The next morning (February 3) the President and Mr. Seward received the Southern Commissioners—­Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell—­on board the U.S. steam transport “River Queen” in Hampton Roads.  The conference, says Mr. Seward, “was altogether informal.  There was no attendance of secretaries, clerks, or other witnesses.  Nothing was written or read.  The conversation, although earnest and free, was calm and courteous and kind on both sides.  The Richmond party approached the subject rather indirectly, and at no time did they either make categorical demands or tender formal stipulations or absolute refusals.  Nevertheless, during the conference, which lasted four hours, the several points at issue between the Government and the insurgents were distinctly raised and discussed, fully, intelligently, and in an amicable spirit.”

The meeting was fruitless.  The commissioners asked, as a preliminary step, the recognition of Jefferson Davis as President of the Southern Confederacy.  Lincoln declined, stating that “the only ground on which he could rest the justice of the war—­either with his own people or with foreign powers—­was that it was not a war of conquest, for the States had never been separated from the Union.  Consequently he could not recognize another government inside of the one of which he alone was President, nor admit the separate independence of States that were yet a part of the Union.  ‘That,’ said he, ’would be doing what you have so long asked Europe to do in vain, and be resigning the only thing the armies of the Union have been fighting for.’  Mr. Hunter, one of the commissioners, made a long reply to this, insisting that the recognition of Davis’s power to make a treaty was the first and indispensable step to peace, and referred to the correspondence between King Charles I. and his Parliament as a trustworthy precedent of a constitutional ruler treating with rebels.  Lincoln’s face then wore that indescribable expression which generally preceded his hardest hits, as he remarked:  ’Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don’t pretend to be.  My only distinct recollection of the matter is that Charles lost his head.’”

Alexander H. Stephens, one of the commissioners at the meeting on board the “River Queen,” and the Vice-President of the waning Confederacy, was a very small man physically, with a complexion so yellow as to suggest an ear of ripe corn.  Lincoln gave the following humorous account of the meeting with him:  “Mr. Stephens had on an overcoat about three sizes too big for him, with an old-fashioned high collar.  The cabin soon began to get pretty warm, and after a while he stood up and pulled off his big coat.  He slipped it off just about as you would husk an ear of corn.  I couldn’t help thinking, as I looked first at the overcoat and then at the man, ’Well, that’s the biggest shuck and the smallest nubbin I ever laid eyes on.’”