fact, and really its most interesting feature is that it gave rise to one of the best of the “Lincoln stories.”  The President was persisting that he could not enter into any agreement with “parties in arms against the government;” Mr. Hunter tried to persuade him to the contrary, and by way of doing so, cited precedents “of this character between Charles I. of England and the people in arms against him.”  Mr. Lincoln could not lose such an opportunity!  “I do not profess,” he said, “to be posted in history.  On all such matters I will turn you over to Seward.  All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I. is, that he lost his head!” Then silence fell for a time upon Mr. Hunter.

Across the wide chasm of the main question the gentlemen discussed the smaller topics:  reconstruction, concerning which Mr. Lincoln expressed his well-known, most generous sentiments; confiscation acts, as to which also he desired to be, and believed that Congress would be, liberal; the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment, concerning which he said, that the courts of law must construe the proclamation, and that he personally should be in favor of appropriating even so much as four hundred millions of dollars to extinguish slavery, and that he believed such a measure might be carried through.  West Virginia, in his opinion, must continue to be a separate State.  Yet there was little practical use in discussing, and either agreeing or disagreeing, about all these dependent parts; they were but limbs which it was useless to set in shape while the body was lacking.  Accordingly the party broke up, not having found, nor having ever had any prospect of finding, any common standing-ground.  The case was simple; the North was fighting for Union, the South for disunion, and neither side was yet ready to give up the struggle.  Nevertheless, it is not improbable that Mr. Lincoln, so far as he personally was concerned, brought back from Hampton Roads all that he had expected and precisely what he had hoped to bring.  For in the talk of those four hours he had recognized the note of despair, and had seen that Mr. Davis, though posing still in an imperious and monumental attitude, was, in fact, standing upon a disintegrated and crumbling pedestal.  It seemed not improbable that the disappointed supporters of the rebel chief would gladly come back to the old Union if they could be fairly received, although at this conference they had felt compelled by the exigencies of an official situation and their representative character to say that they would not.  Accordingly Mr. Lincoln, having no idea that a road to hearty national re-integration either should or could be overshadowed by Caudine forks, endeavored to make as easy as possible the return of discouraged rebels, whether penitent or impenitent.  If they were truly penitent, all was as it should be.  If they were impenitent, he was willing to trust to time to effect a change of heart.  Accordingly he worked