It was during this investigation that the evidence given by Secretaries Seward and Stanton and by Attorney-Generals Speed and Stansbery, demonstrated the utter futility of an attempt to establish complicity in the assassination on the part of Davis, Thompson and the rest, by witnesses who had been shown, in other cases, to be unworthy of a moment's belief.
While the impeachers were in the very act of pursuing the President as an accomplice in the murder of Abraham Lincoln, while the mighty Bingham, who had so eloquently defended President Johnson before the Military Commission against the charge of usurpation of power, and so bitterly denounced Jefferson Davis for alluding to Johnson as "The Beast," now, with a complete change of tune, was clamoring for the impeachment of "his beloved Commander-in-Chief;"--Jefferson Davis, himself, is brought, by direction of the Secretary of War, in obedience to a writ of habeas corpus, before the United States Court at Richmond; there, without a word of remonstrance, transferred to the custody of the civil authority; and forthwith discharged on bail, Horace Greeley, who had never seen him before, becoming one of his bondsmen. Since that day in May, 1867, no attempt has ever been made to call the ex-President of the Southern Confederacy to account as one of the conspirators in the murder of Lincoln. Clay had been let go on parole as long before as April 19th, 1866; his property was restored to him in February, 1867; and proceedings under an indictment found against him for treason and conspiracy, indefinitely suspended on the 26th of March of the same year. Thompson and Sanders and Tucker returned to their country and appeared unmolested amongst us. Jefferson Davis died recently full of years and honors. At the death of Thompson, the flags of the Interior Department were lowered half-mast. Tucker was appointed to office not long ago by President Harrison. And all this, notwithstanding the Judge-Advocate had assured the Military Commission that the guilt of these men was as clear as the guilt of Booth or of Surratt, notwithstanding the Military Commission under his guidance so found, and, had these men been present before that tribunal, would doubtless have hung them on the same scaffold with Mrs. Surratt.