Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, Fort Monroe, VA February 3, 1865
There is a scene in the movie “Lincoln” (Steven Spielberg) where Abraham Lincoln sits across the table from three Confederate representatives who have come to “negotiate” a peace. This historic four-hour meeting happened on February 3, 1865 aboard the River Queen, anchored near Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, VA. Lincoln holds all the cards at this juncture of the war. The landscape and economy of the south have been devastated, and its people are running low on food, supplies, and patience. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was withering away. They had been forced into inactivity along the front at Petersburg, which at this point was in the seventh month of a long a brutal siege. The southern armies were facing deprivation, desertion and battlefield casualties. There is not much hope for them. In the movie, Lincoln is depicted as a cunning, glib, and inflexible leader, standing firm in all attempts made by his southern brethren to get him to move on any issue that will help them, especially the issue of slavery.
This is a brilliant and entertaining cinematic moment, and it is partially accurate. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
At this point in the war, Abraham Lincoln was desperate for peace. The American Civil War had raged on for almost four years, causing ruin to the country’s economy, landscape, and psyche. With the death toll soaring well over 600,000 by now, the exhausted nation yearned for an end to the anguish. Lincoln visibly carried that same desire, along with all of the stresses of the past four years, in his very being. He looked the way the country felt: war weary. He wanted the war, and the suffering, to end.
Lincoln was also thinking ahead to reconciliation. His hope was to ease the people of the south into a post-war reconstruction. The biggest shift for the country, and especially for the slave economy of the south, would be the emancipation of 4 million enslaved people. Lincoln used this moment to communicate an idea that he had regarding the transition to emancipation, in the hopes that it would hasten peace. The representatives who had been sent by Confederate President, Jefferson Davis were Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens, assistant secretary of war John Campbell, and Virginia senator Robert Hunter. Lincoln was accompanied by Secretary of State William Seward.
John A. Campbell, Confederate Assistant Secretary of War
Library of Congress
Lincoln and Stephens were reuniting after 16 years, and when the two had been former Whig Congressmen during Lincoln’s one and only term in Washington, DC. The group exchanged pleasantries and introductions and then got down to business.
Lincoln made it clear that there were two points that were necessary in establishing peace:
1) Confederate armies needed to lay down their arms, and
2) Confederate states had to submit to the authority of the federal government.
These demands were not negotiable, but once they were met, much else would be possible. This included the manner in which slavery would end.
Lincoln told the group that the war had made emancipation a foregone conclusion. He said “slavery must be abolished,” adding that the black soldier had only reinforced his strong belief in emancipation. However, he offered a gentler way for the southerners to ease out of the institution of slavery: compensated emancipation. He was willing to discuss the possibility of the federal government paying slave owners for their enslaved people.
This, coupled with the announcement made by Seward that Congress had just submitted the 13th Amendment to the states for ratification, gave the Confederates much to process.
Virginia Senator Robert Hunter
Library of Congress
Lincoln pledged to the Confederates that he would be generous in restoring southern property taken under the Confiscation Act. Specifically, he was willing to “renumerate the southern people for their slaves.” He was revisiting compensated emancipation, something that he had always supported, and something that he unsuccessfully attempted to use to end the war in the summer of 1861. Lincoln was successful, however, at ending slavery in Washington, DC though this very method, paying owners around $300 for each slave. To Lincoln, this was a dollars and cents move. The cost to pay for the freedom of each slave, by buying them from their owners, would be less than the staggering cost of the war, which was $3 million per day, by February, 1865.
Seward openly disagreed with this offer saying that the United States “had already done enough in expending so much money on the war for the abolition of slavery.” Seward paced the floor in anxious disapproval, while Lincoln reasoned that both sides carried some responsibility for slavery. “If it was wrong in the South to hold slaves, it was wrong in the North to carry on the slave trade and sell them to the South.” Lincoln could give no assurances on this offer, but insisted that he was not alone in the support of compensated emancipation. He said that there were others willing to do this “if the war shall now cease without further expense, and with the abolition of slavery as stated.” He went on to add the details of a plan where half of a proposed $400 million package would be distributed to southern states in proportion to their slave population by April 1, if all resistance to national authority had ceased. The other half would be payable by July 1, if the 13th Amendment was ratified by then.
Stephens sidetracked the conversation by presenting an outlandish plan that would temporarily engage both sides, buy some time, and allow everyone an opportunity to cool off. He suggested that the northern and southern armies join forces and attempt to drive the French out of Mexico. Hunter openly disagreed with this idea, saying that the south was in no position to take on another war. Lincoln shut it down completely, sticking firm to his stance that nothing would happen until the Confederacy pledged to “the ultimate restoration of the Union.”
United States Secretary of State William Seward
Library of Congress
But ultimately, the three Confederate representatives could not agree to the first two non-negotiable conditions of peace, so nothing of note was achieved between the five leaders, despite this surprising offer made to them by Lincoln.
But Lincoln pursued the concept in a specially-scheduled Cabinet meeting on the evening of February 5. Here, he defended his plan for compensated emancipation as a “measure of strict and simple economy.” He wanted to send it to Congress for consideration. After some discussion, the Cabinet voted against the idea saying the rebels would mistake the offer as a “sign of Northern weakness and war weariness” which could infuse a new energy into their war efforts. They felt strongly that the “only way to effectually end the war was by force of arms.”
Lincoln was disappointed, saying “you are all against me.” He noted later that he had drawn up papers that were “submitted to the Cabinet and unanimously disapproved by them.”
Lincoln reported to Congress that the Hampton Roads Peace Conference “ended without result.”
What do you think about Lincoln’s efforts at this juncture of the war? How do you interpret his willingness to accept the decision of his Cabinet? What do you think of the fact that the Confederate representatives didn’t jump at the opportunity to receive money for their enslaved people? What did they think they could achieve otherwise at this juncture of the war?
United States President Abraham Lincoln
Library of Congress
Lincoln-isms during the Hampton Roads Peace Conference:
Alexander Stephens was a small man of slight build. He wore many layers of coats, scarves and shawls to the conference that he took off upon arrival. Lincoln later commented about the scene, “never have I seem so small a nubbin come out of so much husk.”
During the talks Lincoln repeatedly said that he would not negotiate with the southerners while they were in arms against the United States. Hunter tried to convince the president that countries often entered negotiations with rebels. Hunter used Charles I as an example of a leader who talked with countries who they (England) were fighting. Lincoln rebuffed that attempted correlation and responded that “all I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I is that he lost his head in the end.”
To read more about the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, check out:
"Lincoln" by David Herbert Donald
"Abraham Lincoln Redeemer President" by Allen C. Guelzo
"Abraham Lincoln" by Benjamin P. Thomas
"Jefferson Davis and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference" By Charles W. Sanders Jr. from the Journal of Southern History, Volume 64, number 4, November 1997
"The Hampton Roads Peace Conference, the Final Test of Lincoln's Presidential Leadership" by William C. Harris, from the "Journal of Abraham Lincoln Association," Volume 21, Issue 1 Winter, 2000
