ded by submitting resolutions which were just
what he might have submitted four years earlier before a gun had been
fired, so entirely had his mind crystallized in the stress of war! These
resolutions, besides reasserting the full state rights theory, assumed
the readiness of the North to make peace and called for a general
convention of all the States to draw up some new arrangement on a
confessed state rights basis. More than a month before, Lincoln had been
reelected on an unequivocal nationalistic platform. And yet Stephens
continued to believe that the Northerners did not mean what they said
and that in congregated talking lay the magic which would change the
world of fact into the world of his own desire.

At this point in the peace intrigue the ambiguous figure of Napoleon the
Little reappears, though only to pass ghostlike across the back of the
stage. The determination of Northern leaders to oppose Napoleon had
suggested to shrewd politicians a possible change of front. That
singular member of the Confederate Congress, Henry S. Foote, thought
he saw in the Mexican imbroglio means to bring Lincoln to terms. In
November he had introduced into the House resolutions which intimated
that "it might become the true policy of... the Confederate States to
consent to the yielding of the great principle embodied in the Monroe
Doctrine." The House referred his resolutions to the Committee on
Foreign Affairs, and there they slumbered until January.

Meanwhile a Northern politician brought on the specter of Napoleon for
a different purpose. Early in January, 1865, Francis P. Blair made
a journey to Richmond and proposed to Davis a plan of reconciliation
involving the complete abandonment of slavery, the reunion of all the
States, and an expedition against Mexico in which Davis was to play the
leading role. Davis cautiously refrained from committing himself, though
he gave Blair a letter in which he expressed his willingness to enter
into negotiations for peace between "the two countries." The visit of
Blair gave new impetus to the peace intrigue. The Confederate House
Committee on Foreign Affairs reported resolutions favoring an attempt
to negotiate with the United States so as to "bring into view" the
possibility of cooperation between the United States and the Confederacy
to maintain the Monroe Doctrine. The same day saw another singular
incident. For some reason that has never been divulged Foote determined
to counterbal