9. Robert E. Lee and other Confederate officers were protected from treason charges after the Civil War
It was not until the winter of 1864-65 that it became evident that the Confederacy was collapsing and the brutal war with its horrendous casualty lists was coming to an end. In the Union, there was a growing pressure to seize the Confederate leaders for imprisonment as traitors who had committed treason against the United States. Many of the military leaders of the South had violated their oaths of allegiance to the United States at the start of the conflict. The most vocal in the North called for the severe punishment of the South and its people for starting the war, and for carrying it out for so long a time. When Union General Grant first pushed Lee’s army to Appomattox Court House and then accepted his surrender, he extended a general clemency to all who had served, including Lee himself.
When Joseph Johnston surrendered to William Sherman it was under even more generous terms than those which had been offered Lee, though the War Department refused to honor them and started an uproar in Washington political circles. Nonetheless, the amnesty offered to military members of the Confederacy held. Thus the perpetrators of one of the most harmful treasonous acts in American history were never charged with the crime, and were instead treated with generosity in the field by the troops and officers which had defeated them. The clemency extended to the troops of the Confederacy did not extend to political leaders and other influential southerners who had supported the war, and motives of vengeance led to demands for their punishment, either by imprisonment or death.