WI Andrew Johnson hanged Jeff Davis?

[dcharles]

I was recently listening to an anecdote about Andrew Johnson's disastrous speaking tour/campaign back when he was trying to whip up sentiment against the Radicals. Apparently, once someone heckled him when he was in the middle of his stump speech, shouting "hang Jeff Davis!" Johnson retorted that they should hang Thad Stevens, and everything descended into chaos from there.

But this was the same Johnson who, after Lincoln's assassination, paced the floor all night, muttering darkly to himself how "they would pay..."

So WI Andrew Johnson, in a fit of pique after Lincoln is assassinated, puts the rush on the trial and execution of one Jefferson Davis?

 

[CHKeeley]

Besides the fact that we need a more plausible motivator for Johnson (we are talking about the man who issued blanket amnesties here, he would never do this barring more radical changes) this would also go to the courts. While you can get the federal government to prosecute instead of dallying like OTL, Johnson can’t just unilaterally hang Davis. Important Confederate leaders being tried for treason is interesting, but I think with the state of judicial opinion at the time there was a real fear that treason charges wouldn’t hold up in court which would be a major political embarrassment.

 

[Wade Hampton V]

Harry Turtledove actually has a pretty good short story addressing this, Must and Shall if I recall the name correctly. Good read. To address the question, if you hang Davis it just opens the door. If Davis, why not Stephens, Benjamin, the rest of the CS Congress, Lee, Johnston, etc. etc? Sounds like a quick recipe for chaos once that ball starts rolling.

 

[dcharles]

Besides the fact that we need a more plausible motivator for Johnson (we are talking about the man who issued blanket amnesties here, he would never do this barring more radical changes)

He was actually pretty hard in the very beginning. As for other motivators, I can't imagine what you mean. There's almost a million war dead, an assassinated president, and a radical congress that wants to hang Jeff Davis. Andrew Johnson was also one of the top three or four most volatile individuals to be president. He's up there with Nixon, Trump, and Jackson.

Find one that you believe in and give it to Johnson.

this would also go to the courts.
While you can get the federal government to prosecute instead of dallying like OTL, Johnson can’t just unilaterally hang Davis.

I mean, obviously. He can also put someone in charge of the case that ensures the result.

Important Confederate leaders being tried for treason is interesting, but I think with the state of judicial opinion at the time there was a real fear that treason charges wouldn’t hold up in court which would be a major political embarrassment.

He might have an outside chance in a civilian court in the right state. I don't see a court martial acquitting Jefferson Davis at all.

 

[dcharles]

Harry Turtledove actually has a pretty good short story addressing this, Must and Shall if I recall the name correctly. Good read. To address the question, if you hang Davis it just opens the door. If Davis, why not Stephens, Benjamin, the rest of the CS Congress, Lee, Johnston, etc. etc? Sounds like a quick recipe for chaos once that ball starts rolling.

I mean, was it chaos after WW2 when we brought a few Nazis to justice?

Not really.

With all it's flaws, Nuremberg provides a good basic template to answer all those questions. You apportion guilt based on proximate cause, just like you do with anything.

 

[jmc247]

He might have an outside chance in a civilian court in the right state. I don't see a court martial acquitting Jefferson Davis at all.

The US Constitution demands treason charges be tried where (meaning the state) it was accused of occurring. They did that for a reason as they fully expected armed disputes between states to devolve into accusations of treason. A military trial could be controlled by the WH not so much a civilian trial.

As for Davis himself he was at least for several decades after the war the scapegoat in the South for both secession and for all the military and political mistakes the South made during the war. It wasn't until the start of the 20th century that historians started revising that due to the reality that he like his VP warned their states they were jumping off a cliff though both said they had a Constitutional right to do so.

The biggest impact of making Davis a martyr which killing him would have done would have been to promote Davis in the minds of southerners as well as his total resistance concept he had at the end of the war meaning insurgent action and generally treating the US government forces a foreign occupier.

General Forrest became the post war replacement model for many southerners having one hand in national politics meaning going to the Democratic National Convention and hobnobbing in NYC and one hand on the sword by night.

 

[dcharles]

The US Constitution demands treason charges be tried where (meaning the state) it was accused of occurring. They did that for a reason as they fully expected armed disputes between states to devolve into accusations of treason. A military trial could be controlled by the WH not so much a civilian trial.

Lol, this is making me imagine the trial of Davis being held in Wheeling, West Virginia. When Davis gets the news, his ::gulp:: can be heard all the way in San Francisco.

The biggest impact of making Davis a martyr which killing him would have done would have been to promote Davis in the minds of southerners as well as his total resistance concept he had at the end of the war meaning insurgent action and generally treating the US government forces a foreign occupier.

