“The national resources, then, are unexhausted, and, as we believe, inexhaustible.  The public purpose to reestablish and maintain the national authority is unchanged and, as we believe, unchangeable.  The manner of continuing the effort remains to choose.  On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible, it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good.  He would accept nothing short of severance of the Union—­precisely what we will not and cannot give.  His declarations to this effect are explicit and oft-repeated....  What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause is not necessarily true of those who follow.  Although he cannot reaccept the Union, they can.  Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion.  The number of such may increase.  They can, at any moment, have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the national authority under the Constitution.  After so much, the government could not, if it would, maintain war against them.  The loyal people would not sustain or allow it.  If questions should remain, we would adjust them by the peaceful means of legislation, conference, courts, and votes, operating only in constitutional and lawful channels....  In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the national authority, on the part of the insurgents, as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the government, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery.  I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that ’While I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress.’  If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.  In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.”  The country was about to enter upon the fifth year of actual war; but all indications were pointing to a speedy collapse of the rebellion.  This foreshadowed disaster to the Confederate armies gave rise to another volunteer peace negotiation, which, from the boldness of its animating thought and the prominence of its actors, assumes a special importance.  The veteran politician Francis P. Blair, Sr., who, from his long political and personal experience in Washington, knew, perhaps better than almost any one else, the individual characters and tempers of Southern leaders, conceived that the time had come when he might take up the role of successful mediator between the North and the South.  He gave various hints of his desire to President Lincoln, but received neither encouragement nor opportunity to unfold his plans.  “Come to me after Savannah falls,” was