thorized to hope might terminate in the conclusion of a peace mutually just, honorable, and advantageous to the North and to the Soth, exacting no condition but that we should be duly accredited from Richmond as bearers of propositions looking to the estab ishment of peace.”

Thus proffering a basis for conference as comprehensive as we could desire, it seemed to us that the President opened a door which had previously been closed against the Confederate States for a full interchange of sentiment, free discussion of conflicting opinions, and untrammeled effort to remove all causes of controversy by liberal negotiations. We indeed could not claim the benefit of a safe-conduct which had been extended to us in a character we had no right to assume and had never affected to possess; but the uniform declarations of our Executive and Congress, and their thrice-repeated and as often repulsed attempts to open negotiations, furnish a sufficient pledge to us that this conciliatory manifestation on the part of the President of the United States would be met by them in a temper of equal magnanimity. We had, therefore, no hesitation in declaring that if this correspondence was communicated to the President of the Confederate States, he would promptly embrace the opportunity presented for seeking a peaceful solution of this unhappy strife.

We feel confident that you must share our profound regret that the spirit which dictated the first step toward peace had not continued to animate the councils of your President. Had the representatives of the two Governments met to consider this question, the most momentous ever submitted to human statesmanship, in a temper of becoming moderation and equity, followed, as their deliberations would have been, by the prayers and benedictions of every patriot and Christian on the habitable globe, who is there so bold as to pronounce that the frightful waste of individual happiness and public prosperity which is daily saddening the universal heart might not have been terminated, or if the desolation and carnage of war must still be endured through weary years of blood and suffering, that there might not at least have been infused into its conduct something more of the spirit which softens and partially redeems its brutalities?

Instead of the safe conduct which we solicited, and which | your first letter gave us every reason to suppose would be extended for the purpose of initiating a negotiation in which neither Governinent would compromise its rights or its dignity, a document has been presented which provokes as much indignation as surprise. It bears no feature of resemblance to that which was originally offered, and is unlike any paper which ever before emanated from the constitutional executive of a free people. Addressed "to whom it may concern," it precludes negotiation, and prescribes in advance the terms and conditions of peace. It returns to the original policy of "no bargaining, no negotiations, no truce with rebels except to bury their dead, until every man shall have laid down his arms, submitted to the Government, and sued for mercy."

Whatever may be the explanation of this sudden and entire change in the views of the President, of this rude withdrawal of a courteous overture for negotiation at the moment it was likely to be accepted, of this emphatic recall of words of peace just uttered, and fresh blasts of war to the bitter end, we leave for the speculation of those who have the means or inclination to penetrate the mysteries of his Cabinet or fathom the caprice of his imperial will. It is enough for us to say that we have no use whatever for the paper which has been placed in our hands.

We could not transmit it to the President of the Confederate States without offering him an indignity, dishonoring ourselves, and incurring the well-merited scorn of our countrymen. While an ardent desire for peace pervades the people of the Confederate States, we rejoice to believe that there are few, if any, among them who would purchase it at the expense of liberty, honor, and self-respect. If it can be secured only by their submission to terms of conquest, the generation is yet unborn which will witness its restitution.

If there be any military antocrat in the North who is entitled to proffer the conditions of this manifesto, there is none in the South authorized to entertain them. Those who control our armies are the servants of the people-not their masters; and they have no more inclination than they have the right to subvert the social institutions of the sovereign States, to overthrow their established constitutions, and to barter away their priceless heritage of self-government.

This correspondence will not, however, we trust, prove wholly barren of good result. If there is any citizen of the Confederate States who has clung to a hope that peace was possible with this administration of the Federal Govern ment it will strip from his eyes the last film of such delusion; or if there be any whose hearts have grown faint under the suffering and agony of this bloody struggle, it will inspire them with fresh energy to endure and brave whatever may yet be requisite to preserve to themselves and

ir children all that gives dignity and value to life or

hope and consolation to death. And if there be any patriots or Christians in your land who shrink appalled from the illimitablo vista of private misery and public calamity which stretches before them, we pray that in their bosoms a resolution may be quickened to recall the abused author ity and vindicate the outraged civilization of the country. For the solicitude you have manifested to inaugurate a movement which contemplates results the most noble and humane, we return our sincere thanks, and are, most respectfully and truly, your obedient servants, C. C. CLAY, jr.

