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.Several years later General P.G.T.Beauregard summed up Smith’s missed opportunity, writing, “Petersburg at that hour was clearly at the mercy of the Federal commander, who had all but captured it.”3With Lee’s army occupying Petersburg’s trenches, Grant faced the task of strengthening his own defenses and settled into months of siege.Pickets from both sides met after dark between the trenches and established friendships.When Meade learned of the gatherings, he wrote his wife, “I believe these two armies would fraternize and make peace in an hour, if the matter rested with them.”4Peace again became a national issue.On July  Horace Greeley, after volunteering space in the New York Tribune to publish the Wade-Davis Manifesto, informed the president, “I venture to remind you that our bleed-ing, bankrupt, almost dying country.longs for peace.” He warned Lincoln to begin peace talks with the Confederacy now or suffer the consequences in the national election.Greeley said he had been contacted by Confederate agents and urged the president to meet with them.Lincoln offered to study “any proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing”and told Greeley to come immediately with the officials, their credentials, and the document, and he would guarantee safe conduct for all.Greeley had no credible documents, only a letter from two Confederate politicians, Clement C.Clay of Alabama and Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, who lived as expatriates in Canada and were suspected of being rebel spies.After Greeley failed to appear in Washington with the self-appointed emissar-ies, Lincoln expressed exasperation, writing, “I am disappointed that you have not already reached here with those commissioners.” He suspected the publisher had been duped and dispatched John Hay to New York to provide safe conduct to Washington for the Southerners claiming to represent the Confederate government.Hay arrived in New York, met with Greeley, and advised the president that four Confederate commissioners would be waiting at Niagara, New York.Lincoln replied, “If there is, or is not, anything in the affair, I wish to know it, without unnecessary delay.” On the president’s authority Hay prepared a document guaranteeing safe conduct for Clay, Thompson, George N.Sanders, and James B.Holcombe and with Greeley boarded a train for Niagara.5During the trip Hay discovered Greeley had few facts pertaining to the meeting and was “a good deal cut up at what he called the president’s great mistake in refusing to enter into negotiations without conditions.” At the suspension bridge spanning the Niagara River, Greeley met “William Cornelll i n c o l n , t h e c a bi n e t, a n d t h e ge n e r a l s 238Jewett of Colorado,” who claimed to be the commissioners’ intermediary.Greeley handed him Hay’s letter guaranteeing safe passage to Washington and containing a provision requiring the commissioners to be “duly accred-ited from Richmond” to discuss peace.Jewett never expected the scheme to go this far; neither did Greeley.“As it turned out,” wrote Hay, “[Greeley] had been misinformed as.none of them had any authority to act in the capacity attributed to them.” Realizing he had been deceived, Greeley hurried to New York to publish a handful of documents received from Jewett, leaving Hay behind to negotiate.Later, after Hay returned to the White House, Lincoln invited Greeley to Washington in an effort to prevent the publication of the phony “peace mission” papers.Greeley considered the matter, decided Lincoln was right, and put the documents away until after the president’s death.He declined the invitation to come to Washington but agreed to make the trip if Lincoln dismissed Seward.6While Greeley lobbied for peace and radicals schemed against the president, the war took an unexpected detour.On June  Lee detached General Jubal A.Early and ten thousand men, half of them barefoot, to curb General David Hunter’s depredations in the Shenandoah Valley [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]