How would you have treated confederate leaders?

[LBJer]

I wouldn't have treated them very differently than how they were treated.  I abhor the very idea of slavery, and am very glad the Union prevailed, but I also think that a policy of vindictiveness toward the former Confederates could have resulted in the South becoming another Israel/Palestine or Northern Ireland.  Restoring America as a strong, unified country was more important than punishing the Confederates.  Moreover, as odious as the idea of seceding to preserve slavery is (and of course, the war was a result of the secession), the leaders of the South were sincere in their attitudes, however flawed and racist those attitudes were.  I don't see how punishing them more severely would have convinced anyone that this way of thinking was wrong who didn't feel it was wrong already.  In addition, if by "punishment" you mean legal punishment, what would they be punished for?  The former Confederates were hardly the Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg Trials (and the legality even of Nuremberg has been seriously questioned, although many who do so feel that even if it wasn't legal it was morally just).  Slavery had been legal, and the legality of secession was murky.  There was nothing that they did that you could point to as being clearly against the law, nothing like genocide (of course, many Confederates committed atrocities during the war, but many Unionists did as well).  This is probably why Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason.