Jefferson Davis stood accused of treason, piracy, and complicity in the murder of five hundred soldiers at Andersonville Prison. Northerners, among them Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt, put up Davis’s bail. The most influential Northerners had lost their appetite for prosecuting him. They would either create a martyr or, if they failed to convict, cast doubt on the northern version of the war. The judge in the Davis proceeding suspended the trial indefinitely, and Davis went free.
