Our One Common Country (19 page)

Bromwell walked Davis's revision back to Benjamin. “He has cut it up considerably,” Bromwell said.

“Just like him,” Benjamin replied. Then he turned to another aide. “I never saw such a man in my life.”

Benjamin could see at a glance that Davis had wrecked his draft. The whole thing would break down over “two countries,” he said. The federal authorities “will never permit the commissioners to pass through with such letters.”

Benjamin must have known that Davis would not relent, but he went to the Executive Mansion and tried. The commissioners' instructions should be as vague and general as possible, he said, to start a dialogue, to see where Mr. Lincoln stood, to test the intentions Mr. Blair attributed to him. If the parties got to the table, anything could happen, but a meeting conditioned on “two countries” would never occur.

Davis stood his ground and signed the letters as he had edited them. If there were not two countries, he said, he had no authority in the matter. The people had made him president to preserve and defend their Confederacy. He had taken an oath to do so, not to bargain it out of existence. A purposeful sort of vagueness might imply assent to Mr. Lincoln's false premise that reunion could be had. As a matter of “personal honor,” it must be clear that Mr. Lincoln had not been misled.

According to Varina Davis, everyone thought the problematic words, our “one common country,” had come from Seward, “to defeat the objects of the conference,” as if Lincoln would have accepted two. Benjamin later said that neither he nor Davis nor any of the commissioners gave reunion so much as a thought. The conference was a chance for a truce, out of which peace might come. “But none of us for a moment dreamed of reconstruction.” Whatever Benjamin was dreaming, the commissioners kept their dreams to themselves.

That night, a State Department man by the fabled name of Washington brought over to Judge Campbell a purse for their expenses and three identical letters of appointment. As he finished reading his, the judge looked up with dismay when he came to “two countries.” It did not correspond to Mr. Lincoln's letter, he said, and “might make difficulty.” Washington replied that Mr. Davis and Mr. Benjamin had differed on the issue and had settled it. The subject was closed.

After wishing his commissioners well, Davis confided in an ally, Mississippi congressman Ethelbert Barksdale, and gave the lie to what he had just led Stephens to believe—that the Mexican plan could lead to reunion, “a grave question for mature consideration.” Barksdale took Blair's scheme seriously until Davis assured him that he need not worry about a negotiated peace. Davis anticipated, he said, and had given the commissioners to understand, that Mr. Lincoln would demand unconditional surrender and reject anything short of it. His instruction to insist on independence fell rather far short of it. He was sending envoys to Mr. Lincoln “to satisfy a public belief,” propounded by malcontents and obstructionists, that an honorable peace could be had by negotiation. To lead it he had named Mr. Stephens as “the recognized head of the peace party,” leaving no room for a charge of bad faith.

Davis would later say that Stephens and Hunter, first and second in line to succeed him, were prepared to abandon the cause, were “utterly unfit” to lead it, and could not have been trusted with “the powers of negotiation.” Davis had it right, from Davis's point of view. If anything, Campbell was even less enamored of the Confederacy than Stephens was, if not so indiscreet about it, and Hunter had lost his faith. In the end, Davis was sending three of his most reluctant Rebels on a mission to save the rebellion.

None of them missed the irony. Little Alec would later say privately that he considered Davis's endorsement of the conference “a humbug” from the start. Stephens told Campbell that “the old story of the monkey that took the paw of the cat to pull his chestnuts out of the fire was not without some modern illustration.” Campbell thought so too, and said he
did not like it. Hunter would come to believe that the people's demands for peace had grown so loud that Davis and his circle had decided to make “a show” of an effort to obtain it. Many Southerners were alarmed by talk of arming slaves, Hunter said, and “mothers, who had shrunk from nothing heretofore, were beginning to flinch” at the prospect of their sons of sixteen or younger being fed into the grinder. Years later, Hunter would suggest that Davis had appointed his peace commissioners with no expectation of success—as dupes, not as diplomats.

Events would show what diplomats could have done.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Is There Nothing That Will Degrade a Man?

On the cold Sunday morning of January 29, the peace commissioners met at the Richmond & Petersburg depot near the High Bridge over the James. The ice-jammed river had forced a change in plans. Instead of going down to Grant by steamer, they would take the ten o'clock train to Petersburg and present themselves at his siege line.

Alec Stephens was in his usual condition, leaning on his cane, not long out of a sickbed, his complexion “as yellow as a ripe ear of corn,” cocooned in scarves and shawls, weighted down with a ponderous gray overcoat of dense Southern wool, its collar so high off his shoulders that it tipped his hat when he shrugged them. Too feeble to travel alone, he had brought his trusted valet, a slave by the name of Ben Travis.

Lieutenant Colonel William Hatch, Preston Blair's recent host, had also come along, as an aide. A handsome, thirty-two-year-old, Kentucky-born lawyer, he did what he could as Assistant Commissioner of Exchange for the suffering men and boys who passed through his hands from both sides, and both sides admired him for it. An exchanged Michigan cavalryman called Hatch “a perfect gentleman with a big heart in him.” His friendships with federal officers, acquired in the course of his trade, might ease the commissioners through the lines.

