With the airing of the 3-part
Grant mini-series on the History Channel, I created this thread for the
US Civil War discussion.
After seeing
Grant Part I, I was impressed with the huge level of detail in the Wikipedia page for
The Battle of Shiloh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ShilohIt had a lot more information than the History Channel's own site.
When the series ended, I ran across an article that detailed how
General Robert E. Lee was indicted for treason by a grand jury, seven weeks after Appomattox. Both the judge and new President Andrew Johnson wanted a trial and conviction.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169189The article was written by John Reeves, promoting his new book,
The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: the Forgotten Case Against an American Icon (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
General Grant intended that the Confederate soldiers would not face treason trials and severe punishments. His agreement with Lee at Appomattox concluded, “each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by the United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”
[General] Grant fiercely objected to the decision to indict Lee and the other Confederate leaders. In a letter on Lee’s behalf to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Grant wrote:
In my opinion the officers and men paroled at Appomattox C.H. and since upon the same terms given to Lee, can not be tried for treason so long as they observe the terms of their parole…. I will state further that the terms granted by me met with the hearty approval of the President at the time, and of the country generally. The action of Judge Underwood in Norfolk has already had an injurious effect, and I would ask that he be ordered to quash all indictments found against paroled prisoners of war, and to desist from further prosecution of them.