[248] and resources, I am of opinion that if our people could be induced to continue the contest with the spirit which animated them during the first years of the war, our independence might yet be within our reach. But I see no reason to hope for that now.On the second question, as to the proper mode of executing the agreement, I have to say that whatever you may do looking to the termination of the contest by an amicable arrangement which may embrace the extinction of the Government of the Confederate States, must be done without special authority to be found in the Constitution. And yet, I am of opinion that, charged as you are with the duty of looking to the general welfare of the people, and without time or opportunity, under the peculiarity and necessities of the case, to submit the whole question to the States for their deliberation and action without danger of losing material advantages provided for in the agreement; and, as I believe that you, representing the military power and authority of all the States, can obtain better terms for them than it is probable they could obtain each for itself; and, as it is in your power, if the Federal authorities accept this agreement, to terminate the ravages of war sooner than it can be done by the several States, while the enemy is still unconscious of the full extent of our weakness, you should, in case of the acceptance of the terms of this agreement by the authorities of the United States, accept them on the part of the Confederate States, and take steps for the disbanding of the Confederate armies on the terms agreed on. As you have no power to change the government of the country, or to transfer the allegiance of the people, I would advise that you submit to the several States, through their governors, the question as to whether they will, in the exercise of their own sovereignty, accept, each for itself, the terms proposed.
To this it may be said, that after the disbanding of our armies and the abandonment of the contest by the Confederate Government, they would have no alternative but to accept the terms proposed or an unequal and hopeless war, and that it would be needless for them to go through the forms and incur the trouble and expense of assembling a convention for the purpose To such an objection, if urged, it may be answered that we entered into the contest to maintain and vindicate the doctrine of State rights and State sovereignty, and the right of self government, and that we can only be faithful to the Constitution of the United States, and true to the principles in support of which we have expended so much blood and treasure, by the employment of the same agencies to return into the old Union which we employed in separating from it and in forming our present Government; and that if this should be an unwelcome and enforced action by the States, it would not be more so on the part of the States than on the part of the President, if he were to undertake to execute the whole agreement, and while they would have authority for acting lie would have none.
This plan would at least conform to the theory of the Constitution of the United States, and would, in future, be an additional precedent, to which the friends of State rights could point in opposing the doctrine of the
