This Week in History: The trial of Jefferson Davis
- Antone Pierucci
- Posted On
It was going to be the trial of the century. A bloody war had just been fought over the very issue that was now set to be argued before judge and jury.
This was going to be the legal case that finally settled the question of whether or not it was constitutionally legal for states to secede from the Union.
On trial was none other than Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America.
But like most of the goals pursued in Reconstruction America, this trial was never seen through to its bitter conclusion.
The saga of Davis’ trial began in May of 1865 when Jefferson Davis became a prisoner of the United States of America.
Ironically, Davis became such a high-valued target primarily because of the assassination of President Lincoln the month before. President Johnson and other cabinet members suspected that Jefferson Davis had been complicit in the assassination plot and therefore pursued him relentlessly until finally capturing him.
No evidence was uncovered to substantiate the claim of Davis’ complicity in the assassination, and so a charge of treason was instead levelled at Davis, for his role in the recent Civil War. It soon became a trial test to finally determine in the highest courts of law that secession was treasonous.
The executive branch had attempted just such a thing half a century before when charges of treason were levelled at Aaron Burr for his role in a plot to secede the recently-acquired western lands and create his own country.
Burr was acquitted of treason on the grounds that he had not engaged in an “overt act,” which was a requirement of treason as specified by the U.S. Constitution. This would be the very same argument Jefferson Davis’ lawyers would pursue in his treason trial.
It took nearly two years for the federal government to bring formal charges against Jefferson Davis, a delay that castigated the already harried President Johnson, who was facing impeachment proceedings from Congress.
The country had been bloodied, physically and spiritually, during the four years of civil war. The federal occupation of the south following the war, and the continued economic depression elsewhere, had cooled the blood of even the hottest, most fervent Unionists.
Nowhere was this most evident than in the case against Jefferson Davis. When he was finally accused of treason, his bail was set in 1867 for the equivalent of $1 million in today’s money.
More surprising than the size of the bail was the list of 20 wealthy men who ponied up – which included three of the fiercest Unionists in the country.
Gerrit Smith, who was one of six financiers who had supported John Brown’s aborted attempt to take the arsenal at Harpers Ferry before the war, was one of these men, and so too was Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Perhaps the most surprising benefactor of the former Confederate leader was Horace Greeley. The excitable publisher of the New York Tribune had urged readers “Forward to Richmond!” when the war broke out.
When pressed to explain why they were helping Davis, each one expressed his displeasure at the federal government’s prosecution of the trial, namely that they were not granting Davis a timely trial, which is a hallmark of the American justice system.
Davis’ case finally appeared before the circuit court in Virginia Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 1868. By this time, the government was not convinced it had enough support or legal backing to successfully try Davis for treason.
Rather than risk an unfavorable ruling, and in light of the bitter opposition he faced in Congress, President Johnson signed his proclamation granting amnesty to all who had participated in the late rebellion on Christmas Day, 1868.
There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis did not receive a speedy trial, but the absolution of the leader of the rebellion left a bad taste in many Unionists’ mouths.
In reality, however, Davis’ trial was a perfect encapsulation of the failed attempt to reconstruct America following the war.
In the brief few years of federal supervision of official proceedings in the south, recently freed slaves began to enjoy a level of civic participation that had seemed all by impossible five years before.
The first African Americans were elected to U.S. Congress and to a slew of local and state offices. It was looking as if America would make good on its promise to the millions who had been enslaved.
In Davis’ trial, the first ever-integrated jury in the state of Virginia had been called and the seven black and five white jurors were ready to do their duty.
But at the crest of this movement towards integration, just as things were beginning to look good, federal support vanished.
No sooner did the federal troops pull out of the south than white vigilantes, wearing white hoods, brutalized the former enslaved population, stringing them up in trees and permanently stifling their all-too-brief taste of real freedom.
Apologists will say that the federal occupation of the south was unconstitutional, or that it was starting to cause the same sort of friction that had led to the war in the first place. This is certainly true.
But it is also true that at the risk of creating another civil war, the federal government sacrificed millions of African Americans and damned millions more in future generations to the deprivations of a Jim Crow south.
Those lucky few who had been elected to office in the heady days of emancipation would be the last to hold such office for a century or more in some states.
The trial against Jefferson Davis was just one of many unfulfilled promises that left America as divided as ever. We are still grappling with those unresolved issues to this day.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.