Sir: You having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to you of the twelfth instant, you may say to him that I have constantly been, am now, and shall continue ready to receive any agent whom he, or any other influential person now resisting the national authority, may informally send to me, with the view of securing peace to the people of our one common country.
With this, Mr. Blair returned to Richmond, giving Mr. Davis such excuses as he could hastily frame why the ,President had rejected his plan for a joint invasion of Mexico. Jefferson Davis therefore had only two alternatives before him-either to repeat his stubborn ultimatum of separation and independence, or frankly to accept Lincoln's ultimatum of reunion. The principal Richmond authorities knew, and some of them admitted, that their Confederacy was nearly in collapse. Lee sent a despatch saying he had not two days rations for his army. Richmond was already in a panic at rumors of evacuation. Flour was selling at a thousand dollars a barrel in Confederate currency. The recent fall of Fort Fisher had closed the last avenue through which blockade-runners could bring in foreign supplies. Governor Brown of Georgia was refusing to obey orders from Richmond, and characterizing them as “despotic.” Under such circumstances a defiant cry of independence would not reassure anybody; nor, on the other hand, was it longer possible to remain silent. Mr. Blair's first visit had created general interest; when
