The one point he made last he tried to drive home in a sharp personal appeal.
"You cannot afford, Mr. President," he urged with vehemence, "to further expose your own people of Mississippi to the ravages of such men as now control the invading army. They have laid your own home waste. The people of Vicksburg are your neighbors. They know you personally. The people of this territory have sent their sons and brothers into Virginia by thousands. There are no soldiers left to defend them—"
The President lifted his thin hand in protest.
"I can't let the personal argument sway me, Reagan. Our own people must endure what is best for the cause. All I wish to know is what is best—your plan or General Lee's."
Lee persuaded him against his personal judgment to consent to the daring scheme of Northern invasion.
So intent was Reagan on the plan of direct relief to Vicksburg that after Lee had begun his preparations for the advance, Davis called a Cabinet meeting and reconsidered the whole question. Reagan pleaded with tears at last for what he knew his Chief felt to be best. Davis weighed for the second time each point with care and again decided that Lee's plan promised the greater end—peace.
The moment his final decision was made Davis at once commissioned Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, who knew Lincoln personally, to go to Washington to make the proposition for an armistice and begin the negotiations for a permanent peace on the day Lee should make good his promise.
The letter with which Stephens started to Washington asked on its face that the President of the United States arrange for an exchange of prisoners which would be prompt and effective and prevent all suffering by Northern men in Southern climates and Southern men in Northern prisons. Davis had asked again and again that all prisoners be exchanged. The Federal War Department had obstructed this exchange until thousands of Northern soldiers crowded the prisons of the South and it was impossible for the Confederate authorities to properly care for them. Medicine had been made contraband of war by the North and the simplest remedies could not be had for the Confederate soldiers or their prisoners. Behind this humane purpose of Stephens' mission lay the bigger proposition, which was a verbal one, to propose peace on Lee's victory on Northern soil.
Lee's army lay on the plains of Culpeper during the beautiful month of May. The vast field was astir with the feverish breath of preparations for the grand march. Trains rushed to the front loaded with munitions of war. New batteries of artillery with the finest equipment ever known were added to his army. The ordnance trains were packed to their capacity. His troops were better equipped than ever before in the history of the war. Every department of the huge, pitiless machine was running like clockwork.