Questions About John Brown

[Eva Elisabeth]

(02-15-2016 08:41 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(02-15-2016 08:10 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Please keep in mind that it was a reply to Stephens "If slavery were abolished, what are we to do? I know that negroes will not work, unless forced to it, and I tell you that we shall all starve together."

(It seems Stephens either didn't know of those "honest, hard-working Southern people who never owned a slave and tilled the soil", or he didn't have much faith in them. It was just a question that left IMO no other reply. Should Lincoln have expressed pity instead?)

By the time this conversation took place, I think the Lincoln that I recognize as a master politician would have had some conciliatory reply dealing with plans that he hoped he and Congress could put in place to alleviate some of the dire circumstances that were facing the freedmen as well as the whites who had had their lands destroyed or confiscated.

To my understanding the Hampton Roads conference was a farce from the beginning, not on either side a serious attempt to negotiate, and even Stephens had considered his mission a "humbug" from the outset. Regarding this there was not much need for master politician skills at this meeting.

When Confederate emissionary Hunter, speaking “at length, in rather congressional style,” urged “that the recognition of Mr. Davis’s power to make a treaty, was the first and indispensable step to peace” and referred “to the correspondence of King Charles the First, and his Parliament, as a reliable precedent, of a constitutional ruler, treating with rebels,” Lincoln remarked: “Upon questions of history, I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don’t profess to be bright. My only distinct recollection of that matter is, that Charles lost his head.” That observation “settled Mr. Hunter for a while."