retain them at City Point, until the President, or some one whom he would designate, should come to meet them.  They remained several days as guests on board the boat.  I saw them quite frequently, though I have no recollection of having had any conversation whatever with them on the subject of their mission.  It was something I had nothing to do with, and I therefore did not wish to express any views on the subject.  For my own part I never had admitted, and never was ready to admit, that they were the representatives of a government.  There had been too great a waste of blood and treasure to concede anything of the kind.  As long as they remained there, however, our relations were pleasant and I found them all very agreeable gentlemen.  I directed the captain to furnish them with the best the boat afforded, and to administer to their comfort in every way possible.  No guard was placed over them and no restriction was put upon their movements; nor was there any pledge asked that they would not abuse the privileges extended to them.  They were permitted to leave the boat when they felt like it, and did so, coming up on the bank and visiting me at my headquarters.

I had never met either of these gentlemen before the war, but knew them well by reputation and through their public services, and I had been a particular admirer of Mr. Stephens.  I had always supposed that he was a very small man, but when I saw him in the dusk of the evening I was very much surprised to find so large a man as he seemed to be.  When he got down on to the boat I found that he was wearing a coarse gray woollen overcoat, a manufacture that had been introduced into the South during the rebellion.  The cloth was thicker than anything of the kind I had ever seen, even in Canada.  The overcoat extended nearly to his feet, and was so large that it gave him the appearance of being an average-sized man.  He took this off when he reached the cabin of the boat, and I was struck with the apparent change in size, in the coat and out of it.

After a few days, about the 2d of February, I received a dispatch from Washington, directing me to send the commissioners to Hampton Roads to meet the President and a member of the cabinet.  Mr. Lincoln met them there and had an interview of short duration.  It was not a great while after they met that the President visited me at City Point.  He spoke of his having met the commissioners, and said he had told them that there would be no use in entering into any negotiations unless they would recognize, first:  that the Union as a whole must be forever preserved, and second:  that slavery must be abolished.  If they were willing to concede these two points, then he was ready to enter into negotiations and was almost willing to hand them a blank sheet of paper with his signature attached for them to fill in the terms upon which they were willing to live with us in the Union and be one people.  He always showed a generous and kindly spirit toward the Southern people, and I never heard him abuse an enemy.  Some of the cruel things said about President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition and I saw a great deal of him at City Point, for he seemed glad to get away from the cares and anxieties of the capital.