President Abraham Lincoln was the best-remembered visitor to General Grant’s headquarters at City Point. During his first visit between June 21 and June 23, 1864, he was greeted enthusiastically, especially by the black soldiers of General William F. Smith’s Eighteenth Corps, who had captured part of the original Confederate defense lines on June 15th. In February 1865, Vice-President Alexander Stephens, Assistant Secretary of War John Campbell, and Senator Robert Hunter of the Confederate government came to City Point to seek a peaceful end to the war. Grant hosted them at his headquarters and sent them through the lines to meet Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward at Hampton Roads, but the talks failed when the Confederate delegation insisted on Southern independence as an indispensable condition for peace. Lincoln’s second visit began on the evening of March 24, 1865, and lasted two weeks. During that time he met with his staff on board the River Queen to discuss the military situation, and that meeting established the basis for the magnanimous surrender terms later offered by Grant and Sherman to the defeated Confederate armies. Lincoln urged generous terms, saying the Confederates should be allowed to surrender and go home, with their horses to plow and even their guns to shoot crows. A dispatch from June 11, 1864, also recalled his arrival at Grant’s tent, where guards initially stopped the tall, plainly dressed visitor before he identified himself as the President of the United States and was warmly received by Grant, and later at dinner he told three favorite jokes while discussing the matters at hand.