The Case of Jefferson Davis.
It is reported that a writ of habeas corpus has been granted in the case of Jefferson Davis, and that the United States Government have ordered the commanding General at Fortress Monroe to deliver him to the civil officers. It will appear upon the investigation that he is held by the military authority of the United States upon a charge of complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, preferred by the President. If the Court decides not to release him he will, of course, be imprisoned, and in quarters less agreeable than Fortress Monroe. If it inclines to a different decision, how can it release upon bail a man so accused and of such a crime? The charge must be established or withdrawn. As for treason, is it necessary again to invoke a court to decide a question which the war has settled? Suppose Jefferson Davis were tried for treason and the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. What is the consequence? Simply that if he were not guilty the United States Government was. Is it not exquisitely absurd to run the risk of such a result? The moment it was clear that he could not wisely be tried, Davis, like Stephens, should have been released upon his parole.—Harper's Weekly. The same paper of May 25, says:—when Jefferson Davis was caught running away in his wife's petticoats, if he had been summarily tried, convicted, and executed as a rebel in arms against the Government, the public opinion of the country and of mankind would probably have justified the act. We are glad that such was not his fate, although it very soon became clear that nothing remained but to allow him to go at large untouched. That result is now reached. After the most undignified delay upon the part of the Government he has been surrendered to the civil authorities, and by them arrested for high treason and bailed in the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, precisely the amount of the reward offered by the President for his capture as an accessory in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. Maintaining a consistency of folly the Government not only has not formally withdrawn the charge of assassination, but after two years of preparation announces that it is not ready to proceed to the trial for treason; and the prisoner is released with the most perfect understanding upon all sides that he is not to be tried at all. When the Government saw that it could not sustain the charge of complicity in the assassination, and had decided that Davis could not wisely be tried for treason, it should have released him upon his parole as it had released Alexander Stephens. Before these lines are read Jefferson Davis will probably have arrived in New York, and the same feeling which lifted the hats of many in the crowd at Richmond will offer him respectful homage here. But while we rejoice in the strength and nobility of a popular government which can properly do an act so unprecedented as the virtually unconditional release of such an offender, let no American citizen forget for a moment, or fail to teach his children, how wicked the crime was, and how enormous the moral guilt of the criminal. It was a crime measured by which the offences for which every day men are sent to prison and hung are trivial and unimportant; a causeless and cruel crime, for which hundreds of thousands of hearths are desolate and countless hearts are broken. Jefferson Davis and his associates, to gratify a fierce political ambition, sought to destroy a mild Government which they had always controlled, not because it threatened their liberty or property, but because they feared it might prevent their destroying the liberty and stealing the property of other men. They attempted this work by fire and sword, and untold and unimaginable tortures. For four years they waged bloody war against a government which they did not allege had ever injured or was then trying to injure them. The flower of brave and noble youth was cut down. Like Rachel the land mourned her darlings because they were not, because they lay dead upon the field or starving and mad in the pens of Andersonville and Salisbury. For these crimes—which in their nature and by the means necessary to subdue them transcend the forms of human law—for these crimes, committed not in the hope that justice might be done, but with the purpose of perpetuating the most revolting injustice forever, God himself will be the Judge. And so long as Americans love liberty, and respect law, and honor manhood—so long as truth and justice are sweeter to them than cruelty and wrong, their good sense will pierce the sophisms of Davis and his associates to their foul and ghastly purpose, which was not only the overthrow of the Government but the degradation of human nature, and to accomplish which they slew our dearest and our best.