These were the chief points which General Butler thought the defense would set up, and in his brief he grouped a powerful array of precedents and decisions upon which the prosecution could rest its case and meet these objections. During the early stages of this work, Mr. Chandler, General Butler and others, who firmly held that stern punishment should be meted out to a few conspicuous rebels--not in a spirit of vengeance, but from a belief that salutary results would follow if it should be established as a historical fact that in the United States treason is a high crime whose penalty is death--were constantly anxious lest the President should by some violent act or word destroy the moral effect of their position. In public he said repeatedly at this time that "the penalties of the law must be in a stern and inflexible manner executed upon conscious, intelligent and influential traitors," but his private utterances far outstripped this language, and were often scarcely less than bloodthirsty. Mr. Chandler, on one occasion, came away from the White House greatly disturbed by Mr. Johnson's disposition to treat this subject with mere anger, and characteristically said to Senator Wade and Mr. Hamlin, "Johnson has the nightmare, and it is important that he should be watched." General Butler's memorandum Mr. Chandler heartily approved as clear in scope, just in spirit, and certain to prove effective in operation, but, by the time it was fully completed, a great change had taken place in the disposition of the President. In April he was in favor of hanging every body; in June he was opposed to hanging any one. He finally ignored entirely the memorandum which General Butler had drawn up at his request, and decided that Davis should be tried by the civil authorities at Richmond, where his crimes had been committed. As a result the arch-rebel was allowed to remain in prison at Fortress Monroe for nearly two years, because of the lack of a civil court competent to take jurisdiction of his case. In 1866 he was indicted and arraigned, and in 1867 was admitted to bail; a year later a _nolle prosequi_ was entered, and the case against him dismissed. Before this matter had reached its second stage even, Mr. Chandler had become convinced that Andrew Johnson had determined to desert the party which had elevated him to the vice-presidency, and with that knowledge ceased to act as his adviser and became one of the most active of his political enemies. The leniency of the course finally pursued toward Davis Mr. Chandler then and afterward regarded as a grave public mistake, and believed that the failure to enforce the death penalty where it was so thoroughly deserved was exceedingly unfortunate in its influence upon popular opinion, and did more than any other one cause to encourage the disloyal classes of the South in their plans for ultimately recapturing the political supremacy they had forfeited by rebellion.