Hi. I haven't posted to you before, and I'm sure you're a nice guy.......but that's crap!
Andrew Johnson and the United States Government held Jefferson Davis in a federal fortress for years without trying him. Then they let him go. Why?
Because the poorest lawyer in the country would have cut the Government's case to ribbons, that's why!
"Forgiveness", my butt hurts!
Policy, is all it was. They held the South in their hands. They could have done whatever they wanted, even given flyblown Ben Butler the executioner job he so craved.
So don't give me this "well, we aren't going to give you a fair trial after all -- but just go on home and consider yourself guilty as charged". That's buncombe of the zeroeth magnitude and the rankest degree.
No Southerner was guilty of anything, for defending the South. Remember that!
That's why the Yanks let Jeff Davis sit in jail for a couple of years - they wanted a quick trial.
Well, two years. Just. And they released him on bail put up by Horace Greeley.
The problem the government faced was that the decided they'd have to try Davis is a civil court, and that it would have to be in Virginia, since that was the site of his alleged crimes. That meant a Virginia jury, which would likely treat Davis the same way Mississippi juries treated white men who murdered blacks in Jim Crow era--a quick not guilty verdict followed by drinks all around. At the same time, Salmon Chase, the chief justice, developed the opinion that since the leaders of the confederate government had lost their rights to hold public office under the third section of the 14th amendment, they'd already been punished for their activities and therefore couldn't be punished further. WIth the Chief Justice indicating that he'd overturn any conviction on those grounds, the government declined to prosecute the case