As
many as six peace initiatives occurred before and during the war, nearly
all emanating from the South and ending in failure due to Northern
Republican intransigence. “[Lincoln] offered us nothing but
unconditional surrender,” said Vice President Alexander Stephens on his
return from the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 3 February 1865,
calling the meeting “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"
“Let Us Alone and Peace Will Come of Itself”
“Lincoln
was quietly sponsoring a peace initiative of his own [in July 1864 when
he] sent Col. James F. Jaquess, a Methodist minister [of an Illinois
Regiment] . . . and [writer] James R. Gilmore . . . on a mission to
Richmond. Gilmore and Jaquess had a political motive to help Lincoln’s
faltering bid for reelection.
They
wanted to prove that the Confederate’s peace overtures were really
concocted to embarrass Lincoln’s government, to throw upon it the odium
of continuing the war and thus secure the triumph of the
“peace-traitors” in the November election.
With
a personal note from Lincoln to General Grant, the two travelers
crossed the battles lines at City Point, Virginia and entered Richmond .
. . On Sunday
evening, July 17, Jaquess and Gilmore encountered President [Jefferson]
Davis, “a spare, thin featured man with iron gray hair and beard and a
clear gray eye full of life and vigor,” as Gilmore later described him.
“Our people want peace,” Jaquess told Davis. “We have come to ask how it can be brought about.”
In
a very simple way,” responded Davis. “Withdraw your armies from our
territory, and peace will come of itself. We do not seek to subjugate
you. We are not waging an offensive war . . . Let us alone and peace
will come at once.”
“But we cannot let you alone as long as you repudiate the Union. That is one thing the Northern people will not surrender.”
“I
know. You would deny to us the one thing you exact for yourselves –
the right of self- government,” Davis retorted. “You have sown so much
bitterness at the South, you have put such an ocean of blood between the
two sections, that I despair of seeing nay harmony in my time. Our
children may forget this war, but we cannot.”
“We are both Christian men,” the minister said, “Can you, as a Christian man, leave untried any means that may lead to peace?”
“No,
I cannot,” said Davis. “I desire peace as much as you do. I deplore
bloodshed as much as you do; but I feel that no one drop of the blood
shed in this war is upon my hands – I can look up to my God and say
this.”
“I
tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for
twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it but could not. The
North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so
the war came . . . It is with your own people you should labor [to end
the war]. It is they who desolate our homes, burn our wheat fields,
break the wheels of our wagons carrying away our women and children and
destroy supplies meant for our sick and wounded. At your door lies all
the misery and crime of this war – and it is a fearful, fearful
account.”
“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest?” Gilmore asked.
“No,
it is not,” Davis replied. “ . . . You have already emancipated two
million of our slaves – and if you will take care of them, you may
emancipate the rest . . . you many emancipate every Negro in the
Confederacy but we will be free! We will govern ourselves. We will do
it if we have to see every Southern plantation sacked, and every
Southern city in flames.”
As
the interview ended, [Davis] said: “Say to Mr. Lincoln from me, that I
shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis
of our independence. It will be useless to approach me with any
other.”
(The Dark Intrigue, The True Story of a Civil War Conspiracy, Frank van der Linden, Fulcrum Publishing, 2007, pp. 145-148)
I've heard this quote “Let Us Alone and Peace Will Come of Itself” several times in the past and read many essays by Jefferson Davis. It is true that a great many of the southern class elite were willing to emancipate their slaves if it meant preserving their right to self determination as an independent country.This very belief helps undermine the myth that the war was fought primarily over African servitude, they completely ignore this type of stuff in class but Lincolns Gettysburg address is mentioned every time.
ReplyDeleteAgreed and the Gettysburg address was a failure at the time, which shows how constant haranguing of the public changes/brain-washes minds.
DeleteEven to this day, may they all be burning in hell for the travesty they brought on their former countrymen.
ReplyDelete