The whole story of attempts to negotiate a peace is grotesque, yet the conditions surrounding the North and the South and the stress of the times speak in defence of the ambitious spirits who came to the front and essayed, by negotiations, to put an end to the war. Providence had another, more fitting and consummate, ending in store, whereby the war should produce results for the good of mankind commensurate with its cost in tears, treasure, and blood.
( 1) Life of R. E. Lee, White (Putnam's), pp. 416-17.
( 2) Manassas to Appomattox, p. 204.
( 3) Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay), vol. vii., pp. 367-8.
( 4) War Between the States, vol. ii., pp. 557-62, 780; Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay), vol. vii., pp. 371-4.
( 5) Jewett must have attended school where the master required the class to parse the sentence, "Dog, I, and father went a- hunting."
( 6) Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay), vol. ix., pp. 184-200.
( 7) Vol. ii., p. 610. Also see Lincoln (N. and H.), vol. ix., pp. 201-2.
( 8) The attitude of the Democratic party caused the political friends of President Lincoln the deepest anxiety. In its National platform adopted at Chicago, August 30, 1864, it demanded, "that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, immediate efforts should be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States."
( 9) Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay), vol. ix., pp. 216-21.