JAMES P. HOLCOMBE.

CLIFTON HOUSE, NIAGARA FALLS,
WEDNESDAY, July 20, 1864.

COL. W. C. JEWETT, Cataract House, Niagara Falls:
SIR: We are in receipt of your note, admonishing ns of
the departure of the Hon. Horace Greeley from the Fails;
that he regrets the sad termination of the initiatory stepe
taken for peace, in consequence of the change made by
the President in his instructions to convey commissioners
to Washington for negotiations unconditionally, and that
Mr. Greeley will be pleased to receive any answer we may
have to make through you.

We avail ouselves of this offer to enclose a letter to Mr. Greeley, which you will oblige us by delivering. We cannot take leave of you without expressing our thanks for your courtesy and kind offices as the intermediary through whom our correspondence with Mr. Greeley has been conducted, and assuring you that we are, very respectfully, your obedient servants,

C. C. CLAY, Jr. JAMES P. HOLCOMBE.

MR. GREELEY TO MR. JEWETT.

NIAGARA FALLS, (N. Y.,) July 20, 1864. DEAR SIR: In leaving the Falls, I feel bound to state that I have had no intercourse with the Confederate gentlemen at the Clifton House but such as I was fully authorized to hold by the President of the United States, and that I have done nothing in the premises but in fulfillment of his injunctions. The notes, therefore, which you have kindly interchanged between those gentlemen and myself can in no case subject you to the imputation of unauthorized dealing with public enemies. Yours, HORACE GREELEY. W. C. JEWETT, Esq.

MR. JEWETT TO MR. CLAY AND OTHERS.

NIAGARA FALLS, July 20, 1864 Hon. C. C. CLAY, Hon. JACOB THOMPSON, Hon. GEO. N. SANDERS, Hon. BEVERLY TUCKER, and the other Hon. Repre sentatives of the Southern Confederacy. GENTLEMEN: I am directed by Mr. Greeley to acknowledge the receipt of the following telegram from Mr. Clay: "ST. CATHERINE'S, July 20, 1864.

"TO GEO. N SANDERS: "Will be with you at five o'clock. Detain Greeley until I see him. C. C. CLAY." And to state that, in view of his mission being ended, through the rejection of the terms of negotiation in the letter of the President of the United States, delivered to you by Major Hay, he does not feel himself authorized to take any further steps in the matter. He regrets the sad termination of the steps taken for peace, from the change made by the President in his instructions given him to convey commissioners to Washington for negotiations unconditionally. He will be pleased to receive any answer you may have to make in writing through me or any mode

you may desire.

I enclose you a copy of a note from Mr. Greeley addressed to me justifying the intercourse I have had with you during this short negotiation for peace.

In conclusion, I tender to you my heartfelt thanks for the kind and generous manner in which you have received me personally, and for the noble and magnanimous sentiments you have advanced in a desire to end the bloody conflict between the two sections. I can only regret that our Government should not have seen the policy, duty, and justice of meeting your generous offer to meet in council unconditionally-terms of a peace to depend upon circum stances transpiring during negotiations. My efforts shall be as ever unceasing for peace that shall secure to the section you represent that justice that shall meet with the approval of the civilized world, of the coming International Congress proposed by the wise and noble Napoleon. Very truly, WM. CORNELL JEWETT.

MAJOR HAY TO MR. HOLCOMBE.

INTERNATIONAL HOTEL, July 21, 1864. Major Hay has just received Mr. Holcombe's note of this

[From the New York Tribune of July 22.] The telegraphic stories concerning peace conferences at Niagara Falls have a slender foundation in fact, but most of the details are very wide of the truth. The Editor of this paper has taken part in and been privy to no further or other negotiations than were fully authorized, and more than authorized; but these related solely to bringing the antagonists face to face in amicable rather than belligerent attitude, with a view to the initiation of an earnest effort for peace, to be prosecuted at Washington. The movement has had no immediate success.

