — an ovation fully as imposing. He could not promise so long ahead what he could do, in view of his declining years and uncertain health, but said, "There is no place I would rather visit than Richmond; no occasion I had rather be present upon than one that is to honor R. E. Lee. If possible I shall do myself the pleasure of going."

I came away from Beauvoir with the highest gratification that I had had the privilege of seeing at his home, eating with at his table, and mingling in free social intercourse with the great statesman, the peerless orator, the gallant soldier, the stainless Christian gentleman, the devoted patriot, whom, with one voice, the Confederate States

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