Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/195

 The Peace, Conference in Hampton Roads. 179

gestion was adopted, and all the Virginia representatives, fifteen in number, by the invitation of the President, met him, his cabinet, and General Lee, in the afternoon of the same day, at 4 o'clock. At this meeting there was a full and free interchange of opinion, and all the representatives concurred in saying that in their opinion the people of Virginia would be found ready and willing to meet any demand that might be made upon them, in the same spirit of loyalty and devotion that had characterized them since the commencement of the struggle. During the interview General Lee explained the situation fully from a military standpoint. He referred to the length of the line he was obliged to defend, to the number of effective men, and the great scarcity of food for his soldiers and forage for his ani- mals; but he did not say nor did he intimate in any manner what- ever, that in his opinion the cause was lost, and that the time for surrender had come.

It will be remembered that two or three weeks after the interview above referred to, he said in a note to General Grant, that the time for the surrender of his army had not arrived. He was a soldier, and doubtless felt that it was not his province to volunteer advice to the political department of the government, but to make the best fight he could with the means the government was able to place at his disposal.

THE SECOND QUESTION.

Secondly. It has been charged by some that if the Confederate authorities had exhibited real statesmanship, an arrangement might have been made by which the slave-owners would have been paid for their slave property, and that such an offer was actually made by the United States authorities in the famous Hampton Roads conference. This is also, in my opinion, a great mistake.

As is well known, President Lincoln and Secretary Seward, on the morning of the 3d of February, 1865, met on board a steamer at Fortress Monroe, Messrs.. Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hun- ter and John A. Campbell, who had been appointed commissioners by President Davis. The object of the conference was to ascertain upon what terms and in what way the war could be terminated. As is well known, the conference was a failure. Upon the return of the commissioners to Richmond, I heard two of them Mr. Stephens and Mr. Hunter discuss the incidents of the conference with mem- bers of Congress at the Capitol, and they did not intimate that any proposition whatever had been made to pay the owners of slaves for