Of course all reports that the writer has been engaged in proposing, or receiving, or discussing hypothetical terms or basis of peace, whether with accredited agents of the Richmond authorities or others, are utterly mistaken. He has never had the slightest authorization to do anything of the sort; and he is quite aware of those provisions of law which relate to volunteer negotiators with public enemies. Those provisions he heartily approves, and is nowise inclined to violate.

More than this he does not at yet feel at liberty to state, though he soon may be. All that he can now add is his general inference that the pacification of our country is neither so difficult nor so distant as seems to be generally supposed.

Rebel Views of "Peace."

1862.

In September, 1862, these proceedings are published as having taken place in the Rebel Congress :

In the House of Representatives Mr. FOOTE, of Tennessee, offered the following joint resolution proposing to send a commissioner to Washington, empowered to propose terms of just and honorable peace:

Be it enacted by the Congress of the Confederate States of America, That the signal success with which Divine Providence has so continually blessed our arms for several months past would fully justify the Confederate Government in dispatching a commissioner or commissioners to the Government at Washington city, empowered to propose the terms of a just an honorable peace.

Mr. HOLT, of Georgia, asked the consent of the House to offer the following substitute for the resolution:

The people of the Confederate States are, and have been from the beginning, anxious that the war with the United States should be conducted with the sense established by the rales of civilized and Christian nations, and have, on their part, so conducted it, and the said people ardently desire that said war should cease and peace be restored, and have so announced from the beginning: Therefore,

Resolved, That, whenever the United States Government shall manifest a like anxiety and a like desire, it shall be the duty of the President of the Confederate States to appoint commissioners to treat and negotiate with the said United States Government upon said subjects, or either of them.

On motion of Mr. KENAN, of Georgia, the resolution and substitute were laid upon the table-yeas 59, nays 26.

1863.

In January, Mr. CROCKETT, of Kentucky, introduced into the House a resolution with reference to the conditions on which peace should be negotiated; which was debated.

Mr. FOOTE, of Tennessee,* also introduced

The people of the Confederate States of America having, in the progress of the pending war, most clearly demonstrated their ability to maintain by arms the claim to sepa. rate independence, which they have heretofore asserted before the world, and being inflexibly resolved never to relinquish the struggle in which they are engaged until the great object for which they are contending shall have been finally accomplished; in view of the fact that a great political reaction in opposition to the bloody and unnatural war now in course of prosecution, has displayed itself in several of the most populous and influential States of what was once honorably known as "The United States of America;" and, in view of the additional fact that, even among the avowed opponents of despotism, and the recognized friends of peace in the North, a grave and deplorable misapprehension has of late arisen in regard to the true condition of public sentiment in the South touching the question of reconstructing that political Union once existing under the protection of what is known as the Federal Constitution. Now, in order that no further misunderstanding of the kind referred to may hereafter prevail, and in order that the unchangeable determination of our Government and people, in reference to the terms upon which alone they would bring the sanguinary struggle to a close, may be made known, the Congress of the Confederate States of America do resolve as follows: known as the Federal Union to which the people of the Con1. There is no plan of reconstructing what was formerly federate States will ever consent. Wrongs too grievous and multiplied have been committed upon us and upon our most cherished rights by a united North, since this unprovoked and most wicked war commenced; a majority of the people of the northern States have too evidently shown themselves to be utterly incapable of self-government and unmindful of all the fundamental principles upon which alone republican institutions can be maintained. They have too long degraded despotism that the world has yet known; for too submitted patiently to the iron rule of the basest and most long a period of time they have openly and unblushingly

