“I see you think me a croaker,” said Mr. X——-, tranquilly smoking, “and doubtless say to yourself, colonel, that I am injudicious in thus discouraging a soldier, who is fighting for this cause. A year ago I would not have spoken to you thus, for a year ago there was still some hope. Now, to discourage you—if thinking men, fighting for a principle, like yourself, could be discouraged—would result in no injury: for the cause is lost. On the contrary, as the friend of that most excellent gentleman, your father, I regard it as a sort of duty to speak thus—to say to you ‘Don’t throw away your life for nothing. Do your duty, but do no more than your duty, for we are doomed.’”
I could find no reply to these gloomy words.
“The case is past praying for,” said Mr. X——- composedly, “the whole fabric of the Confederacy at this moment is a mere shell. It is going to crumble in the spring, and another flag will float over the Virginia capitol yonder—what you soldiers call ‘The Gridiron.’ The country is tired. The administration is unpopular, and the departments are mismanaged. I am candid, you see. The days of the Confederacy are numbered, and worse than all, nobody knows it. We ought to negotiate for the best terms, but the man who advises that, will be hissed at and called a ‘coward.’ It is an invidious thing to do. It is much grander to shout ‘Death sooner than surrender!’ I shouted that lustily as long as there was any hope—now, I think it my duty as a statesman, and public functionary, to say, ‘There are worse things than death—let us try and avoid them by making terms.’ I say that to you—I do not say so on the streets—the people would tear me to pieces, and with their sources of information they would be right in doing so.”
“Is it possible that all is lost? That negotiations are our only hope?”
“Yes; and confidentially speaking—this is a State secret, my dear colonel—these will soon be made.”
“Indeed!”
“You think that impossible, but it is the impossible which invariably takes place in this world. We are going to send commissioners to meet Mr. Lincoln in Hampton Roads—and it will be useless.”
“Why?”
“We are going to demand such terms as he will not agree to. The commissioners will return. The war will continue to its legitimate military end, which I fix about the last days of March.”
“Good heaven! so soon!”