deeply injured. After reflection, the president wrote his decision to Welles, the court-martial board and the Navy: I am unwilling for the sentence to stand and be executed, to any extent, in this case. In the absence of a more adequate motive than the evidence discloses, I am wholly unable to believe in the existence of criminal or fraudulent intent on the part of one of such well-established good character as is the accused. If the evidence went as far toward establishing a guilty profit of one or two hundred thousand dollars, as it does of one or two hundred dollars, the case would, on the question of guilt, bear a far different aspect. That on this contract, involving from one million to twelve hundred thousand dollars, the contractors should attempt a fraud which at the most could profit them only one or two hundred, or even one thousand dollars, is to my mind beyond the power of rational belief. That they did not, in such a case, strike for greater gains proves that they did not, with guilty or fraudulent intent, strike at all. The judgment and sentence are disapproved and declared null, and the accused ordered to be discharged. Lincoln never got the opportunity to "lay my long hand upon them" who pursued the Smiths. A few short weeks after the president vacated the sentence, he was killed by an assassin's bullet. Aftermath After he was freed by Lincoln, Smith spent some time restoring his business. When the city mourned the death of the president, Smith was asked to lead the gathering at Tremont Temple. He then decided to go abroad and left for Europe. There were three issues at the center of these events: The first was control of the military. The secretary of the Navy is a civilian, but he was manipulated by his assistant secretary, a career officer, into persecuting an innocent man, thereby allowing the military to follow its own agenda. Lincoln's actions shifted the power back to civilian control. Second was the attempt by Congress to suspend the constitutional rights of individual citizens in defiance of the Bill of Rights. The basic constitutional rights of habeas corpus, a jury of peers, and a grand jury hearing before being charged, were not accorded those facing military court-martial. The 1862 Military Contractor Court-Martial act that was the basis for Smith's trial was declared unconstitutional by