Ashley recalled, “Every available foot of space, both in the galleries and on the floor of the House, was crowded at an early hour, and many hundred could not get within hearing.” Chief Justice Chase and the members of the Supreme Court were present, along with Seward, Fessenden, and Dennison representing the cabinet. Dozens of senators had come to witness the historic debate, as had members of most foreign ministries.
Ashley wisely decided to yield his time to the small band of Democrats who would support the amendment but needed to justify their shift to constituents. He called first on Archibald McAllister. The Pennsylvania congressman explained that he had changed his mind when he saw that the only way to achieve peace was to destroy “the corner-stone of the Southern Confederacy.” His remarks brought forth applause from the galleries, as did those of his colleague Alexander Coffroth. “If by my action to-day I dig my political grave,” the congressman from Somerset County proclaimed, “I will descend into it without a murmur.”
After every Democrat who wanted to speak had been heard, the voting began. “Hundreds of tally sheets had been distributed on the floor and in the galleries,” Ashley recorded. It appeared at first that the amendment had fallen two or three votes short of the requisite two-thirds margin. The floor was in tumult when Speaker Colfax stood to announce the final tally. His voice shaking, he said, “On the passage of the Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States the ayes have 119, the noes 56. The constitutional majority of two thirds having voted in the affirmative, the Joint Resolution has passed.” Without the five Democrats who had changed their votes, the amendment would have lost.
“For a moment there was a pause of utter silence,” Noah Brooks reported, “as if the voices of the dense mass of spectators were choked by strong emotion. Then there was an explosion, a storm of cheers, the like of which probably no Congress of the United States ever heard before.”
“Before the members left their seats,” Congressman Arnold recalled, “the roar of artillery from Capitol Hill announced to the people of Washington that the amendment had passed.” Ashley brought to the War Department a list of all those who had voted in favor. Stanton ordered three additional batteries to “fire one hundred guns with their heaviest charges” while he slowly read each name aloud, proclaiming, “History will embalm them in great honor.”
Lincoln’s friends raced to the White House to share the news. “The passage of the resolution,” recalled Arnold, “filled his heart with joy. He saw in it the complete consummation of his own great work, the emancipation proclamation.” The following evening, Lincoln spoke to celebrants gathered at the White House. “The occasion was one of congratulation to the country and to the whole world,” he said. “But there is a task yet before us—to go forward and consummate by the votes of the States that which Congress so nobly began.” The audience responded with cheers. “They will do it” was the confident cry. And, indeed, the legislatures in twenty states acted almost immediately. Before the year 1865 was out, the requisite three quarters had spoken putting a dramatic end to the slavery issue that had disturbed the nation’s tranquillity from its earliest days.
No praise must have been more welcome to Lincoln than that of his old critic, the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. “And to whom is the country more immediately indebted for this vital and saving amendment of the Constitution than, perhaps, to any other man?” Garrison asked a cheering crowd at the Boston Music Hall. “I believe I may confidently answer—to the humble railsplitter of Illinois—to the Presidential chain-breaker for millions of the oppressed—to Abraham Lincoln!”
THE STORY OF the Peace Commissioners, whose presence had almost derailed the vote on the new amendment, had begun with Francis Preston Blair. Lincoln’s reelection had convinced the old editor that another attempt at peace might be successful. Lincoln remained unconvinced that talks at this juncture would be effective, but Blair was so anxious to try that Lincoln gave him a pass for Richmond. It was understood, however, that he was proceeding on his own, without authority to speak for the president.
After leaving Lincoln, Blair wrote two letters to Jefferson Davis. The first, designed for public consumption, requested simply “the privilege of visiting Richmond” to inquire about the papers Blair had lost when General Early’s troops took possession of his Silver Spring house. The second revealed that his “main purpose” in coming was to discuss “the state of the affairs of our country.” He promised to “unbosom [his] heart frankly & without reserve,” hopeful that some good might result.
On January 11, 1865, the seventy-three-year-old Blair arrived in Richmond, where he was greeted warmly by numerous old friends. Jefferson Davis’s wife, Varina, “threw her arms around him” and said, “Oh you Rascal, I am overjoyed to see you.” Seated with President Davis in the library of the Confederate White House, Blair conceded his proposal “might be the dreams of an old man,” but he was confident of Davis’s “practical good sense” and “utmost frankness.” He reminded Davis of his own deep attachment to the South. “Every drop” of his own blood and his children’s sprang from “a Southern source.” Davis responded with equal warmth, assuring Blair that he “would never forget” the many “kindnesses” exhibited by the Blairs toward the Davis family, and that “even when dying they would be remembered in his prayers.”
Blair presented his proposal, which would essentially postpone the war between the North and the South while the armies allied against the French, who had invaded Mexico and installed a puppet regime in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Davis agreed that nothing would better heal the raw emotions on both sides “than to see the arms of our countrymen from the North and the South united in a war upon a Foreign Power.” The specifics of this improbable and unauthorized plan, reminiscent of Seward’s proposal four years earlier, were not discussed, though Davis agreed to send Peace Commissioners to Washington “with a view to secure peace to the two Countries.”
