Grant at once telegraphed these overtures to Washington.  Stanton received the despatch at the Capitol, where the President was, according to his custom, passing the last night of the session of Congress, for the convenience of signing bills.  The Secretary handed the telegram to Mr. Lincoln, who read it in silence.  He asked no advice or suggestion from any one about him, but, taking up a pen, wrote with his usual slowness and precision a despatch in Stanton’s name, which he showed to Seward, and then handed to Stanton to be signed and sent.  The language is that of an experienced ruler, perfectly sure of himself and of his duty: 

“The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for capitulation of General Lee’s army, or on some minor or purely military matter.  He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political questions.  Such questions the President holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions.  Meanwhile, you are to press to the utmost your military advantages.”

Grant answered Lee that he had no authority to accede to his proposition, and explained that General Ord’s language must have been misunderstood.  This closed to the Confederate authorities the last avenue of hope of any compromise by which the alternative of utter defeat or unconditional surrender might be avoided.

Early in March, General Lee visited Richmond for conference with Mr. Davis on the measures to be adopted in the crisis which he saw was imminent.  He had never sympathized with the slight Congress had intended to put upon Mr. Davis when it gave him supreme military authority, and continued to the end to treat his President as commander-in-chief of the forces.  There is direct contradiction between Mr. Davis and General Lee as to how Davis received this statement of the necessities of the situation.  Mr. Davis says he suggested immediate withdrawal from Richmond, but that Lee said his horses were too weak for the roads in their present condition, and that he must wait.  General Lee, on the other hand, is quoted as saying that he wished to retire behind the Staunton River, from which point he might have indefinitely protracted the war, but that the President overruled him.  Both agreed, however, that sooner or later Richmond must be abandoned, and that the next move should be to Danville.

But before he turned his back forever upon the lines he had so stoutly defended, Lee resolved to dash once more at the toils by which he was surrounded.  He placed half his army under the command of General John B. Gordon, with orders to break through the Union lines at Fort Stedman and take possession of the high ground behind them.  A month earlier Grant had foreseen some such move on Lee’s part, and had ordered General Parke to be prepared to meet an assault on his center, and to have his commanders ready to