As they boarded their train, the papers were full of their trip. Stephens remarked that the publicity alone would probably keep them from accomplishing anything. The
Dispatch
noted wisely that “a thousand speculations” explained their mission, “all of which, being based on no known facts, are worthless.” War news was scarce, but “peace rumors were as plentiful as blackberries.”

Gathered at the depot, Campbell gave Stephens and Hunter their copies of Davis's mandate to bring peace to two countries. Stephens read his as the train left the station, literally and figuratively. The very spot was set in his memory. “Upon opening and reading it as we crossed the High Bridge, I remarked to Judge Campbell, ‘nothing could come of it.' ” If Davis had contrived it to prevent any conference at all, it “could not have been better worded.” Campbell believed he had done just that. Stephens had thought there was a chance of doing something. Now all three commissioners despaired. Convinced that Davis's letter would stop them at the federal lines, they agreed not to use it at all unless they had no choice.

As the train rattled on to Petersburg, Judge Campbell disconcerted his fellow peacemakers with the South's inability to wage war. “I knew when we started on that mission,” Hunter said, that the Confederacy's resources were thin, “but the extent of our destitution I did not understand” until Campbell shared the substance of a report he was preparing for the Secretary of War. Hunter would later call it “a beggarly account of empty regiments.” The commissioners knew already that the loss of their last seaport had cauterized their trade. “To the world without we were hermetically sealed by the blockade.” Now Campbell let them know that their domestic supplies of food, clothing, and arms were nearly gone too.

The train ride to Petersburg was not bereft of hope. Stephens told his colleagues about his friendship with Lincoln in the old Congress and their warm correspondence in 1860. Neither Campbell nor Hunter knew much about Lincoln personally. “I knew him well,” Stephens said, “and esteemed him highly.” (The feeling, moreover, was mutual. Lincoln had considered offering Stephens a Cabinet post before Georgia seceded.) Little Alec recounted their protests against taking half of Mexico in 1848 and their efforts to make Zach Taylor president, hoping he would put a stop to it. “We succeeded in the election, but not in the object.”

As the train made its stops, Hunter was impressed with his constituents' response, as “we were received everywhere along the line with marks of great interest and curiosity. Of course, we did nothing voluntarily to create expectations,” holding scant hope of success. When they reached embattled Petersburg, an excited crowd of well-wishers greeted them, and moved them. At the head of the welcoming party, a local judge let them
know if they returned “with any fair hope of peace,” every man, woman, and child in the city would thank them. Hunter had arrived with a grim expectation of failure. He would go to Abraham Lincoln determined to help his people.

The commissioners waited in Petersburg while their aide, Colonel Hatch, went off to the siege line. Not long past noon, drawing cheers when his message spread, Hatch informed the enemy under a white flag of truce that three Southern dignitaries had arrived on their way to Washington, that General Grant would be expecting them, that their mission was to end the war.
Given Grant's reputation in the parts from which they had come, they may not have been surprised but could not have been encouraged when Hatch came back to Petersburg with word from a federal officer that the general was away “on a big drunk,” which must have dampened their joy at the celebration of their arrival.

Lee sent a message to Davis that day from his Petersburg headquarters: If Grant were reinforced (as he surely would be), Lee did not see how he could hold on. His men had had no meat for days. An eighteen-year-old South Carolinian was delivering a dispatch on horseback when A. P. Hill's barefoot infantry marched by. Their bright red tracks on the icy ground would be fresh in his memory until he was buried in his uniform in 1917.

On the Union side of no-man's-land there was meat enough for pets. “The dog mania has got hold of my staff again,” General Orlando Willcox had written his wife, “and we have curs of every degree at headquarters.” Willcox was a full-bearded Indian fighter from Michigan in command of the 9th Corps. A colonel informed him of the arrival of the peace commissioners and their purported understanding with Grant. Willcox knew nothing about it, and wired his superior at City Point, General John Parke. Grant was in North Carolina and had left City Point in the hands of a capable friend, General Edward Ord. Parke passed the buck to Ord, who moved it up by wire to the Secretary of War.

For a second time that day, Colonel Hatch met his Northern counterparts in no-man's–land, cheered from both sides. He was asked to return in the morning. The
Boston Evening Transcript
said a tacit truce had
prevailed for days, what with rumors of peace in the press, but few had thought it “conducive to health to exhibit themselves prominently.” Now every man and boy “not otherwise engaged” was crowding the parapets of both armies, craning for a look at peace. The killing had stopped, and tragedy gave way to comedy as pickets “whiled away the closing hours of the beautiful Sabbath in seemingly friendly intercourse.”

