ant, social intercourse at the army
posts, and they could aid as only women can aid, in a friendly way, to
bring back an era of good feelings. General Ord further intimated
that President Lincoln would not turn a deaf ear to a reasonable
proposition for compensation for the slaves. General Longstreet
accepted the overtures with good grace, but with a dignity fitting
his position. He could not, while in the field and in the face of
the enemy, with his superior present, enter into negotiations for a
surrender of his army, or to listen to terms of peace. He returned and
counseled Lee. Urged him to meet Grant, and as commander-in-chief of
all the armies in the South, that he had a wide latitude, that the
people were looking to him to end the war, and would be satisfied with
any concessions he would recommend. That the politicians had had their
say, now let the soldiers terminate the strife which politicians had
begun. That Napoleon while in Italy, against all precedent and without
the knowledge of the civil department, had entered into negotiations
with the enemy, made peace, and while distasteful to the authorities,
they were too polite to refuse the terms. But General Lee was too much
a soldier to consider any act outside of his special prerogatives. He,
however, was pleased with the idea, and wrote General Grant, asking
an interview looking towards negotiations of peace. But General Grant,
from his high ideals of the duty and dignity of a soldier, refused,
claiming that the prerogatives of peace or war were left with the
civil, not the military arm of the service. So it all ended in smoke.

General Lee began making preparations to make still greater efforts
and greater sacrifices. He had been hampered, as well as many others
of our great commanders, by the quixotic and blundering interference
of the authorities at Richmond, and had become accustomed to it. There
can be no question at this late day that the end, as it did come, had
long since dawned upon the great mind of Lee, and it must have been
with bitterness that he was forced to sacrifice so many brave and
patriotic men for a shadow, while the substance could never be
reached. His only duty now was to prolong the struggle and sacrifice
as few men as possible.

General Bragg, that star of ill omen to the Confederacy, was taken out
of the War Department in Richmond and sent to Wilmington, N.C., and
that brilliant, gallant Kentuckian, General John C. Breckenridge, wa