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 out a scheme whereby Congress should empower him to distribute between the slave States $400,000,000, in proportion to their respective slave populations, on condition that "all resistance to the national authority [should] be abandoned and cease on or before the first day of April next;" one half the sum to be paid when such resistance should so cease; the other half whenever, on or before July 1 next, the Thirteenth Amendment should become valid law. So soon as he should be clothed with authority, he proposed to issue "a proclamation looking to peace and reunion," in which he would declare that, upon the conditions stated, he would