sympathized with the lawless and ferocious miscreants who have been sent into the bosom of the unoffending South to spill the precious blood of our most valued citizens; to pollute and desecrate all that we hold in especial veneration; to rob us of our property; to expel us from our homes and wantonly to devastate our country, to allow even of the possibility of our ever again consenting to hold the least political connection with those who have so cruelly outraged our sensibilities and so profoundly dishonored themselves, and in association with whom we feel that we could not expect that freedom which we love, that self-respect which we are determined ever to cultivate, and the esteem and sympathy of civilized and Christian nations. all responsible for the existing war, and have been at all 2. While the Confederate States of America are not at times ready to participate in such arrangements as would be best suited to bring it to a close, in a manner consistent with their own safety and honor, they could not yield their consent to an armistice of a single day or hour, so long as bearing rule in Washington city, shail remain unrevoked; the incendiary proclamation of the atrocious monster, now nor could the government of said Confederate States agree to negotiate at all in regard to a suspension of hostilities, except upon the basis of a formal and unconditional recognition of their independence.

3. Whenever the friends of peace in the North shall grow tious Cabinet to withdraw said proclamation, and propose strong enough to constrain Abraham Lincoln and his flagian armistice upon the basis aforesaid, the Government of the Confederate States will be ready to accede to said proposition of armistice with a view to the settlement of all existing difficulties.

4. Should peace be at any time brought about, the Confederate States of America would freely consent to the formation of a just and mutually advantageous commercial federate Congress, whenever they are taken up to be considered. We are fighting this war for Southern independence and for a Government of Southern States, recognizing

African slavery as an institution ordained of God, beneficial to mankind, a necessity in our social and political relations as States, and in our intercourse with all other nations or States. Hence the admission of any free State into our Union is not only repugnant to us, but it will be only a continuance of that evil which has brought on the war, and which to get rid of we are now fighting. If the Northwest

The resolution introduced by Mr. Foote in Congress bearing upon a reconstruction of our Government with the Northwestern States, we desire now solemnly to protest against, and we trust that they will be tabled by the Con

for themselves a new Government, and desire to be at peace with the South, no barrier will be placed in their way by our Government, and we shall be willing to treat with them as an independent Government-in peace, as friends; in war, as foes."

treaty with all the States now constituting the United States, except New England, with whose people, and in whose ignoble love of gold and brutifying fanaticism this disgraceful war has mainly originated; in consideration of which fact the people of the Confederate States of America are firmly and deliberately resolved to have no intercourse whatever hereafter, either direct or indirect, political, commercial, or social, under any circumstances which could be

possibly imagined to exist, with said States of New England,

or the people therein resident.

5. The Government of the Confederate States, in consideration of the change in public sentiment which has occurred in several of the Northern States, wherein political elections have been recently held-sympathizing most kindly with those by whose manly exertions that change has been brought about-would be willing to conclude a just and honorable peace with any one or more of said States who, renouncing all political connection with New England, may be found willing to stipulate for desisting at once from the further prosecution of the war against the

South, and in such case the Government of the Confederate States would be willing to enter into a league, offensive and defensive, with the States thus desisting, of a permanent and enduring character.

6. The Government of the Confederate States is now

willing, as it has heretofore repeatedly avowed itself to be, whenever the States bordering upon the Mississippi river, or any of them, shall have declared their inclination to withdraw from the further prosecution of the war upon the South, (which, could it be successful, would only have the effect of destroying their own best market,) to guaranty to them in the most effectual and satisfactory manner the peaceful and uninterrupted navigation of the said Mississippi river and its tributaries, and to open to them at once the markets of the South, greatly enhanced in value to them as they would be by the permanent exclusion of all articles of New England growth or manufacture.

7. The course of practical neutrality in regard to the pending war heretofore pursued by the States and Territotories west of the Rocky Mountains has afforded the highest gratification to the people of the Confederate States of America; and it is hoped that the day is not far distant when said States and Territories, consulting their own obvious safety and future welfare, will withdraw from all political connection with a Government which has heretofore been a source of continual oppression to them; and when said States and Territories, asserting their separate independence, shall appropriate to themselves the manifold advantages sure to result from such a movement, among which may be reckoned: 1st. Relief from grievous and exhausting tariff regulations, now being rigidly enforced. 2d. Relief from all the discredit resulting inevitably from the prosecution of the present unjust and unauthorized war. 3d. Relief from the pressure of a despotism the most heartless and atrocious ever yet established. 4th. Relief from the crushing weight of taxation unavoidably growing out of the war. 5th. The exclusive use and enjoyment of all the rich mineral lands stretching along the slope of the Pacific. 6th. Free trade with all the nations of the earth, and a future maritime growth and power that has no parallel; and lastly, a monopoly of the trade of the Pacific ocean.

