His was the genius of common sense. Of perfect intellectual acuteness and aplomb, he sprang from a Virginia pedigree and was born in Kentucky. He knew all about the South, its institutions, its traditions and its peculiarities. He was an old-line Whig of the school of Henry Clay, with strong Emancipation leaning, never an Abolitionist. "If slavery be not wrong," he said, "nothing is wrong," but he also said and reiterated it time and again, "I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we would not instantly give it up." From first to last throughout the angry debates preceding the War of Sections, amid the passions of the War itself, not one vindictive, prescriptive word fell from his tongue or pen, whilst during its progress there was scarcely a day when he did not project his great personality between some Southern man or woman and danger. III There has been much discussion about what did and what did not occur at the famous Hampton Roads Conference. That Mr. Lincoln met and conferred with the official representatives of the Confederate Government, led by the Vice President of the Confederate States, when it must have been known to him that the Confederacy was nearing the end of its resources, is sufficient proof of the breadth both of his humanity and his patriotism. Yet he went to Fortress Monroe prepared not only to make whatever concessions toward the restoration of Union and Peace he had the lawful authority to make, but to offer some concessions which could in the nature of the case go no further at that time than his personal assurance. His constitutional powers were limited. But he was in himself the embodiment of great moral power. The story that he offered payment for the slaves--so often affirmed and denied--is in either case but a quibble with the actual facts. He could not have made such an offer except tentatively, lacking the means to carry it out. He was not given the opportunity to make it, because the Confederate Commissioners were under instructions to treat solely on the basis of the recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The conference came to nought. It ended where it began. But there is ample evidence that he went to Hampton Roads resolved to commit himself to that proposition. He did, according to the official reports, refer to it in specific terms, having already formulated a plan of procedure. This plan exists and may be seen in his own handwriting. It embraced a joint resolution to be submitted by the President to the two Houses of Congress appropriating $400,000,000 to be distributed among the Southern States on the basis of the slave population of each according to the Census of 1860, and a proclamation to be issued by himself, as President, when the joint resolution had been passed by Congress.