Lincoln indorsed "To take
effect May 15, 1865."
The tragic events of the future were mercifully hidden. Mr. Lincoln,
looking forward to four years more of personal leadership, was planning
yet another generous offer to shorten the period of conflict. His talk
with the commissioners at Hampton Roads had probably revealed to him the
undercurrent of their hopelessness and anxiety; and he had told them
that personally he would be in favor of the government paying a liberal
indemnity for the loss of slave property, on absolute cessation of the
war and the voluntary abolition of slavery by the Southern States.
This was indeed going to the extreme of magnanimity; but Mr. Lincoln
remembered that the rebels, notwithstanding all their offenses and
errors, were yet American citizens, members of the same nation, brothers
of the same blood. He remembered, too, that the object of the war,
equally with peace and freedom, was the maintenance of one government
and the perpetuation of one Union. Not only must hostilities cease, but
dissension, suspicion, and estrangement be eradicated. Filled with such
thoughts and purposes, he spent the day after his return from Hampton
Roads in considering and perfecting a new proposal, designed as a peace
offering to the States in rebellion.
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