When at last through sheer exhaustion the Confederate Armies ceased resistance and surrendered, they did so on precisely the same terms that had been offered by the Government of the Union three months before. In the _interim_ the Confederate leaders had been deluding their people with the pretense that the "Lincoln Government" had outraged the South in refusing to recognize Confederate Nationality even long enough to treat with it for peace. "Nothing beyond this," exclaimed Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter in a speech delivered at a meeting in Richmond held immediately after the Peace Conference to which he had been one of the commissioners,--"Nothing beyond this is needed to stir the blood of Southern men." In the course of his inflammatory address Mr. Hunter made the _naive_ confession: "If our people exhibit the proper spirit they will bring forth the deserters from their caves; and the skulkers, who are avoiding the perils of the field, will go forth to share the dangers of their countrymen." The "skulkers" and "deserters" referred to were no doubt brave men who, having fought as long as there was hope, were not ambitious to sacrifice their lives to carry on the shameless bravado of the political leaders of the Rebellion. Mr. Hunter spoke with singular intemperance of tone for one who was usually cool, guarded, and conservative. He was followed by the _Mephistopheles_ of the Rebellion, the brilliant, learned, sinister Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin. He spoke as one who felt that he had the _alias_ of an English subject for shelter, or possibly the Spanish flag for protection, when the worst should come, and thus he might continue to play the part of Confederate citizen so long as it favored his ambition and his fortune. He delivered a speech full of desperate suggestion--so desperate indeed that it re-acted and injured the cause for which he was demanding harsh sacrifices on the part of others. He urged upon his hearers that the States of the Confederacy had nearly seven hundred thousand male slaves of the age for military service. He gave the assurance that if freedom should be conceded to these men they would fight in aid of the Rebellion. Besides advocating a guaranty of emancipation to all these black men,--for the right to keep whom in slavery the war had been undertaken,--Mr. Benjamin urged that every bale of cotton, every hogshead of tobacco, every pound of bacon, every barrel of flour, should be seized for the benefit of the common cause.