Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez is an attorney based in Austin, Texas. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Texas, where he lectures in the department of history.
A Richmond grand jury indicted Jefferson Davis on charges of
treason in May 1866 and set the trial date for the following month.
Icenhauer-Ramirez brings a lawyer's appreciation for legal
maneuvering and a historian's commitment to in-depth research to
provide a compelling answer to the question, Why was Jefferson
Davis never tried at all? Here is a vast cast of
characters--President Johnson; members of Congress; justices of the
Supreme Court; and Davis' wife, Varina, among many others--in a
tale of personal loyalties, political ambitions, incompetent
prosecution, and public-opinion manipulation. Icenhauer-Ramirez
turns the treason prosecutions undertaken by the federal government
into a story that will be of interest to historians, lawyers, and
anyone who appreciates a fascinating story with twists and
turns.--Jacqueline Jones, author of Saving Savannah: The City and
the Civil War
It takes a lawyer to talk intelligently about a great trial, and
Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez is not only that but a dogged researcher
and a skillful writer. His account of the Jefferson Davis treason
trial--which ought to have been 'the trial of the century' but
wasn't-- is as absorbing a Civil War story as any battlefield
narrative. The outstanding characters-- Varina Davis, Charles
O'Conor, William Maxwell Evarts, Salmon Chase, John C. Underwood--
march vividly past, even as we gasp at the incompetence which
allowed the most spectacular treason case since Aaron Burr to slip
through the government's hands. Thorough in his judgments about the
role of the Lost Cause, the 14th Amendment, and military tribunals,
Icenhauer-Ramirez gives us an enthralling rendering of American law
at its best and its worst.--Allen C. Guelzo, author of Gettysburg;
The Last Invasion and Reconstruction: A Concise History
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