Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 1.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[324]

It has been asserted that Davis is responsible for the death by exposure and famine of our captured soldiers; and his official position gives plausibility to the charge. Yet while Henry Wirz — a miserable wretch — a mere tool of tools — was long ago arraigned, tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged for this crime — no charge has been officially preferred against Davis. So we presume none is to be.

The Tribune kept up repeating this demand during the following part of that year, and admonished the Government of the increasing absurdity of its position, not daring, seemingly, to prosecute a great criminal against whom it had officially declared it was possessed of evidence to prove that crime. On November 9th, 1866, the Tribune again thus emphasized this thought:

Eighteen months have nearly elapsed since Jefferson Davis was made a State prisoner. He had previously been publicly charged by the President of the United States with conspiring to assassinate President Lincoln, and $100,000 offered for his capture thereupon. The capture was promptly made and the money duly paid; yet, up to this hour, there has not been even an attempt made by the Government to procure an indictment on that charge. He has also been popularly, if not officially, accused of complicity in the virtual murder of Union soldiers while prisoners of war, by subjecting them to needless, inhuman exposure, privation and abuse; but no official attempt has been made to indict him on that charge. * * A great government may deal sternly with offenders, but not meanly; it cannot afford to seem unwilling to repair an obvious wrong.

The Government, however, continued to express its inability to proceed with the trial. Another year had passed since the capture of Mr. Davis, and now another attempt to liberate him by bail was to be made. The Government, by its conduct, having tacitly abandoned those special charges of inhumanity, a petition for a writ was to be presented, by which the prisoner might be handed over to the civil authority to answer the indictment for treason. In aid of this project, Mr. Wilson, chairman of the Committee of Military Affairs, offered in the Senate, on the 18th of March, 1867, a resolution urging the Government to proceed with the trial. The remarkable thoughts and language of that resolution were observed at the time, and necessarily caused people to infer that Mr. Wilson, at least, was not under the too common delusion that the Government really had a case on either of those two particular charges against Mr. Davis individually; and a short time after this Mr. Wilson went to Fortress Monroe and saw Mr. Davis. The visit was simply friendly, and not for any purpose relating to his liberation.

On May 14th, 1867, Mr. Davis was delivered to the civil authority; was at once admitted to bail, Mr. Greeley and Mr. Gerrit Smith going personally to Richmond, in attestation of their belief that wrong had been done to Mr. Davis in holding him so long accused