“a secret military convention between the belligerents with a view of preventing the establishment of a French Empire in Mexico by the joint operation of the Federal and Confederate armies in maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine. In this way (writes Mr. Stephens) Mr. Blair thought, as Mr. Davis stated to me, a fraternization would take place between the two armies and peace be ultimately obtained by a restoration of the Union without the subjugation of the Southern States.”[202] In his Lincoln, Mr. Stephenson says: “While the amendment (abolishing slavery) was taking its way through Congress, a shrewd old politician who thought he knew the world better than most men, that Montgomery Blair, Senior, who was father to the Postmaster General, had been trying on his own responsibility to open negotiations between Washington and Richmond. His visionary ideas, which were wholly without the results he intended have no place here. And yet this fanciful episode had a significance of its own. Had it not occurred, the Confederate Government probably would not have appointed commissioners charged with the hopeless task of approaching the Federal Government for the purpose of negotiating peace between ‘the two countries.’” Just what was really happening in the world of politics in these dying days of the Confederacy may possibly never be known with any degree of exactness. The play of politics, not only in the United States; but around the world was quick and varied but very obscure. Mr. Stephenson, the most interesting and thoughtful observer of Lincoln’s career attaches very slight importance to Blair’s negotiations with the Confederacy; but more to the prior negotiations of Gilmore and Jacquess, even going so far as to assert, on the authority of Nicolay and Hay, that Davis had said in his interview with them: “You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our slaves; and if you will take care of them, you may emancipate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of some use to them; they never were of any to me.”[203] Nicolay and Hay do assert that Jacquess asserted that Davis so stated; but they also give Davis’s account of the incident which he published in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.” In this we find no such assertion by Davis and on the contrary the following: “Mr. Gilmore addressed me and in a few minutes conveyed the information that the two gentlemen had come to Richmond impressed with the idea that the Confederate Government would accept a peace on the basis of a reconstruction of the Union, the abolition of slavery and the grant of an amnesty to the people of the States as repentant criminals.... The impudence of the remarks could only be extenuated because of the ignorance displayed and the profuse avowal of the kindest motives and intentions.”[204]