An abortive conference to negotiate an end to the American Civil War. At a meeting on a Union (Northern) steamer moored in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Confederate demands, put forward by the Southern President Jefferson Davis, that the Confederacy be treated as a sovereign state foundered on the refusal of President Lincoln to negotiate on any other terms but reunion and abolition of slavery. The conference broke up without result, and the war carried on until the Confederate surrender two months later at Appomattox.