I’m not talking about justice here. Justice would have demanded hanging every Confederate with a rank of colonel or higher. But often the higher the rank, the older the man, the more tired and harmless he was by the time of the Surrender. Jefferson Davis, for example; justice says he should have hanged, if not tortured to death, but Davis was such a disaster as a Confederate symbol that he wasn’t one of the more dangerous post-war figures. Better to let losers like Davis live on as buffoons rather than kill them and start the songs and poems going.
No, I’m talking about practical killing. Who were the most dangerous ex-Confederates in 1865? Could they have been identified and killed before they neutralized all the gains of America’s most costly war?
The Confederates Who Should Have Been Hanged - The War Nerd