Treason on Trial: the United States V. Jefferson Davis'

H-Nationalism Walser on Icenhauer-Ramirez, 'Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis'

Review published on Monday, March 29, 2021

Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez. Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. 376 pp. $55.00 (cloth),ISBN 978-0-8071-7080-9.

Reviewed by Heather C. Walser (The Pennsylvania State University) Published on H-Nationalism (March, 2021) Commissioned by Evan C. Rothera (University of Arkansas - Fort Smith)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=56425

In Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez explores why the United States failed to prosecute Jefferson Davis for treason in the years following the US Civil War. When federal troops arrested the former Confederate president outside of Irwinville, Georgia, in the early morning hours of May 10, 1865, few questioned whether Davis would face treason charges. Considering Davis’s role as the leader of the Confederacy, accusations about his involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and President Andrew Johnson’s well-known stance regarding the need to make treason “odious,” prosecution of Davis seemed inevitable. But as Icenhauer-Ramirez skillfully demonstrates, any efforts to successfully try Davis for treason hinged on the capabilities and willingness of multiple individuals involved in the prosecution. According toTreason on Trial, the inability of the prosecution to determine when and where Davis should be tried, the reluctance of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase to actively participate in the case in his role as judge, and the skillful use of the countless delays by Davis’s attorneys and wife crippled the prosecution and resulted in Davis’s release from federal custody in December 1868 as a free, and fully pardoned, man.

Davis’s trial, or more appropriately lack thereof, has piqued the interest of multiple historians in recent years, but Icenhauer-Ramirez approaches the subject with a more focused lens, choosing to examine the prosecution from “the perspective of the individuals involved and their actions” (p. xii). Arguing many of the constitutional issues surrounding Davis’s trial, like the question about the legality of secession, and maintaining that national politics were actually secondary to the “actions and decisions of lesser-known men and women” in the failure to prosecute Davis, Icenhauer-Ramirez provides a detailed play-by-play of how and why Davis avoided trial and potentially, execution for treason. As he traces the story from Davis’s arrest through the various trial delays, attorney changes, legal arguments, and ultimately, President Johnson’s pardon on December 25, 1868, Icenhauer- Ramirez focuses on how the “lives and experiences” of those intimately involved in the process shaped and reshaped the outcome of the trial (p. ix). The cast of characters in this story includes Davis and his wife, Varina; a handful of attorney generals, including James Speed, Henry Stanbery, and William Evarts; the chief justice of the United States, Chase; US attorney Lucius Chandler; US district judge John C. Underwood; and Davis’s defense attorney, Charles O’Conor. Each plays an important role in determining Davis’s fate.

Building his argument from close and detailed readings of the correspondence and diaries of these

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Walser on Icenhauer-Ramirez, 'Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis'. H-Nationalism. 03-29-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/reviews/7496062/walser-icenhauer-ramirez-treason-trial-united-states-v-jefferson Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Nationalism men and women, Icenhauer-Ramirez identifies four important themes that seem to shape the outcome of the trial more than other factors: the inexperience of the district attorney Chandler, the confusion created by the rotation of attorneys general under Johnson, the political ambitions of Chase and his reluctance to participate in the trial, and the ability of the defense attorneys and Varina Davis to recraft Jefferson Davis’s image throughout his imprisonment. Chandler’s lack of preparation for the indictment and the replacement of Attorney General Speed with Stanbery, who was far less interested in prosecuting Davis, hampered the ability of the prosecution to build a strong case early on. Meanwhile, Chase’s arms-length approach to presiding over the trial and constant delays in hopes of garnering a presidential nomination first allowed plenty of time for the defense to soften Davis’s image and begin convincing the public that the federal government was hesitant to even try Davis. While Icenhauer-Ramirez wisely avoids placing blame on a single person or event for the failure of the federal government’s prosecution of Davis, he convincingly demonstrates how each of these factors combined to make it nearly impossible for the trial to occur, let alone for the government to obtain a conviction.

One of the highlights of Treason on Trial is the author’s ability to skillfully weave courtroom and legal analysis into the story of the trial. In one of the moments when the actors appear in court, Icenhauer- Ramirez points out to the reader how the “federal prosecutor missed an excellent opportunity” and presents a handful of arguments the young prosecutor could have made instead to strengthen his case (p. 185). Later, in an effort to explain why Chandler might not have been adequately prepared, Icenhauer-Ramirez uses personal experience to argue that “uncertainty about if or when a case will be tried can often lead to unpreparedness” as “an attorney who believes that a case will not be tried will find it exceptionally difficult to prepare with the intensity necessary” (p. 222). Moments like this provide important context for readers unfamiliar with the realities of legal practice and help emphasize the many contingencies involved in the efforts to prosecute Davis.

Treason on Trial is noteworthy because of the different approach it takes to a topic that scholars have become increasingly interested in. Icenhauer-Ramirez claims that Cynthia Nicoletti’s award-winning book, Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis (2017), which argues that the government “sought to mitigate the war’s disruption of the regular legal process by selecting a test case that would prove a final determination of secession’s constitutional and the war’s legitimacy,” is a “bold proposition, but the historical evidence is unconvincing” (p. xii). Instead, according to Icenhauer-Ramirez, the concerns about secession only emerged once the prosecuting lawyers became “convinced that the trial was pointless and used the argument as motivation for Johnson to concur in their request to dismiss the prosecution” (p. xiii). By focusing on the decisions individuals made and the legal minutiae instead of larger political and constitutional questions, Icenhauer-Ramirez tells a different story than Nicoletti but one that ultimately has the same outcome—a failure to prosecute Davis. Icenhauer-Ramirez, like Nicoletti, suggests that this failure has important implications for understanding the development of the Lost Cause and its understanding about the constitutionality of secession. However, because Treason on Trial is grounded in the individual actors and their choices, instead of larger constitutional issues like secession or national political movements surrounding Reconstruction, it occasionally struggles to clearly relate how the difficulties Davis’s prosecution faced connect to this larger context. While it serves as a powerful reminder of how important seemingly familiar narratives on a smaller scale can be, Treason on Trial is at its best when it is read alongside other books, like Nicoletti’s or William Blair’sWith Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (2014), that offer additional context to its story.

Even though the many details Icenhauer-Ramirez provides can occasionally be a bit tedious and distract from the larger picture, Treason on Trial is well written and easily accessible for many different readers. It is certainly a must read for legal scholars of Reconstruction, and Civil War scholars will benefit from reconsidering why the federal government failed to prosecute Davis for treason and what that meant for the success of Reconstruction and American jurisprudence.

Citation: Heather C. Walser. Review of Icenhauer-Ramirez, Robert,Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. March, 2021.URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56425

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.