June 26, 1865---"Mad-dog cries"

JUNE 26, 1865:          

The Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle and Sentinel very belatedly reports on the Hampton Roads Conference between President Lincoln and Alexander Stephens, R.M.T. Hunter, and John C. Campbell. The paper is vituperatively critical of the Confederate Commissioners and particularly Jefferson Davis (“who can no longer arrest or confine people”) calling Lincoln’s proffered peace terms “not dishonorable” and disparaging the Confederate position:

How strange it is that all these bloody-minded men, who advocated the “black flag” and “no quarters” upon our street corners, contented, themselves with words, and with all this hate of Yankees, never undertook to find them at the front, where there have been lots of them to be found for four years!

The paper accuses Davis (not inaccurately) of withholding information, disregarding reports, outright lying, and making inflammatory statements:  “We will teach them that when they talk to us they talk to their masters!”

Claiming that the war could have been over far earlier and with less bloodshed, the editorial ends with an assertion: 

The Administration . . . endeavored to excite the public . . . by raising . . . mad-dog cries of “reconstructionist,” “enemy to the Southern cause,” & c. [but] Mr. STEPHENS [Vice-President of the Confederacy] . . . when master of his own acts . . .  hid no part of the truth from anyone who asked for it.