This explicit letter was communicated to Holcombe at the Clifton House by Greeley and Hay. Mr. Greeley seems to have expressed to Jewett his regret over the "sad termination of the initiatory steps taken for peace, from the charge made by the President in his instructions given him." Nothing could have been more unjust. The Confederate emissaries wrote a long letter to Mr. Greeley, which they gave to the public, arraigning Mr. Lincoln for bad faith. They assumed Mr. Greeley had been sent by the President, on Mr. Lincoln's own motion, to invite them to Washington to confer as to a peace. It does not appear that Mr. Greeley tried to disabuse the public mind of this error or to make known the truth. He claimed to regard the safe conduct of July 16th as a wavier of all the President's precedent terms; also of his own previously expressed terms. The President did not think best to publish the whole correspondence, preferring to suffer the injustice in silence. Mr. Greeley continued in a bad state of mind. He refused to visit Mr. Lincoln, as requested, for a conference. He wrote the President on the 8th and again on the 9th of August, 1864, abusing certain Cabinet officers, reiterating his reproaches of Mr. Lincoln for not receiving Mr. Stephens, censuring him for not sending, after Vicksburg, a deputation to Richmond to ask for peace, complaining to him for not sending the "three biggest" Democrats in Congress to sue for peace, saying, however, little of his Niagara Falls fiasco, but adding: "Do not let the month pass without an earnest effort for peace," and closing his last letter thus:
"I beg you, implore you, to inaugurate or invite proposals for peace forthwith. And in case peace cannot now be made, consent to an armistice for one year, each party to retain, unmolested, all it now holds, but the rebel ports to be opened. Meantime, let a national convention be held, and there will surely be no more war at all events."
This suggestion of an armistice for one year and the opening of the rebel ports, was equivalent to proposing to give one year for the Confederacy to recuperate at home and from abroad; to strengthen its credit, to arrange new combinations, and to tie the hands of its friends of the Union and the Administration, to say nothing of the confession of failure to suppress the insurrection.
While Mr. Greeley was a Union man and had, throughout his public life, opposed slavery, he had no faith in war, nor did he have any of the instincts of a soldier to enable him to discern its tendencies. He was personally friendly, it may be assumed, to the President, but hostile to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, and probably intensely jealous of all the distinguished generals of the army. Greeley had long been, through the Tribune, a recognized factor in moulding public opinion, and now that war had come to absorb all other interests, his power and influence through the press had waned. He was wholly impracticable in executive matters. His failure to inaugurate a peace and to attain prominence in administrative affairs during the war embittered him through life towards his old- time party friends.
A review of Mr. Lincoln's course relating to Mr. Greeley's attempts to negotiate a peace shows the former acted with the utmost candor, and submitted, for the time, to the latter's dictatorial course and the unjust charge of wavering and acting in bad faith, rather then crush his old friend or endanger the general cause for selfish glory.( 6)
Though in a sense inaugurated in 1863, another quite as futile attempt to bring about peace was in progress in July, 1864. James F. Jaquess, Colonel of the 73d Illinois, serving in Rosecrans' army —a Methodist Episcopal clergyman, a D.D.—in May, 1863, wrote to James A. Garfield, Chief of Staff, calling attention to the fact that his church had divided on the slavery question; saying that the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been a leading element in the Rebellion and prominent in the prosecution of the war; that a considerable part of the territory of that church South was in the possession of the Union Army; that from its ministers, once bitterly opposed to the Union, he had learned in person:
"That they consider the Rebellion has killed the Methodist Episcopal Church South; that it has virtually obliterated slavery, and all the prominent questions of difference between the North and the South; that they are desirous of returning to the 'Old Church'; that their brethren of the South are most heartily tired of the Rebellion; and that they most ardently desire peace, and the privilege of returning to their allegiance to church and state, and that they will do this on the first offer coming from a reliable source. . . . And from these considerations, but not from these alone, but because God has laid the duty on me, I submit to the proper authorities the following proposition, viz.: I will go into the Southern Confederacy and return within ninety days with terms of peace that the government will accept."
He further stated;
"I propose no compromise with traitors—but their immediate return to allegiance to God and their country. . . . I propose to do this work in the name of the Lord; if He puts it in the hearts of my superiors to allow me to do it, I shall be thankful; if not, I have discharged my duty."
This letter Rosecrans forwarded to Mr. Lincoln, approving Jacquess' application. The President, seeing the difficulties, wrote Rosecrans saying Jacquess "could not go with any government authority," yet left to Rosecrans the discretion to grant the desired furlough. The furlough was granted. Jacquess, finding a mere furlough or church influence would not aid him in getting into the Confederate lines, repaired to Baltimore and besought General Schenck to send him via Fort Monore to Richmond. Schenck wired the President (July 13th) Jacquess' wishes and was answered: "Mr. Jacquess is a very worthy gentleman, but I can have nothing to do, directly or indirectly, with the matter he has in view." The Colonel, however, persuaded Schenck to send him to Fort Monroe, from whence he reached Richmond through the connivance of officers conducting the exchange of prisoners. In eleven days he was again in Baltimore asking the President by letter to grant him permission to report the "valuable information and proposals for peace" he had obtained. This permission was not granted. Mr. Lincoln well understood that he could have nothing official to report, and that in the brief time he was South he could have gained no reliable information concerning public sentiment. After lingering in Baltimore a little, this preacher- colonel rejoined his regiment. It does not appear that he ever made, even to Rosecrans or Garfield, any detailed report of this his first trip to Richmond. Though his efforts had so far failed, he was not discouraged, but with faith characteristic of his class, resolved upon another effort. He now associated with him one J. R. Gilmore, a lecturer and literary character known as "Edmund Kirke," who had spent some time in the Western armies. Both were enthusiastic, but their zeal constituted their principal merit in the matter attempted. The President declined a personal interview with Jacquess, but gave, July, 1864, Gilmore a pass, over his own signature, to Grant's headquarters, with a note to Grant to allow both "to pass our lines with ordinary baggage and go South." Mr. Gilmore had previously (June 15, 1864) written Mr. Lincoln telling him something of what Jacquess would propose. In substance he would say: "Lay down your arms and resume peaceful pursuits; the Emancipation Proclamation tells what will be done with the blacks; amnesty will be granted the masses, and no terms with rebels. The leaders to be allowed to seek safety abroad, and at the end of sixty days not one of them must be found in the United States." On the 16th, these two men passed from Butler's lines and were allowed to proceed, under surveillance, to Richmond. Next day they asked, through Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, for an interview with "President Davis," which was accorded them at nine o'clock that night, both Davis and Benjamin being present.