Andrew Johnson's Presidential Amnesties IV

This thirteenth exception led to all kinds of machinations and appeals over the next two years. Dorris, in his Pardon and Amnesty under Lincoln and Johnson, devotes an entire chapter to the thirteenth exception (pp. 221-243). Two of the many points he made are instructive. First, only about 7,200 of the estimated 70,000 property-holders in this category applied to him and were granted pardon in the next year (Congress demanded an accounting of this category in March 1866). Some of the formerly wealthy Southerners, to be sure, had lost so much wealth in the war that any kind of pardon, which would really have been necessary in order to continue business, was the last thing they were interested in. Some couldn't bring themselves to do it. Some went into other lines of work. Some decided to "wait it out," believing that better times would be coming in the shape of a second amnesty.

Second, however, an unexpected consequence of this exception was that many people couldn't resume business. Because one's civil rights (right to own property, to sue and be sued, to contract) were included in this pardon, the unwillingness of many to seek it from the President meant that the South was slow to get back on its feet economically. And "slow" might not be a strong enough word. Many businesses were affected where only one of the partners was in the excepted class; many businesses which employed multiple people couldn't open their doors because pardons were either slow to come or were not sought by the firm owners.

But note the "provided" clause--pardons would be "liberally extended." This would hold out hope to those who wanted to "play the game," that they would be quickly restored in good graces of the United States. Thus, Johnson's first pardon proclamation was perceive as a genuine act of statesmanship.

The Formation of State Governments

To make it seem even more "statesmanly," Johnson tied the pardoning apparatus to the formation of state governments, the passing of the 13th Amendment (eliminating slavery) and the writing of state constitutions. That is, on the same day he gave the amnesty proclamation he appointed W.W. Holden to be the Provisional Governor of North Carolina. NC would be the place where Johnson's "reconstruction plan," of which pardon/amnesty was the centerpiece would be showcased. The other six states not on the "Lincoln plan" of reconstruction (SC, GA, AL, MS, TX, LA) would then seek governors from the President and put into effect his plan. Those four states which were already under President Lincoln's plan (AR, TN, LA, VA) would also have governors appointed and be required to pass the 13th Amendment. Johnson believed that if the Southern states in their various conventions in the Summer/Fall of 1865 repudiated the secession decision, renounced the Confederate debt and then passed the 13th Amendment, they would be accepted back into the Union in time for the sitting of the 39th Congress in Dec. 1865. Indeed, all the Southern States had, by Dec. 1865, duly done what Johnson required, but they were not permitted to be seated in the Congress. Thus began the real wrangling after the war was over.

Johnson's Other Amnesties

Only about 15,000 or pardons were granted under the 14 categories of the May 1865 proclamation. Some, to be sure, were held back--many for political reasons. For example, the Provisional Governor of NC, conscious of the fact that he faced stiff electoral competition in Nov. 1865, tried to keep his political opponents from getting pardons. But one of them was elected to office nevertheless; Holden's strategy backfired on him. Thus, in the summer of 1867, when Johnson was at loggerheads with the Congress, he decided to issue his second amnesty. This was a tremendously far-reaching one, excepting only about 300 former Confederate military officers from pardon. So controversial was this amnesty/pardon at the time that various newspaper articles/editorials thought that this pardon would be the first step of Johnson's calling out the army to resist calls for impeachment that were "in the air" (his actual impeachment trial was in early 1868), register the newly pardoned to vote and even perhaps try to establish a military dictatorship (discussed in Dorris, p. 346). Congress, in order to deter Johnson from making this amnesty so broad, had stripped the pardon power given him in sec. 13 of the Confiscation Act of 1862. But Johnson's AG broadly interpreted the Constitutional pardon power to enable him to keep on pardoning as he saw fit.

The political conflict thus "in the air" at the beginning of 1868 makes our political partisanship today look like a child's sandbox dispute. It goes far beyond the confines of these essays to describe it. Suffice it to say that the Congress used the excuse of the President's violation of the Tenure of Office Act (which the US Supreme Court would hold unconstitutional long after all the protagonists/antagonists were dead) to impeach him. Surviving removal by one vote, Johnson then set on a course to "finish" the pardon work that he had set upon. By the summer of 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified, several of the remaining 10 states had been readmitted into the union (only TN, among the former confederate states, had been readmitted before 1868; agreement to the terms of the 14th Amendment was necessary for this readmission for the remaining 10 states), and the Civil War was seemingly a distant memory. US Grant, the Republican Presidential candidate in 1868, was a mild man personally, one who wanted to proclaim the War really over. So, Johnson proclaimed a third amnesty (excepting all but a handful of the highest-ranking Confederate officers) on July 4, 1868, the same day that the Democratic Party opened its 1868 National Convention. Johnson's friends had wanted to put his name forward for another term, and the proclamation of amnesty on that date was meant to give his candidacy a "boost." But ultimately it didn't boost him up enough in people's minds to give him the Democratic nomination. The Democrats nominated New Yorker Horatio Seymour. But, as this article says:

"With Freedmen voting in all of the South [another big historical issue, which I don't have time to develop here], and with massive popularity in the North as the man who won the Civil War, Grant won an impressive victory."

Conclusion--The Christmas Day Pardons

Finally, after the election results were certified but before Grant took office, Johnson proclaimed his final amnesty, which applied to all remaining Confederate generals and opponents. It was a "universal amnesty." The Civil War, from the perspective of readmission into the Union, was officially "over" when the last states then sought and gained readmission in 1870.

Though everyone had been amnestied or pardoned, the 14th Amendment had been ratified in Summer 1868. Sec. 3 of that Act continued one "disability" against many people. No one reads this section of the 14th Amendment anymore--choosing only to focus on "due process" or "equal protection," and so I quote this part in full. It surely was more important to many people in 1870 than was due process or equal protection:

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

The scope and meaning of this disability is far beyond my scope here; suffice it to say that you know there is now another subject that you need to study!

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