Though tired from his arduous journey back to Washington by carriage, train, and steamer, Blair rushed to the White House and delivered the Davis letter to the president. Lincoln consulted Stanton, who pointedly noted: “There are not two countries…and there never will be two countries. Tell Davis that if you treat for peace, it will be for this one country; negotiations on any other basis are impossible.” Lincoln immediately agreed. “You may say to him,” Lincoln directed Blair, “that I have constantly been, am now, and shall continue, ready to receive any agent…with the view of securing peace to the people of our one common country.”
Blair returned straightaway to Richmond with Lincoln’s response, and Davis called a cabinet meeting at his home to discuss his next move. His advisers recognized the irreconcilable conflict between the concepts of “two countries” and “one common country,” but the insistent clamor for peace had convinced Davis to send three commissioners to Fort Monroe—Vice President Alexander Stephens, former United States senator R. M. T. Hunter, and former Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell.
On Sunday, January 29, a flag of truce flown at Petersburg announced the arrival of the commissioners. “By common consent all picket firing was suspended,” the New York Herald reported, “and the lines of both armies presented the appearance of a gala day.” Viewed as “harbingers of peace,” the three gentlemen elicited “prolonged and enthusiastic” applause from both sides, revealing the depth of the soldiers’ desire to end the fighting and return to their families and homes. One reporter noted that when rival songs were played by Southern and Northern bands—“Dixie” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy”—each side responded only to its own patriotic air, “but when the band struck up ‘Home Sweet Home,’ the opposing camps forgot their hostility, and united in vociferous tribute to the common sentiment.”
A Union colonel escorted the commissioners to Grant’s headquarters at City Point. “It was night when we arrived,” Alexander Stephens later recalled. “There was nothing in [Grant’s] appearance or surroundings which indicated his off
icial rank. There were neither guards nor aids about him…. I was instantly struck with the great simplicity and perfect naturalness of his manners, and the entire absence of everything like affectation, show, or even the usual military air or mien of men in his position. He was plainly attired, sitting in a log-cabin, busily writing on a small table, by a Kerosene lamp…. His conversation was easy and fluent, without the least effort or restraint.” After talking for a while, Grant escorted them to the steamship Mary Martin, where he had arranged “comfortable quarters” for his three distinguished visitors. Though Grant was not authorized to discuss the peace mission itself, Stephens got the impression that he was very anxious for “the return of peace and harmony throughout the country.”
Meanwhile, at Lincoln’s request, Seward headed south to meet with the commissioners. “You will make known to them that three things are indispensable,” Lincoln wrote: “The restoration of the national authority…. No receding, by the Executive of the United States on the Slavery question…. No cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war.” If these three conditions were accepted, he was to tell them that all other propositions would be met with “a spirit of sincere liberality.” After riding the train to Annapolis, Seward boarded Grant’s flagship, the River Queen, and proceeded to Fort Monroe.
Before Seward could interview the commissioners, word reached Lincoln that President Davis had instructed them to negotiate peace for two countries. The president felt he had no choice but to recall Seward, until an urgent telegram from Grant changed his mind. Grant was “convinced,” he had written to Stanton, after talking with the three men “that their intentions are good,” and he believed that “their going back without any expression from any one in authority will have a bad influence.” Given the complexity of the situation, Grant wished that the president could meet with them personally. “Induced by a despatch of Gen. Grant,” Lincoln promptly telegraphed Seward and Grant, “Say to the gentlemen I will meet them personally at Fortress-Monroe, as soon as I can get there.”
Accompanied by a single valet and an overnight bag, the president left Washington two hours later on a train headed to Annapolis. There, the steamer Thomas Collyer, “supposed to be the fastest in the world,” stood ready to take him to Fort Monroe. “Upon getting out of the bay,” noted a Herald correspondent who had boarded the vessel before the president arrived, “we encountered large fields of ice, through which we passed slowly.” The steamer finally arrived at Fort Monroe a little past ten that evening, and Lincoln joined Seward on the River Queen.
The four-hour meeting, known as the Hampton Roads Conference, took place the next day in the saloon of the River Queen, which had been lashed to the Mary Martin the night before and “gaily decked out with a superabundance of streamers and flags.” After everyone was introduced, Stephens opened the conversation with warm memories of his days as Lincoln’s congressional colleague nearly two decades earlier. The president “responded in a cheerful and cordial manner,” Stephens recalled, “as if the remembrance of those times…had awakened in him a train of agreeable reflections.” They talked for several minutes of old acquaintances before Stephens asked, “Well, Mr. President, is there no way of putting an end to the present trouble, and bringing about a restoration of the general good feeling and harmony then existing between the different States and Sections of the country?”
The conversation that followed, Seward later wrote, “was altogether informal. There was no attendance of secretaries, clerks, or other witnesses. Nothing was written or read.” The only other person who entered the room was the “steward, who came in occasionally to see if anything was wanted, and to bring in water, cigars, and other refreshments.”
In reply to the question posed by Stephens, Lincoln attested that “there was but one way that he knew of, and that was, for those who were resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance.” Stephens countered with the hope for a temporary solution that would integrate their respective armies to fight the French “until the passions on both sides might cool.”
