r. Botts at the evening interview, Mr. Botts
said; "Will you authorize me to make that proposition to the Union
men of the convention? I will take a steamboat to-morrow morning,
and have a meeting of the Union men to-morrow night, I will guarantee
with my head, that they will adopt your proposition." In reply, Mr.
Lincoln said: "It is too late. The fleet has sailed." In truth it
was too late for the acceptance of the propositions in Virginia. The
Union men were powerless, and the secessionists were dominant in
affairs and already vindictive. The charge that Mr. Seward gave a
promise that Sumter would be abandoned, may or it may not have been
true, but there can be no ground for doubting the statement made by
Mr. Botts in regard to the terms tendered by Mr. Lincoln, and which
were rejected by Mr. Baldwin.

Mr. Baldwin admitted the interview with Mr. Lincoln, and the nature of
it as herein given, to Mr. John F. Lewis, who was a Union man and a
member of the convention that adopted the Ordinance of Secession by
a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five.

Of the three witnesses, Baldwin, Botts and Lewis, Mr. Baldwin was the
first witness who was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction.
At that time the committee had no knowledge of the conversation
between Mr. Baldwin and President Lincoln. Speaking, apparently, under
the influence of the criticisms of Botts and Lewis of his rejection of
Mr. Lincoln's propositions, Baldwin introduced the subject with the
remark: "I had a good deal of interesting conversation with him (that
is with Mr. Lincoln) that evening. I was about to state that I have
reason to believe that Mr. Lincoln himself had given an account of
this conversation which has been understood--but I am sure
_mis_understood--by the persons with whom he talked, as giving the
representation of it, that he had offered to me, that if the Virginia
Convention would adjourn _sine die_ he would withdraw the troops from
Sumner and _Pickens_." As there was no occasion in the conversation
between Lincoln and Baldwin for a reference to Fort Pickens, and as the
President did not mention _Fort Pickens_ in the account of the
conversation that he gave to Mr. Botts, the denial of Mr. Baldwin may
fall under one of the forms of falsehood mentioned by Shakespeare.

The evidence is conclusive to this point: That at an interview at the
Executive Mansion, April 5, 1861, between President Lincoln and Colonel
John B. Baldwin, th