Movie was the subject of peace negotiations between the north and the south at the very end of the civil war, which is the subject of the book. Its a shorthand way for me to introduce it to people because most people who have the fainted faintest interest in the subject will have seen the movie. The cover of the book is on the projector, which redepicts a meeting between lincoln and grant and sherman and admiral porter, who was the senior Union Admiral at the time. On the steamship river queen which was the air force one of its time, as i like to think of it. And it was the chamber, or the compartment on the river queen that you see on the cover of the book that the peace conference took place, about a month or month and a half prior to this meeting between lincoln and his military leaders. The artist who painted the picture in 1868 entitled it the peacemakers which i have always thought was titled with some conscious irony that took light of the fact that the peace conference that had taken place in that same department had failed and the war was ended violently by the generals and the admiral and not by the peacemakers. Theres much more in the book, of course, than i can cover at this presentation, but i think that the summary of it all is that this is the story of five old friends, lincoln, his secretary of state william surd seward and those who had been friends for many years. Seward had been a close friend of all three of the southern peace commissioners. Lincoln, as well see, a close friend of the head of the delegation. Theyd all worked together before the war to try to avert it. And had now come together at the end to try to stop it. Thats what drew me to the subject to begin with and what ive tried to do in the book is to portray a very characterdriven intimate view of what it was like to be there and to work on this crucial effort to stop this war and to reconcile the two sections and the people of the two sections before it ended violently. I will tell you with regard to the images im going to be showing you that some of them are black and white photographs and engravings of the time, but many are the product of a new technology that i think youll find pretty startling. Whereby black and white photographs of that period have been converted to color. Using photoshop technology. I think some of them youll find to be quite startling in their accuracy and immediacy. We begin, i think, with lincoln at the time of his election in 1860. A 51yearold vigorous optimistic, healthy man, and then look at lincoln at the time of the Hampton Roads peace conference four years later. After he had experienced what he did in that period of time. A portrait painter who was living in the white house and painting his picture at that exact point in time described it as the saddest face i ever knew. There were days when i could scarcely look into it without crying. In my generation, 58,000 Young Americans lost their lives in a 12year span in the vietnam war. In the civil war, as many of you know, current estimates tell us that about 700,000 young men their lives, out of a population lost their lives, out of a population less than 10 of our population today in a period of only four years. Its really almost an unimaginable tragedy. With the election of lincoln in 1860, what he wanted to achieve most at that time was the saves of the union. By 1865, after 4 years of this carnage, what lincoln wanted most was to end that war as quickly and as painlessly as possible and to begin the process of healing the country and reconciling its people. Friends have asked me, you know, why this Hampton Roads peace conference was important. What difference would it really have made if the war had ended in february at the time of that conference instead of in april when it finally did end . This young man lost his life in march of 1865. Would have made a difference to him. Would have made a difference to his family. And it certainly would have made a difference to the roughly 10,000 people who lost their lives between february and april of 1865. Which, again, is almost a staggering statistic. Given that twomonth period of time to have lost 10,000 Young Americans when those lives could have been saved and, of course many more were maimed. And then there were the civilians. General William Tecumseh sherman took atlanta in september of 1864, about 5 months before the peace conference and began his infamous march to the sea. I am going into the very bows of the confederacy, sherman bowels of the confederacy, sherman said, and propose to leave a trail that will be recognized 50 years hence. Mary mary chestnut was the wife of a former United States senator from south carolina. Some of you may remember her from the ken burns series on the civil war. She made an entry in her diary when she learned that atlanta had fallen. No hope, she said, we will try to have no fear. These are the ruins of columbia, south carolina, after shermans troops moved up from georgia and destroyed it two weeks after the Hampton Roads peace conference. Columbia is but dust and ash, she said. Men, women and children are left there homeless without a particle of food. Socialites were surviving on scraps of scattered corn left bond the ground by shermans horses. This is a union mortar, one of many that were brought down by rail that were battering petersburg, virginia, at the time of the Hampton Roads conference. As you know, not far south of richmond. These are the ruins of petersburg, achieved, if you will, by the effect of those mortars and that shelling on men, women and children who live there. Women after four horrific years of that sort of thing, the war had almost broken lincoln as well as the south. Apart from saving lives and property, lincoln wanted to end it by agreement rather conquest. To spare the south humiliation of defeat and reconcile the