“I suppose you refer to something Mr. Blair has said,” Lincoln replied. “Now it is proper to state at the beginning, that whatever he said was of his own accord…. The restoration of the Union is a sine qua non with me.” There could be no substantive talk of an armistice or postponement until “the resistance ceased and the National Authority was recognized.” Attempting to circumvent this declaration, Hunter recalled that Charles I of England had entered repeatedly into arrangements with his adversaries despite ongoing hostilities. “I do not profess to be posted in history,” Lincoln answered. “On all such matters I will turn you over to Seward. All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I, is, that he lost his head in the end.”
Judge Campbell then turned the conversation to the question of “how restoration was to take place, supposing that the Confederate States were consenting to it.” This opened a discussion of slavery, which Seward addressed by reciting verbatim from Lincoln’s annual address in which he had said that he would not “attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation, nor…return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that Proclamation.” Moreover, Seward said, he felt obliged to inform the commissioners that Congress had just passed a constitutional amendment banning slavery throughout the entire United States.
They had clearly reached an impasse, but the conversation continued in an amicable tone. Lincoln let the commissioners know that “he would be willing to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for their slaves.” He was fairly confident “the people of the North” would sustain him with “an appropriation as high as Four Hundred Millions of Dollars for this purpose.” On the question of some sort of postponement of hostilities prior to the end of the war, Lincoln was immovable. The conference drew to a close without agreement on any issue.
Before any outcome was made public, the radicals had worked themselves into “a fury of rage,” certain that the president “was about to give up the political fruits which had been already gathered from the long and exhausting military struggle.” Fearing Lincoln would turn his back on emancipation, Thaddeus Stevens excoriated him on the floor of the House. In the Senate, “the leading members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War” roundly castigated the very idea of the conference, predicting that “we shall be sold out, and that the Peace we shall obtain, if any we do, will dishonor us.” Both branches passed a resolution calling for a full report on the proceedings. Even Stanton worried that the president’s kindheartedness “might lead him to make some admission which the astute Southerners would wilfully misconstrue and twist to serve their purpose.”
Lincoln’s report on the conference, complete with the telegrams and documents preceding it, was “read amidst a breathless silence in the hall, every member being in his seat. A low gush of satisfaction broke out when the phrase ‘one common country’ was read in the Blair letter, and an involuntary burst followed the annunciation of the three conditions of peace, given to Seward.” Noah Brooks observed that “as the reading of the message and documents went on, the change which took place in the moral atmosphere of the hall of the House was obvious. The appearance of grave intentness passed away, and members smilingly exchanged glances as they began to appreciate Lincoln’s sagacious plan for unmasking the craftiness of the rebel leaders.” When the presentation was done, “there was an instant and irrepressible storm of applause…it was like a burst of refreshing rain after a long and heartbreaking drought.” Representatives vied with one another to praise the president. Even Thaddeus Stevens “paid a high tribute to the sagacity, wisdom, and patriotism of President Lincoln.”
“Indeed,” Harper’s Weekly observed, “nothing but the foolish assumption of four years ago, that Mr. Lincoln was unfit for his office,” could explain the fatuous predictions that he would “flinch and falter” before the Southern delegates. “If there is any man in the country who comprehends the scope of the war more fully than the President, who is he???
?We venture to say that there is no man in our history who has shown a more felicitous combination of temperament, conviction, and ability to grapple with a complication like that in which this country is involved than Abraham Lincoln.”
Jefferson Davis pragmatically employed the failed conference to incite greater effort on the battlefield, pledging that “he would be willing to yield up everything he had on earth” before acceding to Northern demands. He predicted that before another year had passed, the South would be able to secure peace on its own terms, with separation and slavery intact. “I can have no ‘common country’ with the Yankees,” he announced. “My life is bound up in the Confederacy; and, if any man supposes that, under any circumstances, I can be an agent of reconstruction of the Union, he has mistaken every element of my nature!”
Still, Lincoln did not relinquish hope that he might somehow bring the war to an honorable end before tens of thousands more young men had to die. Following his Hampton Roads suggestion of compensated emancipation, he drafted a proposal that Congress empower him “to pay four hundred millions of dollars” to the Southern states, distributed according to “their respective slave populations.” The first half would be paid if “all resistance to the national authority” came to an end by April 1; the second half would be allocated if the Thirteenth Amendment were ratified by July 1. At that point, with the armed rebellion at an end, the Union restored, and slavery eradicated, “all political offences will be pardoned” and “all property, except slaves, liable to confiscation or forfeiture, will be released.” Furthermore, “liberality will be recommended to congress upon all points not lying within executive control.”
The proposition met with unanimous disapproval from the cabinet, all of whom were present except Seward. “The earnest desire of the President to conciliate and effect peace was manifest,” Welles recorded, “but there may be such a thing as so overdoing as to cause a distrust or adverse feeling.” Usher believed that the radicals in Congress “would make it the occasion of a violent assault on the President.” Stanton had long maintained that it was unnecessary and wasteful to talk about compensation for slaves already freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Fessenden declared “that the only way to effectually end the war was by force of arms, and that until the war was thus ended no proposition to pay money would come from us.”