Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [450]
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