From this Mr. Davis proceeds to discuss the appointment of commissioners to Canada about the middle of 1864, their failure and the mission of Mr. Blair in December. Gen. E. G. Lee’s name is not among the commissioners, as stated, nor is there any reference to his mission in _The Rise and Fall_. But his article in _The Land We Love_[205] appearing in 1867 shows a knowledge and understanding of politics enveloping “Maximilian and His Empire,” viewed from the standpoint of the Confederate States, Louis Napoleon, and Wm. H. Seward, most interesting. This forgotten and youthful Virginian graduate of the oldest college in the United States, in the discussion of a matter in which he does not mention himself, must have had sources of information, which he does not reveal. His admiration for an opponent, Seward, is unrestrained. His contempt for Louis Napoleon is expressed with a refinement that imparts to it a greater force; and altogether as he passes from the stage an unreconstructed “Rebel,” dying even before Virginia shook off the grip of the blacks, he carries with him to the grave some history, which if more fully revealed might have added interest to Blair’s mission. At all events, if General Hill asked— “Is not attention to our fields and firesides of infinitely more importance to us than attention to national affairs?”[206] he yielded space and advanced to the front page of his magazine one best fitted to illustrate—“_Audi alteram partem_.” A little later in an editorial praising Generals Hampton and Wright, Hill says: “So far as we have been able to ascertain every Southern newspaper edited by a Confederate soldier, has followed the lead of these distinguished officers. The prominent idea held out by Generals Hampton and Wright, is that the freedman is to be trained to feel that he is a Southern man, identified with the South in its interests, its trials and its suffering. He is to be taught to feel that he is no alien upon the soil, but that this is his country and his home.”[207] In the elections of 1868, however, Congressional Reconstruction was overwhelmingly triumphant throughout the South and, with a fringe of whites, a black pall was thrown over the region.