The Southern President had “felt” his constituency on the subject of enrolling slaves as soldiers with a promise of emancipation as the reward of military service.

The fifth message urged Congress to submit to the States an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery.  Such action had been considered in the previous session, but nothing had been done.  At Lincoln’s suggestion, it had been recommended in the platform of the Union party.  Now, with the President’s powerful influence behind it, with his prestige at full circle, the amendment was rapidly pushed forward.  Before January ended, it had been approved by both Houses.  Lincoln had used all his personal influence to strengthen its chances in Congress where, until the last minute, the vote was still in doubt.(4)

While the amendment was taking its way through Congress, a shrewd old politician who thought he knew the world better than most men, that Montgomery Blair, Senior, who was father of the Postmaster General, had been trying on his own responsibility to open negotiations between Washington and Richmond.  His visionary ideas, which were wholly without the results he intended, have no place here.  And yet this fanciful episode had a significance of its own.  Had it not occurred, the Confederate government probably would not have appointed commissioners charged with the hopeless task of approaching the Federal government for the purpose of negotiating peace between “the two countries.”

Now that Lincoln was entirely in the ascendent at home, and since the Confederate arms had recently suffered terrible reverses, he was no longer afraid that negotiation might appear to be the symptom of weakness.  He went so far as to consent to meet the Commissioners himself.  On a steamer in Hampton Roads, Lincoln and Seward had a long conference with three members of the Confederate government, particularly the Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens.

It has become a tradition that Lincoln wrote at the top of a sheet of paper the one word “Union”; that he pushed it across the table and said, “Stephens, write under that anything you want” There appears to be no foundation for the tale in this form.  The amendment had committed the North too definitely to emancipation.  Lincoln could not have proposed Union without requiring emancipation, also.  And yet, with this limitation, the spirit of the tradition is historic.  There can be no doubt that he presented to the commissioners about the terms which the year before he had drawn up as a memorandum for Gilmore and Jaquess:  Union, the acceptance of emancipation, but also instantaneous restoration of political autonomy to the Southern States, and all the influence of the Administration in behalf of liberal compensation for the loss of slave property.  But the commissioners had no authority to consider terms that did not recognize the existence of “two countries.”  However, this Hampton Roads Conference gave Lincoln