There has been much discussion about what did and what did not occur at the
famous Hampton Roads Conference. That Mr. Lincoln met and conferred with
the official representatives of the Confederate Government, led by the Vice
President of the Confederate States, when it must have been known to him
that the Confederacy was nearing the end of its resources, is sufficient
proof of the breadth both of his humanity and his patriotism. Yet he went
to Fortress Monroe prepared not only to make whatever concessions toward
the restoration of Union and Peace he had the lawful authority to make,
but to offer some concessions which could in the nature of the case go no
further at that time than his personal assurance. His constitutional powers
were limited. But he was in himself the embodiment of great moral power.
The story that he offered payment for the slaves--so often affirmed and
denied--is in either case but a quibble with the actual facts. He could not
have made such an offer except tentatively, lacking the means to carry it
out. He was not given the opportunity to make it, because the Confederate
Commissioners were under instructions to treat solely on the basis of the
recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The conference came to
nought. It ended where it began. But there is ample evidence that he went
to Hampton Roads resolved to commit himself to that proposition. He did,
according to the official reports, refer to it in specific terms, having
already formulated a plan of procedure. This plan exists and may be seen in
his own handwriting. It embraced a joint resolution to be submitted by the
President to the two Houses of Congress appropriating $400,000,000 to be
distributed among the Southern States on the basis of the slave population
of each according to the Census of 1860, and a proclamation to be issued
by himself, as President, when the joint resolution had been passed by
Congress.
There can be no controversy among honest students of history on this point.
That Mr. Lincoln said to Mr. Stephens, "Let me write Union at the top
of this page and you may write below it whatever else you please," is
referable to Mr. Stephens' statement made to many friends and attested by a
number of reliable persons. But that he meditated the most liberal terms,
including payment for the slaves, rests neither upon conjecture nor
hearsay, but on documentary proof. It may be argued that he could not
have secured the adoption of any such plan; but of his purpose, and
its genuineness, there can be no question and there ought to be no
equivocation.
Indeed, payment for the slaves had been all along in his mind. He believed
the North equally guilty with the South for the original existence of
slavery. He clearly understood that the Irrepressible Conflict was a
Conflict of systems, not a merely sectional and partisan quarrel. He was a
just man, abhorring proscription: an old Conscience Whig, indeed, who stood
in awe of the Constitution and his oath of office. He wanted to leave the
South no right to claim that the North, finding slave labor unremunerative,
had sold its negroes to the South and then turned about and by force of
arms confiscated what it had unloaded at a profit. He fully recognized
slavery as property. The Proclamation of Emancipation was issued as a war
measure. In his message to Congress of December, 1862, he proposed payment
for the slaves, elaborating a scheme in detail and urging it with copious
and cogent argument. "The people of the South," said he, addressing a
Congress at that moment in the throes of a bloody war with the South, "are
not more responsible for the original introduction of this property than
are the people of the North, and, when it is remembered how unhesitatingly
we all use cotton and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it
may not be quite safe to say that the South has been more responsible than
the North for its continuance."