Mr. Baldwin admitted the interview with Mr. Lincoln, and the nature of it as herein given, to Mr. John F. Lewis, who was a Union man and a member of the convention that adopted the Ordinance of Secession by a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five.
Of the three witnesses, Baldwin, Botts and Lewis, Mr. Baldwin was the first witness who was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction. At that time the committee had no knowledge of the conversation between Mr. Baldwin and President Lincoln. Speaking, apparently, under the influence of the criticisms of Botts and Lewis of his rejection of Mr. Lincoln's propositions, Baldwin introduced the subject with the remark: "I had a good deal of interesting conversation with him (that is with Mr. Lincoln) that evening. I was about to state that I have reason to believe that Mr. Lincoln himself had given an account of this conversation which has been understood--but I am sure _mis_understood--by the persons with whom he talked, as giving the representation of it, that he had offered to me, that if the Virginia Convention would adjourn _sine die_ he would withdraw the troops from Sumner and _Pickens_." As there was no occasion in the conversation between Lincoln and Baldwin for a reference to Fort Pickens, and as the President did not mention _Fort Pickens_ in the account of the conversation that he gave to Mr. Botts, the denial of Mr. Baldwin may fall under one of the forms of falsehood mentioned by Shakespeare.
The evidence is conclusive to this point: That at an interview at the Executive Mansion, April 5, 1861, between President Lincoln and Colonel John B. Baldwin, then a member of the Virginia Convention that finally adopted the Ordinance of Secession, President Lincoln assured Mr. Baldwin that he would evacuate Fort Sumter if the fort could be provisioned and the Virginia Convention would adjourn _sine die_.
Colonel Baldwin's voluntary and qualified denial is of no value in presence of President Lincoln's report of the interview as given by Mr. Botts and in presence of the testimony that Mr. Baldwin did not deny the truthfulness of Mr. Botts' limited statement, when it was asserted by Mr. Botts in the presence of Lewis.
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS AND HIS STATE-RIGHTS DOCTRINES