Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 37.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[251] 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 these 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 14, 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 upon those charges, now abandoned, and as an expression of magnanimity toward the South. Commodore Vanderbilt, then but recently the recipient of the thanks of Congress for his superb aid to the Government during the war, was also represented there, and signed the bond through Mr. Horace F. Clark, his son-in-law, and Mr. Augustus Schell, his friend.

The apparent unwillingness of the Government to prosecute, under every incentive of pride and honor to prosecute, was accepted by those gentlemen and the others whom I have mentioned as a confirmation of the information given to me at Montreal, and of its entire accuracy.

These men—Andrew, Greeley, Smith and Wilson—have each passed from this life. The history of their efforts to bring all parts of our common country once more and abidingly into unity, peace and concord,¹ and of Mr. Greeley's enormous sacrifice to compel justice to be done to one man, and he an enemy, should be written.

I will add a single incident tending the same way. In a consultation with Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, at his residence on Capitol Hill, at Washington, in May, 1866, he related to me how the Chief of this Military Bureau showed him ‘the evidence’ upon which the proclamation was issued charging Davis and Clay with complicity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. He