A Bribe offered to the South: Thoughts by Edward Alfred Pollard, 1865
We cannot anticipate what bribes may be offered the South to confederate again with the North. But one has been already suggested in the North: it is, to find an atrocious compensation for the war in a combined crusade against foreign nations.
As the Civil War dragged on, there were attempts to negotiate a peace and bring the blood-letting to an end. These attempts continued almost to the very end: The Hampton Roads Conference, for example, between Abraham Lincoln, et al., and Alexander Stephens, et al., took place on February 3, 1865, with a goal of negotiating an end to the conflict. At this conference, Lincoln demanded an immediate restoration of the Union and Stephens demanded independence; both sides walked away achieving nothing.
Incidentally, Lincoln and Stephens discussed uniting and engaging in a joint campaign against the French in Mexico, which reflects on the content of this post.
In this post, Southern chronicler, Edward Alfred Pollard, addresses another interesting suggestion for peace: a combined war against other nations.
August Glen-James, editor
At the time these pages are given to the press, it appears that the great disappointment of the North in the results of the summer campaign of 1864, has given rise to a certain desire to end the war by negotiations, and that this desire has found some response in the South. . . . We cannot anticipate what bribes may be offered the South to confederate again with the North. But one has been already suggested in the North: it is, to find an atrocious compensation for the war in a combined crusade against foreign nations.
The New York Herald declares:
With a restored Union, prosperity would once more bless the land If any bad blood remained on either side, it would soon disappear, or be purged by a foreign war. With a combined veteran army of over a million of men, and a fleet more powerful than that of any European power, we could order France from Mexico, England from Canada, and Spain from Cuba, and enforce our orders if they were not obeyed. The American continent would then belong to Americans. The President at Washington would govern the New World, and the glorious dreams and prophecies of our forefathers would at length be realized.
To a proposition of such infamy of infamies, the attention of the civilized world should be called. What a commentary upon that European policy which has lavished so much of sympathy and material comfort upon the North, and, on the other hand, has rejected the cause of a people, who as they are resolute in maintaining their own rights, are as equally, indeed expressly and emphatically, innocent of any designs on the right and welfare of others! The suggestion is, that of a huge and horrible Democracy, eager to prey upon the rights of others, and to repair by plunder and outrage the cost of its feuds and the waste of its vices.
The people of the Confederacy do not easily listen to suggestions of dishonor. Yet none are more open to the cunning persuasion which wears the disguise of virtuous remonstrance and friendly interest. It is here where the Yankee peacemaker is to be resisted and unmasked.
It will be for the Confederacy to stand firm in every political conjuncture, and to fortify itself against the blandishments and arts of a disconcerted and designing enemy. It will remember that enemy’s warfare. It will remember that an army, whose personnel has been drawn from all parties in the North, has carried the war of the savage into their homes. It will remember how Yankees have smacked their lips over their carnage and the sufferings of their women and little ones. It will remember how New England clergymen have advised that “rebels,” men, women and children, should be sunk beneath the Southern sod, and the soil “salted with Puritanical blood, to raise a new crop of men.” To hate let us not reply with hate. We reply with the superiority of contempt, the resolution of pride, the scorn of defiance. Surely, rather than reunite with such a people; rather than cheat the war of “independence,” and make its prize that cheap thing in American history—a paper guarantee; rather than cheat our dead of that for which they died; rather than entitle ourselves to the contempt of the world, the agonies of self-accusation, the reproof of the grave, the curses of posterity, the displeasure of the merciful God who has so long signified His providence in our endeavors, we are prepared to choose more suffering, more trials, even utter poverty and chains, and exile and death.
Pollard, Edward Alfred. Southern history of the war. The third year of the war. New York. Charles B. Richardson, 1865. PP. 284-286.