Our one common country Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads peace conference of 1865

In early February 1865, in the midst of the Civil War, a group of Southern and Northern politicians-including President Lincoln-met at Hampton Roads, Va., to negotiate peace between the two warring factions, however skeptically. Plans centered on a proposal to overcome their differences by invading Mexico together, and throughout the peacemaking attempts, the politicians sought secrecy (often in vain) because of strong disapproval from the media and certain peers. Needless to say, the peace conference was a failure. Conroy's impressively thorough and engaging document details the events leading up to, during, and immediately after the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, which has never before been the sole subject of a book. The book illuminates the conflicting, passionate views on the Civil War-and on the appropriate way to end the war-while giving fascinating insight into the war's major players: Lincoln and his secretary of state, William H. Seward; Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his vice president, Alexander Stephens; the Blair family of Washington power brokers; and generals Grant, Meade, Lee, and Longstreet. Conroy draws on private journals, official notes, newspaper reports, and more as he untangles this important, but often overlooked, moment in history. (Jan) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A brilliant account of the doomed effort to end the Civil War through diplomacy. In February 1865 three "commissioners," all prominent members of the Confederate government, met with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward on a riverboat near Hampton Roads, Va., to explore the possibility of a negotiated end to the Civil War, an event briefly portrayed in the recent film Lincoln. The project appeared hopeless from the start; schemes were launched to derail the conference before it could begin, deftly defeated by further chicanery on the parts of the commissioners and Ulysses Grant. Legal and political difficulties beset the conference as well, given the commissioners' lack of authority to conclude an agreement, Jefferson Davis' claim that he had no authority to dissolve the Confederacy, and Lincoln's refusal to recognize the existence of a separate government in Richmond. In this excellent debut, Boston-based attorney Conroy vividly captures the hope, weariness, despair and anger of the moment and the complexity of feelings on both sides. Everyone yearned for peace, but in the end, Southern hard-liners clung to an increasingly incredible denial of their impending defeat, and Northern radicals bent on vengeance made agreement impossible even at this late stage of the war. The author lays out this tragic and fascinating story in a style that is witty, acerbic and ironic. His characters stand out as strikingly distinctive individuals, including the bitter, delusional dead-ender Davis, a man "with a politeness so studied as to be almost sarcastic"; Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, with his "nerve-chilling stare and his perfumed beard"; and Stanton's agent, the officious Maj. Thomas Eckert, who "descended from Washington City like the coming of the Lord." Towering over all is Lincoln, desperate to end the killing but, despite the fears of the radical Republicans, adamant about reunion and the end of slavery as the price of peace. A splendid addition to any Civil War library.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Shortly after breakfast on a springlike day in the winter of 1865, Abraham Lincoln slipped out of the White House unnoticed with an Irish valet and a carpetbag and into a waiting carriage. A locomotive hitched to a railway car had been summoned to take him to Annapolis, where the fastest steamboat on Chesapeake Bay was ready to run him south. In a moment unique in history, the Commander in Chief had agreed to sit down and reason with the enemy in the midst of a shooting war. Having gone on ahead of him to Fort Monroe, the massive Union stronghold at Hampton Roads, Virginia, his Secretary of State, William Seward, a keen politician and a world-class charmer, was preparing to receive him and his guests on the paddle-wheeler River Queen , the Air Force One of its day. Their old friend Alec Stephens, the eccentric Vice President of the Confederate States of America, was on his way to meet them with two other Rebel peace envoys in Ulysses S. Grant's dispatch boat. On the edge of his authority, Grant had passed them through his siege line to the cheers of the combatants on both sides, wined and dined them at his headquarters with Julia Dent Grant, evaded Lincoln's orders to turn them away unheard, and convinced the embattled President to give peace a chance. With much of the South in Northern hands, its crippled armies cornered, and the means to resist nearly gone, the Rebellion was all but broken. The issue was how it would end. Over 600,000 young Americans were dead. A Federal push to victory would cost thousands of more lives, humiliate the South, and complicate the healing of a reconstructed Union. Reasonable men on both sides were coming to Hampton Roads in search of a way out. On the other side of Grant's siege line, Robert E. Lee was praying for their success and Jefferson Davis was plotting their failure. Under pressure from his left to accept Lincoln's invitation to send "any agent" to negotiate a reunion of "our one common country," the defiant Confederate President had chosen as his spokesmen three leaders of Richmond's growing antiwar movement and given them a mandate to bring peace to "two countries." Expecting them to fail, he was poised to proclaim their rejection as a Yankee insult, discredit his internal political opposition, and incite the Southern people to a war of desperation in a single stroke. To avert a pointless death struggle, the President of the United States and the men in Grant's dispatch boat would have to square that circle. Excerpted from Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference Of 1865 by James B. Conroy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.