Guilty of treason

Shortly after the death of Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee are hauled off to Washington and stand trial with Mary Surrat and the other Lincoln conspirators and are found guilty and sentenced to hang. The executions are carried out a week later, Lee is shot by firing squad, Davis by hanging.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Shortly after the death of Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee are hauled off to Washington and stand trial with Mary Surrat and the other Lincoln conspirators and are found guilty and sentenced to hang. The executions are carried out a week later, Lee is shot by firing squad, Davis by hanging.
Traitors die a traitor's death (except for Lee, who deserves hanging but won't get it) and the Lost Causers actually get some "martyrs" to weep over.

Other than that, maybe some riots or an odd revenge-killing over Lee's execution, but I suspect that'd be about it.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
Traitors die a traitor's death (except for Lee, who deserves hanging but won't get it) and the Lost Causers actually get some "martyrs" to weep over.

Other than that, maybe some riots or an odd revenge-killing over Lee's execution, but I suspect that'd be about it
.Depending how soon all this happens, there is no way that Joe Johnston or Beauregard, or Kirby Smith or Richard Taylor surrender their armies if they get the idea that they're looking at the same fate.

It is known that Sherman informed Johnston about Lincoln's assassination after the Bentonville battle, and some discussion was made about Confederate culpibility in the plot.

Would all of this change Sherman's instructions from Grant?

Stay tuned.
 
your looking at a very bloody reconstruction. not only will the remaining rebel armies go gorilla, theirs a good chance you have terrorist groups forming out of men from the AoV. those men loved lee and his execution would give them an excuse to fight again.
 
So like OTL Reconstruction, only more obvious about it being terrorism.

Making this point because it isn't as if there wasn't an attempt to derail Reconstruction using violence OTL, something that seems to be minimized whenever people treat it as if a treatment of the surrendered Confederates as something other than "welcome back into the Union" with minimal consequences would have meant oceans of blood and mountains of carrion (poetic terms of exaggeration mine).
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Davis, I can see. Indeed, many people at the time expected it.

Lee, I cannot see. Even assuming that Northern public opinion wouldn't have been outraged, wouldn't the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia have made such an execution illegal?
 
General; In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly [exchanged], and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked, and stacked, and turned over to the officers appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by the United States authorities so long as they observe their paroles, and the laws in force where they may reside.



Italics mine. Source: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/appomatx.htm


So I'd say yes (to it being barred by the terms of surrender). Trying Lee for treason would definitely be violation of the part of not being disturbed by the US authorities.
 

So I'd say yes (to it being barred by the terms of surrender). Trying Lee for treason would definitely be violation of the part of not being disturbed by the US authorities.
But would anyone (aside from Grant) concern themselves with that? I have a hard time imagining Thaddeus Stevens even caring...
 
But would anyone (aside from Grant) concern themselves with that? I have a hard time imagining Thaddeus Stevens even caring...

I don't. Why? Because Lee lived OTL. That means Stevens was willing to accept it.

Stevens was not a raging psychotic monster who wanted to drown the South in blood, much as those who think the Radicals were EVAL for actually wanting to have any consequences for rebellion at all as opposed to the Destroy Reconstruction terrorists and the...okay, I'll put it this way.

Johnson should never have been president. Ever.

Pardon the mini-rant, I just find the idea that the Radicals were the bad guys to be up there with the idea Germany was betrayed in WWI and that the Catholic Church was the root of all evil in the Middle Ages.

That if such an agreement hadn't been made that Stevens would support having Lee shot is another story, though. That at least makes some sort of sense.

I think most of the army would be with Grant to a greater or lesser extent (not necessarily to the point of threatening to resign, but certainly giving a similar opinion if asked).
 
I agree that the Radical Republicans weren't evil. What I meant was that I don't think Stevens considered Grant to have had the power to make enforceable promises. As far as he was concerned, Lee was a traitor who deserved death until and unless he was pardoned by the President himself. The reason he eventually reconciled himself to Lee's living, I think, was that he saw it would do more harm than good to reconciling the South to staying in the Union. (Of course, there's always the possibility that Stevens didn't have anything to do with the charges against Lee being dismissed.)
 
I agree that the Radical Republicans weren't evil. What I meant was that I don't think Stevens considered Grant to have had the power to make enforceable promises. As far as he was concerned, Lee was a traitor who deserved death until and unless he was pardoned by the President himself. The reason he eventually reconciled himself to Lee's living, I think, was that he saw it would do more harm than good to reconciling the South to staying in the Union. (Of course, there's always the possibility that Stevens didn't have anything to do with the charges against Lee being dismissed.)

I don't know if he did or not, but there's a difference between advocating for Lee to be tried as a traitor with the argument Grant didn't have the authority and just ignoring Grant's agreement.

After all, the former had to get the approval of others, who may or may not have agreed with that position (whether or not they agreed with Stevens on Lee).
 
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