people as quickly and effectively as possible. In december of 1864, he had little or no hope that the confederate government would negotiate its own demise and made an annual address to congress that basically reached out to the southern people. And implored them to end the war simply by refusing to keep fighting it. On only three conditions. First, that there would be no truth short of a final end to the war. Second, that the union would be restored. And third, that there would be no backwards steps on slavery on the part of the executive. Unspoken by leaving open the prospect of some kind of negotiation on details, ways and means, through the legislatures, the congress, and the courts. Every other american war had ended and had negotiated peace. The revolution, the war of 1812, and the mexican war. It was the custom of the time, it was the norm. Weve become more accustomed, i think, in our day to the thought of Unconditional Surrender in major wars between nation states, but that was not the norm at the time, and everyone anticipated that a war would end by negotiation. By the end of 1864, the outcome of the civil war was quite clear to anyone who could see and count and appreciate the reality of the situation, but there were very formidable obstacles blocking a negotiated peace. The first of which i think its fair to say is the insurgent leader as lincoln called him. Declining to refer him as president and therefore to acknowledge legitimacy of the confederacy. This is Jefferson Davis in his prime. A westpoint graduate. Had spent seven years in the United States army. Was a hero of the mexican war. Had been wounded seriously at the head of an elite unit called the mississippi rifles. And was a national war hero. Not simply a southern hero or political figure. He was a masterful Senate Speaker in the United States senate. Very charismatic. Very talented politician. And well regarded on both sides of the mason dixon line. William seward was a fiercely antislavery senator from new york, as many of you know. Was Jefferson Davis close friend as well as one of his most formidable adversaries. Seward referred to davis at the time as a splendid embodiment of manhood. Their colleague, sam houston took a different view. Ambitious as lucifer and cold as a lizard. But as the souths charismatic champion in the senate, if you will, davis developed a reputation as time went on of being a, generally an opponent of the kind of compromise that others were trying to achieve in the middle 1850s. He once gave a speech regarding the compromise of 1850 opposing it, saying that he was doing so, proud in the consciousness of my own rectitude, regarding degraded letter writers with the indifference which belongs to the assurance that i am right and the security with which the approval of my constituents invest me. I think we hear echoes of that kind of thing in the year 2014 as well. [laughter] this is a middleaged Jefferson Davis as the threat of disunion disunion intensified in the 1850s. And in that period, davis vacillated between compromise and aggression and seemed to be wrestling with himself as much as with his critics. At one point expressing in a single speech a superstitious reverence for the union and a willingness to leave the south out of it. This portrait of davis was painted in 1863. The high water mark, if you will, of the sovereign war for independence. Two years later, in 1865, a friend found him, so emaciated and altered as not to be recognized. Ive not seen a picture of davis in 1865, but we can imagine the stress and the burden that was Jefferson Daviss at that time. He had a clouded left eye that could see only darkness and light. His right arm and hand often shook from a painful nerve disease. He had lost 20 or 30 pounds and was in a very strange condition both physically and emotionally as was lincoln. And there were certainly no frivolity in him. This was his life, no doubt, in a somewhat younger time, who says in his memoirs that mr. Davis cast a critical eye at the wardrobes of rich mens ladies and described one that mispleased him as very high colored and full of tags, and you could see her afar off. Devoted though she was to her husband, even barina recalled him in those memoirs as, a nervous dyspeptic. Ill served by a repellent manner. So thin skinned that even a childs disapproval discomposed him. In 1865, there was much to be discomposed about. The confederacy was cut in two by the loss of the mississippi. Much of it was occupied. Almost all of its ports were occupied or closed. It was being strangled by a union blockade. Its armies had outfought the north more often than not but they had been bled by that effort. As the book says, one tubercular draftee was constricted for ten days service here in richmond and died on the 11th. The draft pool was depleted. Georgia and North Carolina had pretty much withdrawn themselves from it. There were growing demands for negotiations from many in the south. And the georgia North Carolina legislatures were debating the prospect of a separate piece. None of it moved jeff davis who was heard to say, well, walking past a group of young boys playing in a Richmond Park that the people of the south would eat rats and their 12yearold and 14yearold sons would have their trial before this war was over. In 1864, he had sent word to lincoln that he would be happy to negotiate peace on the basis of independence, but it would be, useless to approach me with any other. This, as you all this, as you all know, as richmond folk, is the capitol here in richmond designed by thomas jefferson. And it was here that the confederate house and senate met. And as adamantly as davis, the Confederate Congress was unanimous in rejecting the prospect of a union right up until the end of the war. Even the unionists among them would not admit that unionists they were. It was