How do the people of the South feel toward Lincoln? Kindly. We honor his memory. We think that he was broad-minded, free from vindictiveness, free from sectionalism, free from class-hatred. We think he was a strong man, a sagacious man, and a very determined man. We have always regarded his assassination as the worst blow the South got after Appomattox. We think that he, alone, could have stemmed the torrent of sectional hatred, and could have worked out a simple plan of restoring the seceding states to the Union which would have reunited the family without that carnival of debauchery and crime known as the “Reconstruction period.”
We think that the man who made the appeal to the South which he made in his first inaugural, and the man who at Gettysburg, soon after the battle, praised the courage of the troops who made the effort to storm such heights as those, and who on the night of Lee’s surrender called upon the bands to play “Dixie,” was not a bitter partizan of the Thaddeus Stevens stripe, who, after the guns had been stacked and the flags furled, would have used all of the tremendous and irresistible power of the Federal Government to humiliate, outrage, despoil and drive to desperation a people who were already in the dust.
It is not true that Mr. Lincoln offered generous terms to the South at the Hampton Roads Conference. He did not say to the Confederate Commissioners, “Write the word ‘Union’ first and you may write whatever you please after that.”
It is not true that he offered payment for the slaves.
The official reports made to both Governments, as well as Mr. Stephens’ story of the celebrated Conference, conclusively prove that Mr. Lincoln demanded the unconditional surrender of the Confederacy as a preliminary to any discussion of terms.
In fact, at the close of the Conference of four hours, Mr. R. M. T. Hunter, one of the Confederate Commissioners, feelingly complained of the harshness and humiliation involved in the “unconditional surrender” demanded of the seceding states.
Mr. Lincoln declined to commit himself, officially, to the proposition that the South, by laying down her arms and submitting to the restoration of the national authority throughout her limits, could resume her former relations to the Government. Personally, he thought she could. He refused officially to commit himself on the subject of paying the slave-owners for their slaves. Personally, he was willing to be taxed for that purpose, and he believed that the Northern people held the same views. He knew of some who favored a Congressional appropriation of $400,000,000 for that purpose. But give any pledges? Oh, no. The Confederacy must first abolish itself,—then there would be a discussion of terms!
Fort Fisher, North Carolina, had recently fallen; the Confederacy was reeling under the shock of repeated disaster, the thin battle lines of the Gray were almost exhausted,—and Mr. Lincoln was now certain that secession was doomed.
In the “Recollections” of J. R. Gilmore, there is a curious account of an informal mission undertaken by himself and Col. J. F. Jaquess for the purpose of ending the war. According to Gilmore, he went to Washington, had an interview with Mr. Lincoln, and drew from him a statement of the terms which he was willing to offer the Confederate Government.
The gist of his several propositions was that the Confederacy should dissolve, the armies disband, the seceding states acknowledge national authority and come back into Congress with their representatives, that slavery should be abolished and that $500,000,000 be paid the South for the slaves. This was in June 1864.