We had tried to intimate to General Grant before we reached Old Point, that a settlement generally satisfactory to both sides could be more easily effected through him and General Lee by an armistice than in any other way. The attempt was in vain. Lee had too much principle probably to have yielded to such a suggestion, and if Grant would have suffered no principle to restrain him if he had seen his way clear, he had not the ability to weigh truly his responsibility or to understand his opportunities. Generals who are so often accused and blamed for usurping power often see the best way out of difficulties. Had Caesar or Napoleon been in command of the Union forces there is little doubt but that some settlement would have been made to have relieved us of much of our difficulty. When a general knows what to do he is often more reliable than the politicians in civil war. England, probably, was better managed by Cromwell than would have been done by the general voice of her civilians. Politicians often make more fatal inroads on the bulwarks of national liberty than military commanders. It is doubtful whether a Government formed by the Roman Senate would have been better than Scylla's, and Napoleon's constitutions were probably preferable to what the civilians would have given them. Civil wars often produce emergencies which create new and unexpected wants, and in these I have no doubt but that Napoleon was a more reliable counsellor than Lieges. Complications are sometimes produced by the sword that can only be cut by the sword. In this very case some compensation for the negroes taken away would have been both just and politic. Through a truce or armistice it might have been effected, but otherwise it seems not.
With regard to the Monroe doctrine, out of which I feared some complications might arise, as Blair had seemed to favor it very much, I took occasion to say to Mr. Lincoln that I differed much from Mr. Stephens, and so in my opinion did many of our people, who would be found unwilling to kindle a new war with the French on any such pretence. That for one I laid no such claims to the right of exclusive possession of the American continent for the American people, as had been done by others. That many of us would be found unwilling to have a war upon a mere question of policy rather than of honor or right. That although we would hear and communicate whatever was said to us on this question, we were not instructed to treat upon it. Nor for one was I prepared to do so. I asked him, however, to communicate the terms,
