The Hampton Roads Conference: The Southern View - By Lochlainn Seabrook

Illustrated Paperback - 294 pgs. The most famous and important meeting of the War for the Constitution (the American “Civil War”) took place in Virginia aboard the U.S. steamer River Queen on February 3, 1865. And yet it receives barely a mention in our mainstream history books, except to say that “it was a futile effort that achieved nothing.” Known as the Hampton Roads Conference (named after its location at the famous ship anchorage in southeastern Virginia), in attendance on one side of the table were Confederate States Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Confederate Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, and Confederate Senator Robert M. T. Hunter; and on the other side, United States President Abraham Lincoln and United States Secretary of State William H. Seward. According to conventional history, the meeting opened with a “frank, honest, and kind-hearted Lincoln” offering generous promises to the “erring South,” including $400,000,000 in compensation for her slaves upon emancipation - if only the seceded states would return to the Union, to “our one common country.” The Confederate commissioners, however, viewed the meeting as a negotiation between “our two countries,” demanding that the North recognize the constitutionally established independence of the Southern states. Lincoln refused to budge, in return demanding the C.S.A.’s complete surrender to the “national authority” of the U.S.A. Due to space limitations, we cannot offer any other info here.