unspeakable in richmond to take that position. But just about every other position that Jefferson Davis took was greeted with howls of protest by the Confederate Congress and the confederate senate, with a very small and diminishing group of davis loyalists as the war went on. Thats not well understood in the north or even otherwise today, but he was besieged by critics and enemies, political and otherwise, right here in richmond with an increasingly dysfunctional government. Again, a phenomenon that were not entirely unfamiliar with. There was a time when the house proposed to make a Courtesy Call on the president and was so shouted down that they had to take a roll call vote on whether they would do that or not. Three of richmonds four newspapers were hostile to davis. The fourth was pretty much davis own organ, as it was described. But the press was just vitriolic in its condemnation of Jefferson Davis right here in richmond. This is senator louis wigfall, a confederate senator from texas who had been a davis ally. Wigfall called his president an amalgam of malice and mediocrity. Those were the words being said about Jefferson Davis. In washington, meanwhile lincoln, too, was under fire both from the left and from the right. This cartoon appeared in a democratic newspaper in the 1864 election and it features columbia, the embodiment of america, demanding that lincoln return her children. The draftees that he had conscripted, the rolled up scroll on the bottom speaks of 500,000 of columbias children being drawn into the war, and democrats at the time were primarily southern sympathizing. The party was rooted in the south. After the two sections split the democrats by in large continued to be sympathetic to the south and favored negotiation. The more extreme of them we referred to by the opposition as copperheads who were pretty much in favor of peace at any price. War democrats who were supportive of the war but only to the extend of achieving reunion and with little, if any, interest in abolition as a war goal. Even some moderate republicans like Horace Greeley here were pushing lincoln hard for peace. Horace greeley i like to think of as the Walter Cronkite of his time. Was the editor of the new york tribune. The most influential, the most powerful journalist in america certainly in the north. And had been very much an advocate and supporter of the war. When grant began to suffer horrific casualties in the spring of 1864, losing 95,000 men in 2 months in may and june of 1864, Horace Greeley turned against the war as Walter Cronkite did in the late 1960s with the vietnam war and began to push the people against the war and toward the negotiation camp. On the other side of the spectrum, this is a republican cartoon from the 1864 election drawn by thomas nast who later became the scourge in new york. And the theme of the cartoon is that compromise with the south would be a disgrace, a rebuke, if you will, to the northern soldiers who died in the war and anathema to the republican side of the political spectrum at that time. Essentially the theme being that compromise of the south would dishonor the dead and nullify all the sacrifices that had been made in the war. This is Thaddeus Stevens who was the, perhaps the most wellknown of the radical republicans at the time. He was the chairman of the house ways and Means Committee at the time from pennsylvania. Very brilliant man but a whit. Even if he attacked Andrew Johnson on more than one occasion on the floor of the house. One of johnsons supporters rose in his defense and said he would remind the gentlemen that mr. Johnson was a selfmade man, to which stevens replied, glad to hear it. Relieves god almighty of a heavy responsibility. [laughter] he was hard on lincoln as well and completely opposed to negotiations with anybody. This is a contemporary northern cartoon of Jefferson Davis on the platform that the cartoonists believed he should be standing. The radical republicans, many of them, were bent on hanging not only davis, but as one of them called it, a bakers dozen of the other confederate leaders when the war was over, and a more vehement radical republican said there should be three times that many hanged. The radicals said that the south, the Southern States, had committed suicide, as they put it. When they seceded from the union, and that once the war was over, that the south should be governed as england governs india. Basically as a vanquished tribe without any Political Rights at all. Gideon wells was the secretary of the navy under lincoln who called him uncle gideon. Very fond of him. He was an old democrat. A contemporary called him a man of no decorations. He told you what he thought without the varnish. He wrote a great diary which historians have found invaluable, as i did. And in the fall of 1864, uncle gideon says in his diary that lincoln is bent on finding a way to end this war peacefully. But the question is, how . Davis wont negotiate for reunion. Lincoln wont davis at all. Because to do so would, in his view, legitimatize him and recognize the legitimacy of the confederate government. And acknowledge some sort of Lawful Authority there which lincoln was not willing to do. There is the dilemma. As uncle gideon said in his diary, the president says he cannot treat with the jeff davis government, but who will he treat with, and how commence the work . The work commenced in december of 1864 with this man, Francis Preston blair. Blair was an old jacksonian. A member after Andrew Jacksons kitchen cabinet, as they called it. A circle of close advisers with no formal office but with great influence on the president. He had been born here in virginia, raised and made his fortune in kentucky and came to washington in the 1830s to work with jackson and had stayed. He had those deep southern roots. Deep southern sympathies. Bu