from abroad, and we are unable to arm our people if they were willing to continue the struggle. The supplies of quartermaster and comissary stores in the country are very liited in amount, and our railroads are so broken and destroyed as to prevent, to a great extent, the transportation and accumulation of those remaining.

Our currency has lost its purachsing power, and there is no other means of supplying the Treasury; and the people are hostile to impressments and endeavor to conceal such supplies as are needed for the army from the officers charged with their collection. Our armies, in case of a prolongation of the struggle, will continue to melt away as they retreat through the country. There is danger, and I think I might say certainty, based on the information we have, that a portion and probably all of the States will make separate terms with the enemy as they are overrun, with the chance that the terms so obtained will be less favorable to them than those contianed in the agreement under consideration, and the despair of our people will prevent a much longer continuance of serious resistance unless they shall be hereafter urged to it by unendurable oppressions. The agreement under consideration secures to our people, if ratified by both parties, the uninterrupted continuance of the existing State government, s the guarantees of the Federal Constitution and of the constitutions of their respective States, the guarantee of their political righs and of their rights of person and property, and immunity from fus and penalties for their participation in the existing war, on the condition that we accept the Constitution and government of the United Staes and disband our armies by marching the troops to their respective States and depositing their arms in the State arsenals, subject to the future control of that Government, but with a verbal understanding that they are only to be used for the preservation of peace and order in the respective States. It is also to be observed that the agreement contians no direct reference to the question of slavery, requires no concession no direct reference to the question of slavery, requires no concession from us in regard to it, and leaves it subject to the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the several States just as it was before the war. With these facts before us and under the belief that we cannot now reasonably hoep for the achievement of our independence, which should be dearer than life it it were possibly attainable, and under the belief that a continuance of the struggle with its sacrifices of life and property and its accumulation of sufferings, without a resaonable prospect of success, would be both unwise and criminal, I advise that you assent to the agreement as the best you can now do for the people who have clothed you with the hgh trusts of your position. In advising this course I do not conceal from myself, nor would I withhold from Your Excellency, the danger of trusting the people who drove us to war by their unconstitutional and unjust aggressions, and who will now add the conciousness of power to their love of dominion and greed of gain.

It is right alsofor me to say that, much as we have been exhausted in men and resources, I am of opinion that if our people could be induced to continue the contest with the spirit which animated them during the first years of the war our independence might yet be within our reach; but I see no reason to hope for that now. On the second question, as to the proper mode of executing the agreement, I have to say that whatever you may do looking to the termination of the contest by an amicable arragnement which may embrace the extinctioin of the Government of the Confederate States must be done without special authority to be found in the Constitution; and yet I am of opinion that, charged as youa re with the duty of looking to the general welfare