‘71 2 REBEL CONDITIONS OF PEACE. From the Richmond Enquirer of October 16, 1863. “ PEACE.” “ Save on our own terms, we can accept no peace whatever, and must fight till doomsday, rather than yield an iota of them, and our terms are : Recognition by the enemy of the independence of the Confederate States. Withdrawal of the Yankee forces from every foot of Confederate ground, including Kentucky and Missouri. Withdrawal of the Yankee soldiers from Maryland, until that State shall decide, by a free vote, whether she shall remain in the old Union, or ask admission into the Confederacy. Consent, on the part of the Federal Government, to give up ‘io the Confederacy its proportion of the navy as it stood at the dime of secession, or to pay for the same. Yielding up of all pretension, on the part of the Federal 'Government, to that portion of the old Territories which lies west of the Confederate States. An equitable settlement on the basis of our absolute independence and equal rights of all accounts of the public debt and public lands, and the advantages accruing from foreign treaties. These provisions, we apprehend, comprise the minimum of what we must require before we lay down our arms. That is to say, the North must yield all,—we nothing. The whole pretension of that country to prevent, by force, the separation of the States must be abandoned, which will be equivalent to an avowal that our enemies were wrong from the first; and, of course, as they waged a causeless and wicked war upon us, they ought, in strict justice, to be required, according to usage in such cases, to reimburse to us the whole of our expenses and losses in the course of that war. Whether this last proviso is to be insisted upon or not, certain we are that we cannot have any peace at all, until we shall be in a position, not only to • demand and exact, but also to enforce and collect treasure for ■ our own reimbursement out of the wealthy cities in the enemy’s • country. In other words, unless we can destroy or scatter ■ their armies, and break up their Government, we can have no peace; and if we can do that, then wre ought not only to extort :from them our own full terms and ample acknowledgment of their wrong, but also a handsome indemnity for the trouble and expense caused to us by their crime. Now, we are not yet in position to dictate those terms to our enemies, with Rosegbans’ army still in the heart of our country, and Meade still on Virginia soil, but though it is too soon to propose such conditions to them, yet it is important that we should keep them plainly before our own eyes as the only ad- 7^- 705^6
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