The enemy proposed was not Great Britain but France, and the place of operations Mexico.

There was much discussion of this plan between Seward and Stephens, the leading Southern Commissioner, but Lincoln merely listened, and when pressed for comment stuck fast to his decision that no agreement whatever would be entered into until the South had laid down its arms.

The Southerners urged that there was precedent for an agreement in advance of cessation of hostilities in the negotiations between Charles I and the Roundheads.
Lincoln's reply was pithy: "I do not profess to be posted in history.

On all such matters I turn you over to Seward.

All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I is that he lost his head in the end[1272]." When news of the holding of this conference reached England there occurred a panic on the Stock Exchange due to the uncertainty created by the prospect of an immediate end of the American War.