Why wasn't Robert E Lee prosecuted and executed?

[eppur_se_muova]

20. Andrew Johnson was something of a flip-flopper. Sometimes he supported strong measures against ...

the South (he approved executions for several in the assassination plot, including the woman who owned the boarding house where meetings were held, which many regarded as undeserved), and sometimes he adumbrated leniency. He refused to accept the surrender of one of the CSA armies in NC in exchange for not freeing slaves in NC, and the Confederates capitulated. Later he proposed very lenient terms for readmission to the Union, but also campaigned for the Presidency under the name of the Union Party (created by Lincoln when the Republicans refused to re-nominate a sitting President in wartime, but after his election absorbed into the Republican Party) in an election in which Southerners could not vote. Even a short summary of the tumult behind his eventual impeachment is filled with seeming, or sometimes real, contradictions. It would be very hard to figure out what his convictions were, if any, given his actions -- perhaps the one respect in which he most resembles the current Occupant of the WH. Turnip's convictions, however, are mostly obvious and transparent -- he cares about ME, ME, ME, and whatever inflates his own opinion of ME. Everything else is just background noise.