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The South sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate terms for the forts, etc., but the President would not officially receive them.

Not even that - he wouldn't even recieve them unofficially, or through an intermediary negotiator, or through another government official serving as third party. That didn't stop them from trying to meet with Lincoln. They sought meetings for weeks. Two different sitting United States Senators who had not seceded yet and a Supreme Court Justice all offered to act as negotiators between the commissioners and Lincoln. Lincoln refused every single one of them and refused to even meet with sitting US Senators from the south!

After repeated attempts failed the three commissioners returned to Montgomery and filed a report with Davis. They effectively said that it was impossible to work with this man, Lincoln, on anything at all because he would not even acknowledge that they existed.

Thanks. I was also thinking of the earlier set of South Carolina Commissioners sent to negotiate with the Buchanan government. From their letter to Buchanan:

WASHINGTON, 28th DECEMBER, 1860.
Sir: We have the honor to transmit to you a copy of the full powers from the Convention of the People of South Carolina, under which we are "authorized and empowered to treat with the Government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, light houses and other real estate, with their appurtenances, within the limits of South Carolina, and also for an apportionment of the public debt and for a division of all other property held by the Government of the United States as agent of the confederated States, of which South Carolina was recently a member; and generally to negotiate as to all other measures and arrangements proper to be made and adopted in the existing relation of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity between this commonwealth and the Government at Washington."

Not even that - he wouldn't even recieve them unofficially, or through an intermediary negotiator, or through another government official serving as third party.

They were traitors.

Walt

They sought meetings for weeks. Two different sitting United States Senators who had not seceded yet and a Supreme Court Justice all offered to act as negotiators between the commissioners and Lincoln. Lincoln refused every single one of them and refused to even meet with sitting US Senators from the south!

Rightly so.

This was during the Buchanan administration:

"These gentlemen claim to be ambassadors," he [attorney general Stanton] said. "It is preposterous! They cannot be ambassadors; they are lawbreakers, traitors. They should be arrested. You cannot negotiate with them; and yet it seems by this paper that you have been led into that very thing. With all respect to you, Mr. President, I must say that the Attorney General, under his oath of office, dares not to be cognizant of the pending proceedings. Your reply to these so-called ambassadors must not be transmitted as the reply of the president. It is wholly unlawful, and improper; its language is unguarded and to send it as an official document will bring the presidency to the point of usurpation."

-- The Coming Fury, p. 165 by Bruce Catton

Walt