This story was entangled from the first with another difficult story. Commissioners from the Southern Confederacy came to Washington and sought interviews with Seward; they came to treat for the recognition of the Confederacy and the peaceful surrender of forts and the like within its borders. Meanwhile the action of Virginia was in the balance, and the "Peace Convention," summoned by Virginia, still "threshing again," as Lowell said, "the already twice-threshed straw of debate." The action of Virginia and of other border States, about which Lincoln was intensely solicitous, would certainly depend upon the action of the Government towards the States that had already seceded. Might it not be well that the Government should avoid immediate conflict with South Carolina about Fort Sumter, though conflict with the Confederacy about Fort Pickens and the rest would still impend? Was it not possible that conflict could be staved off till an agreement could be reached with Virginia and the border States, which would induce the seceded States to return? These questions were clearly absurd, but they were as clearly natural, and they greatly exercised Seward. Disappointed at not being President and equally disturbed at the prospect of civil war, but still inclined to large and sanguine hopes, he was rather anxious to take things out of Lincoln's hands and very anxious to serve his country as the great peacemaker. Indirect negotiations now took place between him and the Southern Commissioners, who of course could not be officially recognised, through the medium of two Supreme Court Judges, especially one Campbell, who was then in Washington. Seward was quite loyal to Lincoln and told him in a general way what he was doing; he was also candid with Campbell and his friends, and explained to them his lack of authority, but he talked freely and rashly of what he hoped to bring about. Lincoln gave Seward some proper cautions and left him all proper freedom; but it is possible that he once told Douglas that he intended, at that moment, to evacuate Fort Sumter. The upshot of the matter is that the decision of the Government was delayed by negotiations which, as it ought to have known, could come to nothing, and that the Southern Government and the Commissioners, after they had got home, thought they had been deceived in these negotiations.