On February 9, 1865, he consented to make Lee
General-in-Chief of all the Southern armies. This belated delegation
of larger authority to Lee had certain military results, but no
political result whatever. Lee could have been the dictator of the
Confederacy if he had chosen, and no one then or since would have
blamed him; but it was not in his mind to do anything but his duty as a
soldier. The best beloved and most memorable by far of all the men who
served that lost cause, he had done nothing to bring about secession at
the beginning, nor now did he do anything but conform to the wishes of
his political chief. As for that chief, Lincoln had interpreted Davis'
simple position quite rightly. Having once embraced the cause of
Southern independence and taken the oath as chief magistrate of an
independent Confederacy, he would not yield up that cause while there
was a man to obey his orders. Whether this attitude should be set
down, as it usually has been set down, to a diseased pride or to a very
real heroism on his part, he never faced the truth that the situation
was desperate and the spirit of his people daunted at last. But it is
probable that just like Lincoln he was ready that those who were in
haste to make peace should see what peace involved; and it is probable
too that, in his terrible position, he deluded himself with some vague
and vain hopes as to the attitude of the North. Lincoln on the other
hand would not enter into any proceedings in which the secession of the
South was treated otherwise than as a rebellion which must cease; but
this did not absolutely compel him to refuse every sort of informal
communication with influential men in the South, which might help them
to see where they stood and from which he too might learn something.

Old Mr. Francis Blair, the father of Lincoln's late Postmaster-General,
was the last of the honest peace-makers whom Lincoln had allowed to see
things for themselves by meeting Jefferson Davis. His visit took place
in January, 1865, and from his determination to be a go-between and the
curious and difficult position in which Lincoln and Davis both stood in
this respect an odd result arose. The Confederate Vice-President
Stephens, who had preached peace in the autumn without a quarrel with
Davis, and two other Southern leaders presented themselves at Grant's
headquarters with the pathetic misrepresentation that they were sent by
Davis on a mission which Lincoln had un