I've always thought the idea that the South *didn't* embrace total resistance mystifying. Total resistance is pretty much the history of OTL for the next 100 years. It's hard to get more total than a decades long campaign of terror and murder.

I guess the only other step would be refusing to pledge loyalty to the US at all, and carrying the ghost of a crypto CSA into the 20th century. Which would keep more of the most violent out of electoral politics altogether...

That's kind of an interesting idea.

 

[jmc247]

I've always thought that the South *didn't* embrace total resistance mystifying. Total resistance is pretty much the history of OTL for the next 100 years. It's hard to get more total than a decades long campaign of terror and murder.

I guess the only other step would be refusing to pledge loyalty to the US at all, and carrying the ghost of a crypto CSA into the 20th century. Which would keep more of the most violent out of electoral politics altogether...

That's kind of an interesting idea.

Resistance while being inside the government is not the same as resistance while being outside the government.

The Forrest concept was that the Confederacy could defacto live on while being part of the United States and with southerners in the government. My sense is Davis didn't believe in a hybrid strategy or the honor in it.

 

[Odinson]

Besides the fact that we need a more plausible motivator for Johnson (we are talking about the man who issued blanket amnesties here, he would never do this barring more radical changes) this would also go to the courts. While you can get the federal government to prosecute instead of dallying like OTL, Johnson can’t just unilaterally hang Davis. Important Confederate leaders being tried for treason is interesting, but I think with the state of judicial opinion at the time there was a real fear that treason charges wouldn’t hold up in court which would be a major political embarrassment.

According to one Grant biography, Johnson planned on having Lee and Davis be tried as traitors, and planned to have them hanged because the Judge who would oversee the trial would have more or less guaranteed it, but Grant threatened to resign in Summer of 1865 if he did so, so Johnson backed off.

 

[jmc247]

According to one Grant biography, Johnson planned on having Lee and Davis be tried as traitors, and planned to have them hanged because the Judge who would oversee the trial would have more or less guaranteed it, but Grant threatened to resign in Summer of 1865 if he did so, so Johnson backed off.

Right after the trials of the Lincoln assassins proved popular there was a movement in that direction yes and the gears moved a little bit. But, he quickly figured out the idea would have been incredibly unpopular in the North not to mention with the Union Army.

 

[dcharles]

According to one Grant biography, Johnson planned on having Lee and Davis be tried as traitors, and planned to have them hanged because the Judge who would oversee the trial would have more or less guaranteed it, but Grant threatened to resign in Summer of 1865 if he did so, so Johnson backed off.

That's very interesting, because it opens up the possibility for a coalition of contempt between AJ and the Radicals.

So Johnson goes ahead with the trials of Lee and Davis, Grant resigns.

What next? Does Grant run on an Amnesty platform, prefiguring the Liberal Republican coalition?

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

One must recall that Johnson was a partisan Democrat.

He had been a hard-war Democrat, which is why he was on the ticket in 1865. (BTW, he was the only VP nominee who could not bring any home-state advantage to the ticket.) And as a "poor white" who'd climbed to success, he bitterly resented the plantation elite, whom he once described as "a swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy". (That was in response to a remark in the Senate by Jefferson Davis!)

But after the war... He had no interest in advancing the condition of blacks, nor the political reach of the Republican Party. And I think that to a degree he was co-opted by the deferential attentions of prominent Southerners in the immediate post-war period.

Unless something happened to convert him to the Radical Republican cause, he was going to slide over to "Conservative Reconstruction".

 

[BELFAST]

Besides the fact that we need a more plausible motivator for Johnson (we are talking about the man who issued blanket amnesties here, he would never do this barring more radical changes) this would also go to the courts. While you can get the federal government to prosecute instead of dallying like OTL, Johnson can’t just unilaterally hang Davis. Important Confederate leaders being tried for treason is interesting, but I think with the state of judicial opinion at the time there was a real fear that treason charges wouldn’t hold up in court which would be a major political embarrassment.

Indeed.
if aquitted it might set a precedent that rebellion is not treason or worse that a state seceding from the union was not illegal.

 

[dcharles]

One must recall that Johnson was a partisan Democrat.

But the coalitions were fluid. This was an era of a great deal of partisan resorting. Even the Radicals who wanted to nominate Fremont in 64 had a Democrat as his running mate. Cochrane, I believe. So I think there's a possibility, as we witnessed in East Tennessee OTL in the Brownlow years, that a coalition of punishment arises across the South. Black civil rights are a whole different thing, and a tension at the heart of the coalition.

