Not
wanting to return to Congress in 1859 to witness the coming death of
the Founders’ Union, Alexander H. Stephens returned Georgia to await
predictable political events. In early February 1865 he met Lincoln
aboard the River Queen at Hampton Roads for a last peace conference to
end the war. “He offered us nothing but unconditional surrender,” said
Stephens on his return, calling the conference “fruitless and
inadequate.”
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Expecting to Return as a Prisoner of War
“The
[Cincinnati] speech was intended as a solemn warning not only to his
constituents and people of the South, but the whole country, that in his
opinion the peace and prosperity of the country depended upon a strict
and inflexible adherence to the principles of the adjustment measures of
1850 upon the subject of slavery, as carried out and expressed in the
Democratic Baltimore platform of 1852, with the additional plank
inserted in the Cincinnati Convention of 1856.
It
was well known then that Mr. Stephens had serious apprehensions that
those principles would be departed from in the next Democratic
Convention to be held in Charleston the following year. It was also
known that he did not finally determine to withdraw from Congress until
after a personal interview with Mr. [James] Buchanan, in which he had
urged the President to cease his warfare against Mr. [Stephen] Douglas,
and the support of the paper known as his organ in Washington in
insisting upon the insertion of a new plank in the next Convention,
asserting it to be the duty of Congress to pass acts to protect slavery
in the Territories, and not to leave that subject, as the Cincinnati
platform had done, with the people of the Territories.
Mr.
Stephens most urgently urged the President that if he continued to
pursue the line of policy he was then following there would be a
burst-up at Charleston, and with that burst-up of the Union – temporary
or permanent – “as certainly as he would break his neck if he sprang
from that window” [of the reception-room at the White house, in which
they were conversing] “or as the sun would set that night.”
Mr.
Buchanan seemed surprised at this opinion, but was unshaken in his
determination to adhere to the policy he was then following. Mr.
Stephens, in taking leave, told the President that his object in seeking
the interview was to know if his purpose was as stated, and if that was
so, his own intention was, not to be allowed to return to the next
Congress.
He
had spent sixteen years of life in striving to maintain the Union upon
the principles of the Constitution; this he thought could be done for
many years to come upon the principles set forth in the Cincinnati
platform. The Government administered on these principles he thought the
best in the world; but if it was departed from, he saw nothing but ruin
ahead. He did not wish to be in at the death; but if disunion should
come in consequence of this departure, he should go with the people of
his own State.
Another
fact connected with the retirement of Mr. Stephens from Congress may be
noted here. When leaving Washington, with a number of other Southern
members, on the beautiful morning of the 5th of March, 1859,
he stood at the stern of the boat for some minutes, gazing back at the
Capitol, when [someone] jocularly said, “I suppose you are thinking of
coming back to those halls as a Senator.”
Mr.
Stephens replied, with some emotion, “No; I never expect to see
Washington again, unless I am brought here as a prisoner of war.” This
was literally fulfilled in the latter part of October 1865, when he
passed through Washington on his way to his home as a paroled prisoner
from Fort Warren.”
(Life of Alexander H. Stephens, R.M. Johnston & W.H. Browne, J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1883, pp. 347- 348)
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