8. Resolved, That the President be respectfully requested, if he shall approve these resolutions, to cause them to be promulgated and transmitted to the States of the North by such means as he shall deem most judicious; and that he accompany them, if he think it advisable, with such an address or proclamation, expository of the matters embodied therein, as he shall judge most suitable and proper.

Jan. 21-Mr. FOOTE remarked in relation to proposed retaliation by Mr. Clopton:

| persisted in this demoniacal and hellish warfare, we are not to blame. He was sure, however, that these politica" uprisings in the States of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, were of no little moment, and the results would presently

appear.

In September, certain "peace resolutions" were introduced into the Senate of Virginia, which proposed in substance that three commissioners should be appointed by each of the Confederate States, to repair to each of the States remaining in the old Union, and make known to the Governors of each of them that the Confederate States demand that they will, by the ballot-box, consent that the Confederate States be allowed thenceforth to be separated from them in peace.

These resolutions were discussed at some length, and then indefinitely postponed by a unanimous vote. When they were first offered and read

Mr. ARMSTRONG moved that the rules be suspended fr the purpose of acting on the resolutions forthwith. Mr. COLLIER appealed to the Senate to allow the resol tions to lay on the table, in order that Senators might have full time to reflect on their importance.

Mr. SEDDON was unwilling to allow the silent sanction of the Senate to endorse for an hour these resolutions. He was in favor of disposing of them without delay. The rules were then suspended.

Mr. NASH moved the indefinite postponement of the reso lutions. He regretted painfully to see such resolutions offered. He objected to them toto calo. He was as much opposed to sending commissioners to Gov. Morgan, or any other northern Governor, as to Mr. Lincoln. In their views and public policy they were all alike.

Mr. COLLIER thought the action of the Senate was hasty and inconsiderate. The scheme he proposed never had been attempted. There was no clause in the Constitution that provided for a peaceful dissolution of the Union. A sort of dread filled the public mind in regard to propositions of peace, because they might do harm. If there was any expression in the preamble or resolutions which inculcates the idea that we are to desist from the struggle till the independence of this Confederacy was achieved he would like should obtain our independence; but while fighting with to know it. He was willing to fight on, to fight on till we the other. He hoped, if the resolutions were to be buried, one hand he would hold out the olive-branch of peace with they would be allowed the decent respect shown to all corpses, of remaining twenty-four hours before interment. The roll was called, and the vote stood-ayes 38, noes 1, (Mr. Collier.) So the preamble and resolutions were indefinitely postponed.

In the Legislature of Georgia, the same subject was considered, on which the Savannah Republican remarked:

We hope the Georgia Legislature will let this question alone, and turn their attention to war. The peace talk is designed to help the Northern Democrats, but it is a great mistake. It helps Lincoln, as we shall see to our sorrow.

In the Legislature of North Carolina,* some

* March 4, 1864, Wm. W. Holden issued this card: To the People of North Carolina: In compliance with the wishes of many friends, I announce myself a candidate for the office of Governor of North Carolina, at the election to be held on the first Tuesday in August next.

My principles and views, as a conservative, "after the strictest sect," are well known to the people of the State. These principles and views are what they have been. They

I am not disposed, at a time like this, to invite the people from their employments, and add to the excitement which prevails in the public mind by haranguing them for their votes. We need all our energies to meet the common enemy, and to provide means of subsistence for our troops in the field and the people at home. Let the people go calmly and firmly to the polls and vote for the man of their choice. I will cheerfully abide their decisions whatever it may be.

If elected I will do everything in my power to promote the interests, the honor, and the glory of North Carolina, and to secure an honorable peace.