time receive persons informally sent to talk with a view to the surrender of the rebel armies.  Grant, however, was deeply impressed with the sincerity of their desire for peace, and he entreated Lincoln to receive them.  Lincoln therefore decided to overlook the false pretence under which they came.  He gave Grant strict orders not to delay his operations on this account, but he came himself with Seward and met Davis’ three commissioners on a ship at Hampton Roads on February 3.  He and Stephens had in old days been Whig Congressmen together, and Lincoln had once been moved to tears by a speech of Stephens.  They met now as friends.  Lincoln lost no time in making his position clear.  The unhappy commissioners made every effort to lead him away from the plain ground he had chosen.  It is evident that they and possible that Jefferson Davis had hoped that when face to face with them he would change his mind, and possibly Blair’s talk had served to encourage this hope.  They failed, but the conversation continued in a frank and friendly manner.  Lincoln told them very freely his personal opinions as to how the North ought to treat the South when it did surrender, but was careful to point out that he could make no promise or bargain, except indeed this promise that so far as penalties for rebellion were concerned the executive power, which lay in his sole hands, would be liberally used.  Slavery was discussed, and Seward told them of the Constitutional Amendment which Congress had now submitted to the people.  One of the commissioners returning again to Lincoln’s refusal to negotiate with armed rebels, as he considered them, cited the precedent of Charles I.’s conduct in this respect.  “I do not profess,” said Lincoln, “to be posted in history.  On all such matters I turn you over to Seward.  All I distinctly recollect about Charles I. is that he lost his head in the end.”  Then he broke out into simple advice to Stephens as to the action he could now pursue.  He had to report to Congress afterwards that the conference had had no result.  He brought home, however, a personal compliment which he valued.  “I understand, then,” Stephens had said, “that you regard us as rebels, who are liable to be hanged for treason.”  “That is so,” said Lincoln.  “Well,” said Stephens, “we supposed that would have to be your view.  But, to tell you the truth, we have none of us been much afraid of being hanged with you as President.”  He brought home, besides the compliment, an idea of a kind which, if he could have had his way with his friends, might have been rich in good.  He had discovered how hopeless the people of the South were, and he considered whether a friendly pronouncement might not lead them more readily to surrender.  He deplored the suffering in which the South might now lie plunged, and it was a fixed part of his creed that slavery was the sin not of the South but of the nation.  So he spent the day after his return in drafting a joint resolution which he hoped the