reported him as
emphatically asserting that no conditions of Peace "save the
Independence of the Confederacy could ever receive his sanction. He
doubted not that victory would yet crown our labors, * * * and sooner
than we should ever be united again he would be willing to yield up
everything he had on Earth, and if it were possible would sacrifice a
thousand lives before he would succumb." Thereupon the meeting of
Rebels passed resolutions "spurning" Mr. Lincoln's terms "with the
indignation due to so gross an insult;" declared that the circumstances
connected with his offer could only "add to the outrage and stamp it as
a designed and premeditated indignity" offered to them; and invoking
"the aid of Almighty God" to carry out their "resolve to maintain" their
"Liberties and Independence"--to which, said they, "we mutually pledge
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." So too, at the second
of these meetings, presided over by R. M. T. Hunter, and addressed by
the Rebel Secretary Judah P. Benjamin, resolutions were adopted amid
"wild and long continued cheering," one of which stated that they would
"never lay down" their "arms until" their "Independence" had "been won,"
while another declared a full confidence in the sufficiency of their
resources to "conduct the War successfully and to that issue," and
invoked "the People, in the name of the holiest of all causes, to spare
neither their blood nor their treasure in its maintenance and support."

As during these Peace negotiations, General Grant, by express direction
of President Lincoln, had not changed, hindered, nor delayed, any of his
"Military movements or plans," so, now that the negotiations had failed,
those Military movements were pressed more strenuously than ever.

[The main object of this Conference on the part of the Rebels was
to secure an immediate truce, or breathing spell, during which they
could get themselves in better condition for continuing the War.
Indeed a portion of Mr. Seward's letter of Feb. 7, 1865, to Mr.
Adams, our Minister at the Court of St. James, giving him an
account of the Conference with the party of Insurgent
Commissioners, would not alone indicate this, but also that it was
proposed by that "Insurgent party," that both sides, during the
time they would thus cease to fight one another, might profitably
combine their forces to drive the French invaders out of Mexico and