What confederate leaders were tried for treason?

Answer 1

None. The northern radical Republicans wanted to see trials for southern leaders, and actually managed to get Confederate president Jefferson Davis indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on charges of treason. Davis was held in rugged conditions inside a US army fort, Fortress Monroe, in Virginia, for nearly two years, before he was released without being tried. Cooler and wiser heads had prevailed. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had been Secretary of the Treasury during most of the war, pointed out that it was not a foregone conclusion that Davis could be convicted, or, as a matter of law, whether any conviction could stand up on appeal. The Constitution is silent on the issue of secession. Southerners had pointed out that it took a voluntary act by each state to enter into the Federal Union, and did it not then follow that by a voluntary act a state could withdraw from that Union? The southerners were not the first to consider secession. Previously the idea almost came to action by the New England states, during the War of 1812. New Englanders had swiftly resumed trade with England after the Revolution, and resented the Embargo Act and the interruption of business when open warfare erupted. They despised the War, and grew rich carrying on a treasonable trade with the British, without which the British would have been unable to maintain their army and navy in North America. The New England states went so far as to call a Convention to meet at Hartford, Connecticut in 1815 to discuss and enact secession. But, by the time the Hartford Convention met the war had ended, so the issue died back to a simmer. There were several other instances before and after this near-secession by the New Englanders where states or regions came more or less near to getting serious about secession. The fact is, that up until Lincoln was elected everyone knew that if you really wanted out of the US, you could get out. It was Lincoln who changed the rules, not the southerners. In light of all this, which seems like crazy ideas to modern people, but which was very familiar to the people at that time, the certainty or sustainability of a conviction of any southerner was not at all a sure thing.