Scores of ebullient letters were composed in pits and trenches, but General Willcox wrote home to his wife in a snit. General Meade had awarded him a twenty-day leave, but Willcox's immediate superior, “being zero & afraid of his shadow,” had vetoed it. Willcox felt “partly compensated” nonetheless, “for Stephens, Hunter & Campbell have been seeking to come in through my lines on their way to Washington to talk of peace. . . . I suppose I shall see the three doves with olive branches in their mouths, & God grant that peace may ensue, though I must confess I fear the talk will amount to nothing quite yet.”

Late that night, having first asked Lincoln for instructions, Secretary of War Stanton shot a wire to City Point in response to General Ord's report of a Rebel peace commission expecting a welcome from Grant. There was no welcome in it. One can almost hear Mars roaring. “This Department has no knowledge of any understanding by General Grant to allow any persons to come within his lines as commissioners of any sort. You will therefore allow no one to come into your lines under such character or profession until you receive the President's instructions.”

It had only been a day since Blair had told Lincoln that Davis had seemed to accept “our one common country” as a premise for peace, but Lincoln had his doubts. Davis had always rejected reunion out of hand, and Lincoln would not see his envoys until he endorsed it plainly. The House would vote the next day on the amendment banning slavery. A dozen War Democrats who were leaning toward aye were wobbly already. If they thought Jeff Davis was ready to come home, they would never drive him away by banning slavery. Instead of welcoming the doves to Washington, Lincoln decided to keep them in Virginia, out of sight of the House of Representatives, until they had been vetted and the amendment had been passed.

At or about the time that Stanton was composing his orders to General Ord to keep the Rebel peace commissioners on their own side of no-man's-land, the president was chatting in the White House with Captain Robert Todd Lincoln, Harvard '64, a newly named member of Grant's staff. The president told his son he was not entirely comfortable letting generals vet peacemakers. He was going to send Tom Eckert down to see them, with orders to let them pass if they committed to reunion in writing, but not otherwise.

Meticulously dressed and groomed, Major Thomas T. Eckert, soon to be General Thomas T. Eckert, was an expert telegrapher who had never worn a uniform, but Stanton had given him a major's rank and pay, a government horse and carriage, and command of the War Department's telegraph office, which the president haunted for war news. A bureaucrat's bureaucrat, Eckert was cut from his boss's cloth. He bullied his subordinates like a drill instructor with a toothache and guarded his master like a Rottweiler. Early in the war, he was capable of misleading the president himself, so rigidly did he follow Stanton's orders to preserve secrecy. The very model of an officious civil servant, Eckert wielded his authority whenever he had it, and often when he did not. As almost no one else would do, he was known to push back against Mars himself when he thought that Stanton was wrong, never doubting that Eckert was right.

Now Lincoln told his son that Eckert would screen the Rebel peace envoys. He had “never failed to do completely what was given him to do, and to do it in the most complete and tactful manner,” without deviating an inch from his orders. An “incessant worker,” as Lincoln's friend Noah Brooks called him, he would shed his harness grudgingly even to get some sleep.

According to a Lincoln bodyguard, the War Department was housed in “a small, mean, two-story building” on the western edge of the Executive Mansion's lawn. With the exception of its occupant, there was nothing mean about Stanton's second-floor office overlooking the White House, and Eckert's adjoining telegraph office made him the best-informed man in the army. Stanton hovered there day and night. Most mornings and evenings, Lincoln did too, often past midnight, feeding on news of the war. Major Eckert would walk him home with a corporal's guard. On
election night, the major had provided a midnight supper for Lincoln and his friends as the returns came in by wire. The commander in chief had amused his aide John Hay, going “awkwardly and hospitably to work shoveling out the fried oysters.” Eckert was powerfully built and had once impressed the president by breaking four or five iron pokers over his arm while sampling a government contractor's wares and finding them wanting. In 1907, Robert Lincoln recalled that his father was so emphatic about sending Eckert in particular to examine the Rebel peace commissioners “that it made a deep impression upon me, and I never see General Eckert without thinking of it.”

Sending Eckert south was the Secretary of War's idea. Stanton told Lincoln that the conference was a trap, that Davis was sending “underlings,” whose commitments could be disavowed. It was beneath the president's dignity to see them. What would be the point? He had “no right” to offer them anything but surrender. Lincoln only listened. Before Eckert left, Stanton told him to “keep close to Mr. Lincoln” if peace talks ensued, to save him from being “snared.”

A telegrapher named David Bates reported to Eckert obsequiously, and it seemed even to him that Lincoln might have trusted Grant instead of Eckert to screen the Rebel envoys. “But the subject was so complicated and fraught with contingent dangers, and Stanton was so strenuous in his objections to the whole scheme, that only Lincoln himself or someone fresh from his councils who possessed his absolute confidence could be trusted to meet the shrewd and wily adversaries.” Having implied that Grant was no match for shrewd and wily adversaries, let alone contingent dangers, Bates lets us know what Stanton was thinking—“that Lincoln's great kindness of heart and his desire to end the war might lead him to make some admission which the astute Southerners would willfully misconstrue and twist to serve their purpose.”