as he confronted the possibility of a divided country.

The real tragedy of the time lay in the failure of the advocates
of these two great principles--each so necessary to a far-flung
democratic country in a world of great powers!--the failure to
coordinate them so as to insure freedom at home and strength
abroad. The principle for which Lincoln stood has saved Americans
in the Great War from playing such a trembling part as that of
Holland. The principle which seemed to Lee even more essential,
which did not perish at Appomattox but was transformed and not
destroyed, is what has kept us from becoming a western Prussia.
And yet if only it had been possible to coordinate the two
without the price of war! It was not possible because of the
stored up bitterness of a quarter century of recrimination. But
Virginia made a last desperate attempt to preserve the Union by
calling the Peace Convention. It assembled at Washington the day
the Confederate Congress met at Montgomery. Though twenty-one
States sent delegates, it was no more able to effect a working
scheme of compromise than was the House committee of thirty-three
or the Senate committee of thirteen, both of which had striven,
had failed, and had gone their ways to a place in the great
company of historic futilities.

And so the Peace Convention came and went, and there was no
consolation for the troubled men of the upper South who did not
want to secede but were resolved not to abandon local autonomy.
Virginia was the key to the situation. If Virginia could be
forced into secession, the rest of the upper South would
inevitably follow. Therefore a Virginia hothead, Roger A. Pryor,
being in Charleston in those wavering days, poured out his heart