Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, Fort Monroe, VA, February 3, 1865
There is a scene in the 2012 movie Lincoln (directed by 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. The men came together aboard the River Queen, a steamship anchored near Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, VA. Lincoln held all the cards at this juncture of the war. The landscape and economy of the Confederacy were devastated, and its people ran low on food, supplies, and patience. Ulysses S. Grant's US armies held Lee's men in a siege around Petersburg, Virginia. The two forces had already spent seven brutal months locked in struggle, with no end in sight. Confederate armies faced deprivation, desertion and battlefield casualties. They held out little hope. In the movie, Lincoln appears as a cunning, glib, and inflexible leader. He stands firm against all attempts made by the Confederate representatives 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, bringing ruin to the country’s economy, landscape, and psyche. With the death toll soaring well over 600,000, 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 rebellious states into a post-war Reconstruction. The biggest shift for the country, and especially for the southern states, would be the emancipation of 4 million enslaved people. Lincoln used this moment to communicate an idea that he had about the transition to emancipation, in the hopes that it would hasten peace. The representatives sent by Confederate President Jefferson Davis were Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, Assistant Secretary of War John Campbell, and Virginia Senator Robert Hunter. Secretary of State William Seward accompanied Lincoln to the meeting.
John A. Campbell, Confederate Assistant Secretary of War
Library of Congress
Lincoln and Stephens were reuniting after 16 years. The two men had been friends as Whig congressmen during Lincoln’s one term in the House of Representatives from 1847-49. The group exchanged pleasantries and introductions and then got down to business.
Lincoln made it clear that there were two necessary points for 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 on the table. 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 performances of black soldiers had only reinforced his strong belief in emancipation. However, he offered a gentler way for the Confederates to ease out of the institution of slavery: compensated emancipation. Lincoln was willing to discuss the possibility of the federal government paying slave owners for their enslaved people.
Seward shared the news that Congress had submitted the 13th Amendment to the states for ratification. The ratification of that amendment would formally abolish slavery in the United States. These bits of information gave the Confederate commissioners much to process.
Virginia Senator Robert Hunter
Library of Congress
Lincoln pledged to the Confederates that he would be generous in restoring property taken under the Confiscation Act. Specifically, he was willing to “renumerate the southern people for their slaves.” He was revisiting compensated emancipation, an idea that he had long supported. He had unsuccessfully attempted to use offers of compensated emancipation to end the war in the summer of 1861. Lincoln was successful, however, at ending slavery in Washington, DC though this very method. The Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 paid enslavers around $300 for each enslaved person in the capital. To Lincoln, this was a dollars and cents move. The cost to pay for the freedom of each enslaved person, by buying them from their enslavers, would be less than the staggering cost of the war. The United States spent almost $3 million per day on the war effort by February 1865.
Seward openly disagreed with Lincoln's offer. He said 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, the president said.” Lincoln could give no assurances on this offer. He insisted, though, 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.”
Lincoln went on to add the details of his plan. The states in rebellion would receive half of a proposed $400 million package, distributed in proportion to their enslaved population by April 1 if all resistance to national authority had ceased. The other half would be payable by July 1, if the states ratified the 13th Amendment 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 Federal and Confederate armies join forces and attempt to drive the French out of Mexico. Hunter disagreed with this idea, saying that the Confederacy was in no position to take on another war. Lincoln shut the scheme down completely. The president held firm to his stance that nothing would happen until the rebellious states pledged to “the ultimate restoration of the Union.”
United States Secretary of State William Seward
Library of Congress
Ultimately, the three Confederate representatives could not agree to the first two non-negotiable conditions of peace. The five leaders did not come to peace terms, despite Lincoln's surprising offer.
Lincoln pursued compensated emancipation again in a specially scheduled Cabinet meeting on the evening of February 5. He defended his plan as a “measure of strict and simple economy” and wanted to send it to Congress for consideration. After some discussion, the Cabinet voted against the idea. Lincoln's advisors believed 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 rebellious states while they were in arms against the Federal government. Hunter tried to convince the president that countries often entered negotiations with rebels. Hunter used King Charles I of England as an example of a leader who met with rebels fighting against him. Lincoln rebuffed that attempted correlation. The president 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 the Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 21, Issue 1 Winter, 2000