But with adequate protection from guerillas and harsh punishments for ex Confederates, the Scalawags might have become a permanent feature of the Southern political landscape. Egalitarianism was surprisingly popular in the upcountry. The KKK guys of that era talked about it in the memoirs they would write in the 1880s and 90s-that people in the black belt knew how to maintain hierarchy, but the people in the hills got the wrong ideas with all this due process and general welfare and so forth. Some of them even attributed the need to have a KKK to that fact.

 

[Don Corleone]

Indeed.
if aquitted it might set a precedent that rebellion is not treason or worse that a state seceding from the union was not illegal.

Which would technically be correct - neither the Constitution nor federal statutes prohibited secession. Texas v White didn't happen until 1869.

Which is why the issue divided the Radical Republicans. The opponents felt that the rule of law must be obeyed, even when it benefits bad people, and going ahead with treason charges wouldn't be in accordance with the rule of law.

 

[Odinson]

That's very interesting, because it opens up the possibility for a coalition of contempt between AJ and the Radicals.

So Johnson goes ahead with the trials of Lee and Davis, Grant resigns.

What next? Does Grant run on an Amnesty platform, prefiguring the Liberal Republican coalition?

The Attorney General, James Speed, Judge John C. Underwood, and General Benjamin Butler were in favor of trying Lee and Davis (and Underwood had even indicted Lee in OTL IIRC), and Underwood was even willing to pack the jury to get a guilty verdict. I doubt Grant would run on an amnesty platform considering he beat the Army of Northern Virginia, and stomped on the Klan when it rose up in OTL. Johnson knew being politically allied to Grant was necessary for public support, so if Grant resigns, Johnson probably won't do so. But lets say Johnson goes ahead after being properly motivated. If this is mid 1865/early 1866, the northern public is behind him, as are the radicals in congress. Davis is hung, possibly Lee as well. Afterwards we see an uptick in violence in the southern states. Tennessee is probably the only southern state brought back in during Johnson's term. Might see an uneasy partnership between Johnson and the radicals that lasts to 1868. Johnson wanted to use the poor whites of the south as a political base, but he hated secessionists. If the violence gets too bad, its possible (and this is a HUGE stretch) we might see Johnson pragmatically accept some of the radical's policies as a way to keep down the guerrillas in the south, but its more probable that Johnson alienates the radicals while still being militant to the bushwackers in the southern states.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Which would technically be correct - neither the Constitution nor federal statutes prohibited secession. Texas v White didn't happen until 1869.

Umm. The Supreme Court does not make law. In Texas v. White, the Court found that secession was not permitted under the Constitution, and never had been. More precisely, the Court found that a declaration of secession, and any acts by a legislature in furtherance of such a declaration, or under authority purportedly granted by such a declaration, are void.

As stated in Article Six of the Constitution, the supremacy of Federal law cannot be altered by a state, and remains binding on everyone in the state, regardless of anything in the state's laws or constitution.

 

[EWHM]

I recall my great-grandmother singing that song---about hanging Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree. It was a popular song during the Civil war.

 

[Don Corleone]

Umm. The Supreme Court does not make law. In Texas v. White, the Court found that secession was not permitted under the Constitution, and never had been. More precisely, the Court found that a declaration of secession, and any acts by a legislature in furtherance of such a declaration, or under authority purportedly granted by such a declaration, are void.

As stated in Article Six of the Constitution, the supremacy of Federal law cannot be altered by a state, and remains binding on everyone in the state, regardless of anything in the state's laws or constitution.

But you can't use that as grounds to prosecute someone. You can nullify the actions of the states that seceded, but you can't imprison or execute individuals who didn't break an existing rule.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

But you can't use that as grounds to prosecute someone. You can nullify the actions of the states that seceded, but you can't imprison or execute individuals who didn't break an existing rule.

Jeff Davis and Co. committed numerous violent crimes against the United States, including theft and destruction of federal property, assault and murder of US Army and Navy personnel, coercion of US citizens to join in the above crimes, and murder of citizens who refused to do so.

Because the rebels were (unofficially?) recognized as belligerents engaged in war, these actions were considered as acts of war, not ordinary crimes. Soldiers of a foreign government committing such acts could be made prisoners of war, but would be exempt from criminal charges. However, the "Confederates" were US citizens: in making war on the United States, they committed treason. The purported declarations of secession were void, and had no effect on this.

Texas v. White merely confirmed the nullity of secession.

As to why there were no treason trials after the War: IMO, there was a general perception that the rebellion was a collective act by "the South". Furthermore, "the South" had been severely punished in the course of the War: hundreds of thousands dead, cities burned down, etc., and that was enough.