Just what was really happening in the world of politics in these dying days of the Confederacy may possibly never be known with any degree of exactness. The play of politics, not only in the United States; but around the world was quick and varied but very obscure. Mr. Stephenson, the most interesting and thoughtful observer of Lincoln’s career attaches very slight importance to Blair’s negotiations with the Confederacy; but more to the prior negotiations of Gilmore and Jacquess, even going so far as to assert, on the authority of Nicolay and Hay, that Davis had said in his interview with them:
“You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our slaves; and if you will take care of them, you may emancipate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of some use to them; they never were of any to me.”[203]
Nicolay and Hay do assert that Jacquess asserted that Davis so stated; but they also give Davis’s account of the incident which he published in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.” In this we find no such assertion by Davis and on the contrary the following:
“Mr. Gilmore addressed me and in a few minutes conveyed the information that the two gentlemen had come to Richmond impressed with the idea that the Confederate Government would accept a peace on the basis of a reconstruction of the Union, the abolition of slavery and the grant of an amnesty to the people of the States as repentant criminals.... The impudence of the remarks could only be extenuated because of the ignorance displayed and the profuse avowal of the kindest motives and intentions.”[204]
From this Mr. Davis proceeds to discuss the appointment of commissioners to Canada about the middle of 1864, their failure and the mission of Mr. Blair in December. Gen. E. G. Lee’s name is not among the commissioners, as stated, nor is there any reference to his mission in The Rise and Fall. But his article in The Land We Love[205] appearing in 1867 shows a knowledge and understanding of politics enveloping “Maximilian and His Empire,” viewed from the standpoint of the Confederate States, Louis Napoleon, and Wm. H. Seward, most interesting. This forgotten and youthful Virginian graduate of the oldest college in the United States, in the discussion of a matter in which he does not mention himself, must have had sources of information, which he does not reveal. His admiration for an opponent, Seward, is unrestrained. His contempt for Louis Napoleon is expressed with a refinement that imparts to it a greater force; and altogether as he passes from the stage an unreconstructed “Rebel,” dying even before Virginia shook off the grip of the blacks, he carries with him to the grave some history, which if more fully revealed might have added interest to Blair’s mission. At all events, if General Hill asked—
“Is not attention to our fields and firesides of infinitely more importance to us than attention to national affairs?”[206]
he yielded space and advanced to the front page of his magazine one best fitted to illustrate—“Audi alteram partem.”
A little later in an editorial praising Generals Hampton and Wright, Hill says:
“So far as we have been able to ascertain every Southern newspaper edited by a Confederate soldier, has followed the lead of these distinguished officers. The prominent idea held out by Generals Hampton and Wright, is that the freedman is to be trained to feel that he is a Southern man, identified with the South in its interests, its trials and its suffering. He is to be taught to feel that he is no alien upon the soil, but that this is his country and his home.”[207]
In the elections of 1868, however, Congressional Reconstruction was overwhelmingly triumphant throughout the South and, with a fringe of whites, a black pall was thrown over the region.