From December 20, 1864, to February 1, 1865, Sherman remained in Savannah, renewing by sea the strength of his army. On the latter date he moved north along the coast, meeting at first no resistance and easily overrunning the country. Columbia, capital of South Carolina, was burned. Charleston was evacuated, and it was not until March, in North Carolina, that any real opposition to the northward progress was encountered. Here on the sixteenth and the nineteenth, Johnston, in command of the weak Southern forces in North Carolina, made a desperate effort to stop Sherman, but without avail, and on March 23, Sherman was at Goldsboro, one hundred and sixty miles south of Richmond, prepared to cut off the retreat of Lee when Grant should at last take up an energetic offensive.
In the last week of March, Grant began cutting off supplies to Richmond, thus forcing Lee, if he wished still to protect the Southern capital, to come out of his lines at Petersburg and present an unfortified front. The result was the evacuation of Petersburg and the abandonment of Richmond, Jefferson Davis and his Government fleeing from the city on the night of April 2. Attempting to retreat southwards with the plan of joining Johnston's army, Lee, on April 9, found his forces surrounded at Appomattox and surrendered. Nine days later, on April 18, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Durham, North Carolina. It was the end of the war and of the Confederacy.
The rapidity with which Southern resistance in arms crumbled in 1865 when once Sherman and Grant were under way no doubt startled foreign observers, but in British opinion, at least, the end had been foreseen from the moment Sherman reached the sea at Savannah. The desperate courage of the South was admired, but regarded as futile. Equally desperate and futile was the last diplomatic effort of the Confederate agents in Europe, taking the form of an offer to abolish slavery in return for recognition. The plan originated with Benjamin, Southern Secretary of State, was hesitatingly approved by Davis[1263], and was committed to Mason for negotiation with Great Britain. Mason, after his withdrawal from London, had been given duplicate powers in blank for any point to which emergencies might send him, thus becoming a sort of Confederate Commissioner at Large to Europe. Less than any other representative abroad inclined to admit that slavery was other than a beneficent and humane institution, it was felt advisable at Richmond not only to instruct Mason by written despatch, but by personal messenger also of the urgency of presenting the offer of abolition promptly and with full assurance of carrying it into effect. The instruction was therefore entrusted to Duncan F. Kenner, of Louisiana, and he arrived in Paris early in March, 1865, overcame Mason's unwillingness to carry such an offer to England, and accompanied the latter to London.
The time was certainly not propitious, for on the day Mason reached London there came the news of the burning of Columbia and the evacuation of Charleston. Mason hesitated to approach Palmerston, but was pressed by Kenner who urged action on the theory that Great Britain did not wish to see a reconstruction of the Union[1264]. Slidell, in Paris, on receiving Mason's doubts, advised waiting until the Emperor had been consulted, was granted an interview and reported Napoleon III as ready as ever to act if England would act also, but as advising delay until more favourable news was received from America[1265]. But Mason's instructions did not permit delay; he must either carry them out or resign--and Kenner was at his elbow pressing for action. On March 13, therefore, Mason wrote to Palmerston asking for a private interview and was promptly granted one for the day following.
Both personal disinclination to the proposal of abolition and judgment that nothing would come of it made Mason cautious in expressing himself to Palmerston. Mason felt that he was stultifying his country in condemning slavery. Hence in roundabout language, "with such form of allusion to the concession we held in reserve, as would make him necessarily comprehend it[1266]," and turning again and again to a supposed "latent, undisclosed obstacle[1267]" to British recognition, Mason yet made clear the object of his visit. The word slavery was not mentioned by him, but Palmerston promptly denied that slavery in the South had ever been, or was now, a barrier to recognition; British objections to recognition were those which had long since been stated, and there was nothing "underlying" them. On March 26, Mason called on the Earl of Donoughmore, a Tory friend of the South with whom he had long been in close touch, and asked whether he thought Palmerston's Government could be induced by a Southern abolition of slavery to recognize the Confederacy. The reply was "that the time had gone by now...." This time the words "slavery" and "abolition" were spoken boldly[1268], and Donoughmore was positive that if, in the midsummer of 1863, when Lee was invading Pennsylvania, the South had made its present overture, nothing could have prevented British recognition. The opinion clashed with Mason's own conviction, but in any case no more was to be hoped, now, from his overture. Only a favourable turn in the war could help the South.
There was no public knowledge in London of this "last card" Southern effort in diplomacy, though there were newspaper rumours that some such move was on foot, but with a primary motive of restoring Southern fighting power by putting the negroes in arms. British public attention was fixed rather upon a possible last-moment reconciliation of North and South and a restored Union which should forget its domestic troubles in a foreign war. Momentarily somewhat of a panic overcame London society and gloomy were the forebodings that Great Britain would be the chosen enemy of America. Like rumours were afloat at Washington also. The Russian Minister, Stoeckl, reported to his Government that he had learned from "a sure source" of representations made to Jefferson Davis by Blair, a prominent Unionist and politician of the border state of Maryland, looking to reconstruction and to the sending by Lincoln of armies into Canada and Mexico. Stoeckl believed such a war would be popular, but commented that "Lincoln might change his mind[1269] to-morrow." In London the Army and Navy Gazette declared that Davis could not consent to reunion and that Lincoln could not offer any other terms of peace, but that a truce might be patched up on the basis of a common aggression against supposed foreign enemies[1270]. Adams pictured all British society as now convinced that the end of the war was near, and bitter against the previous tone and policy of such leaders of public opinion as the Times, adding that it was being "whispered about that if the feud is reconciled and the Union restored, and a great army left on our hands, the next manifestation will be one of hostility to this country[1271]."
The basis of all this rumour was Blair's attempt to play the mediator. He so far succeeded that on January 31, 1865, Lincoln instructed Seward to go to Fortress Monroe to meet "commissioners" appointed by Davis. But Lincoln made positive in his instructions three points:
(1) Complete restoration of the Union.
(2) No receding on emancipation.
(3) No cessation of hostilities "short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the Government."