Ron, checked out the book, "The Civil War Years" by Robert E. Denny and found your reference. It was pretty much the way I thought, Grant could not make any negotiations with Lee because it still involved recognizing the Confederacy as a nation. Lincoln was not going to entertain that, not after all the Union had been through to get to this stage. It just seems to me the South, through Lee and Davis, were just trying to win by talking what they couldn't win on the battlefield.
Just an opinion, oldreb,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass "Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana |