Jefferson Davis Case

Jefferson Davis Case in the United States

Background

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was president of the Confederate states in the American Civil War.

After the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston in April 1865, President Davis attempted to make his way, through Georgia, across the Mississippi, in the vain hope of continuing the war with the forces of Generals Smith and Magruder. He was taken prisoner on the 10th of May by Federal troops near Irwinville, Irwin county, Georgia, and was brought back to Old Point, Virginia, in order to be confined in prison at Fortress Monroe. In prison he was chained and treated with great severity. (1)

The case

He was indicted for treason by a Virginia grand jury, persistent efforts were made to connect him with the assassination of President Lincoln, he was unjustly charged with having deliberately and wilfully caused the sufferings and deaths of Union prisoners at Andersonville and for two years he was denied trial or bail. Such treatment aroused the sympathy of the Southern people, who regarded him as a martyr to their cause, and in a great measure restored him to that place in their esteem which by the close of the war he had lost. It also aroused a general feeling in the North, and when finally he was admitted to bail (in May 1867), Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and others in that section who had been his political opponents, became his sureties. Charles O’Conor, a leader of the New York bar, volunteered to act as his counsel. With him was associated Robert Ould of Richmond, a lawyer of great ability. They moved to quash the indictment on which he was brought to trial. Chief Justice Chase and Judge John C. Underwood constituted the United States circuit court sitting for Virginia before which the case was brought in December 1868; the court was divided, the chief justice voting to sustain the motion and Underwood to overrule it. The matter was thereupon certified to the Supreme Court of the United States, but as the general amnesty of the 25th of December 1868 included Davis, an order of “nolle prosequi” was entered in February 1869, and Davis and his bondsmen were thereupon released. (2)

After the Release

After his release he visited Europe, and spent the last years of his life in retirement, during which he wrote his Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols., 1881). In these volumes he attempted to vindicate his administration, and in so doing he attacked the records of those generals he disliked. He also wrote a Short History of the Confederate States of America (1890). (3)

Resources

Notes and References

  1. Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)
  2. Id.
  3. Id.

See Also

Further Reading

F. H. Alfriend’s Life of Jefferson Davis (Cincinnati, 1868), which defended him from the charges of incompetence and despotism brought against him; E. A. Pollard’s Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of the Southern Confederacy (Philadelphia, 1869), a somewhat partisan arraignment by a prominent Southern journalist; and W. E. Dodd’s Jefferson Davis (Philadelphia, 1907), which embodies the results of recent historical research. The Prison Life of Jefferson Davis (New York, 1866) by John J. Craven (d. 1893), a Federal army surgeon who was Davis’s physician at Fortress Monroe, was long popular; it gives a vivid and sympathetic picture of Mr Davis as a prisoner, but its authenticity and accuracy have been questioned.


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