I have it. It's there. Too bad. Empahsis mine:
The Prisioner / 203Typo's mine. Does that help?
But there was still a clamor for the execution of Davis. Speaker
of the House of Representatives Schuyler Colfax (who was soon to
be exposed as a grafter) told the House that if justice were done,
Davis would be "hanging between heaven and earth as not fit for
either."
But ex-President Franklin Pierce, who was corresponding
with Varina, assured her that her husband would not be tried, since
the government's case rested upon "wicked fabrications from the
perjured lips of the lowest on earth."
Pierce referred to a bizarre "professional perjurer" by the name
of Charles A. Dunham, who, under the alias Sanford Conover, of-
204 / The Prisoner
fered in return for a handsome fee to produce witnesses who
would swear that Davis had plotted with them to have Lincoln
murdered. Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, who was as gullible
as he was vindictive, accepted Conover's tales, and for some weeks
hoodlums and drifters were smuggled into Washington and re-
hearsed in false testimony by Conover. But their unlikely tales were
so transparently untrue that the Bureau of Military Justice exposed
them.
One witness, William Campbell (actually Joseph A. Hoare, a
New York "gas-fixer") gave away the scheme. "This is all false," he
said. "I must make a clean breast of it; I can't stand it any longer."
Campbell testified that Judge Holt, anxious for proof of Davis's
guilt after payment of the $100,000 reward, asked for any testimony
that might convict him: "Conover wrote out the evidence," Camp-
bell said, "and I learned it by heart." He was paid $625, of which
Holt had given him $500. Another "witness," Dr. James B. Merritt,
was paid $6,000.
After Campbell had confessed, Conover fled but was captured
and imprisoned. Only then was the fanatic Holt forced to abandon
his effort to send Davis to the gallows.
From the moment of Conover's exposure, Davis was no longer
in danger of prosecution for conspiracy in Lincoln's death but
Edwin Stanton, though he ceased to fill the newspapers with insinua-
tions, made no public acknowledgment of defeat, and defendants
were left in ignorance as to the status of the charges against them.
The Davis case became more vexing to Secretary Stanton and
the Radicals in other ways. The trunk full of personal and official
letters left at the David Yulee plantation in Florida by Captain dark
had arrived in Washington, where War Department officials scanned
every sheet without finding evidence to incriminate the Confederate
President. During the summer's heat, while Stanton and the Cabinet
still debated as to how the case should be tried. Chief Justice Salmon
P. Chase urged Stanton to forget the problem: "If you bring these
leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution,
secession is not rebellion." He added that it was absurd to try to
prove in court that Davis had been the chief of an armed uprising,
since that had been common knowledge. "Lincoln wanted Jefferson
Davis to escape," Chase said. "And he was right. His capture was
a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of
treason. Secession is settled. Let it stay settled."Burke Davis, The Long Surrender, New York: Random House, 1985, pp. 203-204.
As ususal, you need corroboration.
Walt