"Soon after the failure of the Fortress Monroe or Hampton Roads conference, I was visited by Governor Graham (whose death we so recently deplore) who was then a Senator of the Confederate States. After giving all the particulars of that conference which had not appeared in the papers, and the prevailing impressions of congressional circles, about Richmond, etc., he informed me that a number of leading gentlemen there, despairing of obtaining peace through Mr. Davis, and believing the end inevitable and not distant, had requested him to visit me and urge me, as Governor of North Carolina, to take steps for making separate peace with Mr. Lincoln, and thus inaugurate the conclusion; that he agreed to lay their request before me without promising to add his personal advice thereto. I asked who those gentlemen were, and, with some reluctance, he gave me their names, chiefly Senators and Representatives in the Confederate Congress. I asked why these gentlemen did not begin negotiations in their own States with the enemy, and if they would come out in the papers with this request to me. He said they could not take the initiative, they were so surrounded at home, and so trammeled by pledges, etc., as to render it impossible! I declined the proposition of course." It is with reluctance that I advert to this statement. Had it been given to the press with a sponsor less entitled to consideration, I should have been disposed to let it float with the tide. But it presents itself under imposing circumstances; it proceeds from one who, at the time referred to, was at, the head of the government in North Carolina; it is contained in an address made before a society whose object it is to preserve the memorials of that time. The statement thus passes into history. It will not be waived. It peremptorily challenges attention. [Mr. McGehee here enters into a rather labored argument to show that Vance was mistaken; it would have been sufficient simply to have published Graham's letter to Swain, written shortly after the conversation, and therefore a better exponent of what actually took place. It appears that Graham as Confederate Senator had far better means of knowing the real condition of the Confederacy than Vance had, and he, doubtless, as was his duty, gave him the whole truth. Even without the vindication of his letter, I should be very slow to believe that he ever advised Vance on his own responsibility to undertake separate negotiations with the enemy. For the consideration of a matter so delicate, serious, and dangerous, doubtless, he, as well as Vance, would wish the assembled wisdom of the State. And what he really advised, as his letter shows, was to call the Legislature together, so that, in secret session, upon full information, it might consider if the State and the several States of the Confederacy should as States make any propositions to the enemy.--ED.]