On December 27, Mr. Benjamin wrote his last important instruction to John Slidell, the Confederate commissioner in Europe.  It is nothing less than a cry of despair.  Complaining bitterly of the attitude of foreign nations while the South is fighting the battles of England and France against the North, he asks:  “Are they determined never to recognize the Southern Confederacy until the United States assent to such action on their part?” And with a frantic offer to submit to any terms which Europe might impose as the price of recognition, and a scarcely veiled threat of making peace with the North unless Europe should act speedily, the Confederate Department of State closed its four years of fruitless activity.

Lee assumed command of all the Confederate armies on February 9.  His situation was one of unprecedented gloom.  The day before he had reported that his troops, who had been in line of battle for two days at Hatcher’s Run, exposed to the bad winter weather, had been without meat for three days.  A prodigious effort was made, and the danger of starvation for the moment averted, but no permanent improvement resulted.  The armies of the Union were closing in from every point of the compass.  Grant was every day pushing his formidable left wing nearer the only roads by which Lee could escape; Thomas was threatening the Confederate communications from Tennessee; Sheridan was riding for the last time up the Shenandoah valley to abolish Early; while from the south the redoubtable columns of Sherman were moving northward with the steady pace and irresistible progress of a tragic fate.

A singular and significant attempt at negotiation was made at this time by General Lee.  He was so strong in the confidence of the people of the South, and the government at Richmond was so rapidly becoming discredited, that he could doubtless have obtained the popular support and compelled the assent of the Executive to any measures he thought proper for the attainment of peace.  From this it was easy for him and for others to come to the wholly erroneous conclusion that General Grant held a similar relation to the government and people of the United States.  General Lee seized upon the pretext of a conversation reported to him by General Longstreet as having been held with General E.O.C.  Ord under an ordinary flag of truce for the exchange of prisoners, to address a letter to Grant, sanctioned by Mr. Davis, saying he had been informed that General Ord had said General Grant would not decline an interview with a view “to a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties by means of a military convention,” provided Lee had authority to act.  He therefore proposed to meet General Grant “with the hope that ... it may be found practicable to submit the subjects of controversy ... to a convention of the kind mentioned”; professing himself “authorized to do whatever the result of the proposed interview may render necessary.”