Informal audience with Emperor.
I had thus an informal audience, not obtained through the regular official channel, and was received by the
Emperor with the greatest courtesy.
He bade me sit opposite him, and during the conversation which ensued evinced much interest in the progress of the war, made many remarks on details connected with the operations in the field, but the political side of the contest was never touched upon.
All I could do was to assure him that the people of the
South were determined to fight to the last in defense of the political doctrine of State-rights handed to them as an heirloom by their forefathers, and that in doing so they were only upholding the principles of
Washington, and of the other founders of the first Union of States established with the aid of the
French nation.
To this the
Emperor made no reply.
In taking leave of him I asked permission to introduce an aide-de-camp of the
Governor of
Louisiana, the bearer of a letter to him.
The Emperor hesitated a moment, asking (I well remember his words): ‘Que me dit il dous cette lettre?’
(What does he tell me in that letter?) I replied that I had not read the letter, but that it surely recalled the fact that
Louisiana had originally been a French settlement, adding that the ties of blood had ever since kept alive a natural sympathy with
France among the descendants of the first settlers.
The Emperor granted my request, but more I think from courtesy to me than from any other motive, for it struck me at the time how guarded he had become the moment we approached the boundary of official
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ground.
However, the next day I introduced
Colonel Miltenberger.
He handed
Governor Allen's letter to the
Emperor, who, without opening it; laid it on a table near him. He received us standing and our conversation lasted only a few minutes.
This was my last interview with the
Emperor.
The news of
General Lee's surrender reached us almost immediately afterward, and the briefness of the interval would itself suffice to disprove the allegations contained in the first editorial of the Washington Post on ‘A Lost Chapter of History’ (March 14, 1901), from which I quote the following extract:
‘At all events
Polignac, accompanied by
Moncure, went to
Paris—via
Galveston, we think—and though their mission was barren of result, so far as concerned the
Confederacy, it leaked out when
Moncure returned that
Louis Napoleon had frequently consulted with Lord Palmerston and that so far from refusing to consider the proposition at all—whatever it may have been—the latter had given it a great deal of his time, and had finally dismissed it with reluctance.
We have since been told that the
Queen herself intervened, but we rather think that the appearance of the
Russian fleets at New York and
San Francisco—with orders, as afterward transpired, to place themselves at the disposal of the
United States Government—cut at least some figure in Lord Palmerston's philosophy.’
So much for history!
The wonderful array of political intrigues, negotiations, conflicting efforts, and warlike demonstrations, supposed to have taken place in the space of a few weeks, perhaps only of a few days, does infinite credit to the dramatic imagination of the author, as well as to the spirit of enterprise which distinguished this dramatic personage.
Indeed, the tenor of the whole article, with the
Queen and the
Russian fleets thrown in, appeals so strongly to one's sense of humor that it seems a pity to mar by any commentaries the comical foundation of the scene.
Nor are the afterthoughts intended to supply motives for these imaginary facts less ingeniously contrived.
I quote again from the aforementioned letter to the
Editor of the Washington Post (March 16, 1901):
. . .‘There was a strong feeling at the time west of the
Mississippi River that the
Confederacy was doomed, and the
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effort was to preserve the part of the
United States west of the river to the PacificOcean as a slaveholding Confederacy.
Of course, if the
European nations adopted the plan, it was certain that the vast majority of the negroes from the Carolinas to the river would be moved across it and that section would be an agricultural free-trade community.
It was, of course, an iridescent dream, but some of the ablest men in the
South were dreaming it.’
