Peace Conf

The Washington Peace Conference

In February 1861, representatives of 21 of the States still in the Union (among them, Maryland, Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, Delaware, and Virginia) met in an abandoned church hall in the City of Washington in a last ditch effort to avoid the disintegration of the Union and the bloody conflict they foresaw.  Congress had failed to reach any compromise with the States that had already seceded.  The Commonwealth of Virginia initiated the peace conference in the hope that, if the delegates could arrive at some amicable compromise, secession fever might diminish and the seceded states might be entreated to rejoin the Union.  The doomed assembly, led by the tottering former President John Tyler, met before a fine portrait of George Washington lent by the Mayor of the City, framed compromise proposals, submitted its plan to the Senate, and left town.  No one listened.  Soon Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee joined the Confereracy, and the great conflagration had begun.

The abandoned church building used for the conference was the F Street Church which two years before had merged with the Second Presbyterian Church to form the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Information from Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington,
1860-1865.  New York: Harper and Row, 1941.