incoln seemed to become uneasy at being
represented by any other person whomsoever in so important a business;
for he decided to go himself and confer personally with the Southerners.
Then ensued, and continued during four hours, on board a steamer in
Hampton Roads, the famous conference between the President and his
secretary of state on the one side and the three Confederate
commissioners on the other. It came to absolutely nothing; nor was there
at any time pending its continuance any chance that it would come to
anything. Mr. Lincoln could neither be led forward nor cajoled sideways,
directly or indirectly, one step from the primal condition of the
restoration of the Union. On the other hand, this was the one
impossible thing for the Confederates. The occasion was historic, and
yet, in fact, it amounted to nothing more than cumulative evidence of a
familiar fact, and really its most interesting feature is that it gave
rise to one of the best of the "Lincoln stories." The President was
persisting that he could not enter into any agreement with "parties in
arms against the government;" Mr. Hunter tried to persuade him to the
contrary, and by way of doing so, cited precedents "of this character
between Charles I. of England and the people in arms against him." Mr.
Lincoln could not lose such an opportunity! "I do not profess," he said,
"to be posted in history. On all such matters I will turn you over to
Seward. All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I. is,
_that he lost his head_!" Then silence fell for a time upon Mr. Hunter.

Across the wide chasm of the main question the gentlemen discussed the
smaller topics: reconstruction, concerning which Mr. Lincoln expressed
his well-known, most generous sentiments; confiscation acts, as to which
also he desired to be, and believed that Congress would be, liberal; the
Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment, concerning
which he said, that the courts of law must construe the proclamation,
and that he personally should be in favor of appropriating even so much
as four hundred millions of dollars to extinguish slavery, and that he
believed such a measure might be carried through. West Virginia, in his
opinion, must continue to be a separate State. Yet there was little
practical use in discussing, and either agreeing or disagreeing, about
all these dependent parts; they were but limbs which it was useless to
set in shape while the body was lacking. Ac