|
Article Excerpt
Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson each pursued plans of Reconstruction that provided for a speedy restoration of the union. Both plans included proclamations of amnesty that restored legal and political rights to most former Confederates in exchange for an oath of future allegiance to the United States and a promise to obey all legislation pertaining to emancipation. Johnson eventually issued four proclamations, concluding with a declaration of universal amnesty on Christmas Day 1868. His first proclamation, however, affected by far the greatest number of Southerners. It excluded from general amnesty fourteen specific classifications of individuals (including six groups also targeted by Lincoln's plan and a seventh Lincoln added later), who were required to request a pardon directly from the president. Johnson, who promised that he intended to grant these requests "liberally," pardoned approximately 13,500 of 15,000 applicants between May 29, 1865, and September 6,1867. Clearly, Johnson could not have handled each request individually. How did he and his staff decide whose applications to accept and whose to reject? Were some "offenses" considered worse than others? Did other considerations affect the decisions? The most complete study of the amnesty process to date, Jonathan T. Dorriss's Pardon and Amnesty Under Lincoln and Johnson (1953), while providing an excellent overview, does not answer such questions. A detailed examination of this historically overlooked process using data from Texas applications addresses these issues and reveals that Johnson did in fact consider certain exceptions--those of a military nature--less forgivable than others. (1)
At the conclusion of the American Civil War, the legal and political fate of former Confederates remained unresolved. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that actions taken by the executive and legislative branches of its own government in 1861 implied the belligerent, rather than insurrectionary, character of the Confederate States of America. The Court pointed to Lincoln's proclamation ordering a blockade of the Southern coast and congressional legislation increasing the rate of pay for American soldiers to fight the Confederacy as evidence of such status, though that clearly was never the intention of the president or Congress. The Court also advanced the "double status" theory, which considered Confederates both "belligerents" and "traitors." They were enemies because they were traitors. Thus Federal authorities possessed absolute powers of authority over parts of the country as well as belligerent powers in an official war against a recognized enemy. Despite government actions that appeared to treat the Confederates as belligerents, Lincoln, Johnson, and Congress preferred to think of the Confederates as "rebels." Federal authorities had concluded no treaty with the Confederacy and regarded its adherents as insurgents and liable to the appropriate punishment. Upon the war's conclusion, Johnson held that "treason must be made infamous, and traitors must be impoverished." Possible sentences for treason included death, disfranchisement, imprisonment, confiscation of property, and heavy fines. Because the chief executive initially controlled Reconstruction, each president claimed the power to deal with the "rebels" as he deemed appropriate. (2)
Lincoln's plan of amnesty, announced on December 8,1863, and designed at least in part as a war measure to weaken Southern support for the rebellion by promising leniency, allowed for the restoration of political rights to vote and hold office, as well as property rights, with the obvious exception of slaves. It required former Confederates to take an oath of allegiance to the United States and a pledge to abide by all executive and congressional decisions regarding emancipation. This oath formed the basis of Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan, which allowed a Southern state to begin the reconstruction process upon the pledge of at least one-tenth of that state's total number of voters in the presidential election of 1860. Obviously and intentionally moderate, the plan nonetheless demanded the necessary ingredient to the foundations of the reconstructed Southern state governments--the citizens' pledge of allegiance to the U.S. government. Yet Lincoln's plan listed six exceptions to amnesty. These included Confederate civil or diplomatic officials; individuals who vacated judicial positions in the United States to aid the rebellion; Confederate army officers above the rank of colonel and naval officers above the rank of lieutenant; persons who left seats in the U.S. Congress to aid the rebellion; individuals who resigned commissions in the U.S. Army or navy and afterward served the rebellion; and those who treated black prisoners of war or their white officers unlawfully. (3)
Johnson's plan of Reconstruction, though obviously not a wartime measure, proved fundamentally similar to his predecessor's. One difference stemmed from Johnson's personal animosity toward the Southern planter class, whom he at least initially sought to prohibit from immediately regaining control of the Southern state governments. He justified the issuance of a new amnesty proclamation on May 29, 1865, because so few had taken advantage of Lincoln's offer and because, he insisted, many others whose service in the rebellion had previously made them ineligible now genuinely sought amnesty. Johnson's first proclamation retained Lincoln's six exceptions and further excluded those who absented themselves from the United States in order to aid the rebellion; Confederate military personnel who were educated at West Point or Annapolis (not necessarily graduates); former Confederate governors; those who left homes under U.S. jurisdiction in order to aid the rebellion; individuals who engaged in the destruction of U.S. commerce on the high seas or conducted raids into the country from Canada; persons in the custody of federal authorities (Johnson retained this exception from an explanatory address given by Lincoln in March 1864); voluntary participants in the rebellion who held taxable property worth at least $20,000; and individuals who had broken the oath of allegiance issued on December 8, 1863. The tone of these additional exceptions, particularly the $20,000 rule (thirteenth exception), reflected Johnson's personal desire to punish the planter class. (4)
The plan required those applicants barred from general amnesty to swear the following oath, administered by the same officials who registered new voters immediately after the war:
I, --, do solemnly swear (or affirm) in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves. So help me God.
A copy of this oath, at least one letter of recommendation, and the signature of the governor to acknowledge his endorsement generally accompanied the applicant's correspondence to Johnson. A significant number of applicants, however, applied without the involvement of their state's executive. Between June and August 1865, the U.S. attorney general examined the files and made recommendations to the president. During the latter month, the attorney general authorized the creation of a new position, pardon clerk, to assist with the applications. Thus, the amnesty application went first to the pardon clerk, next to the attorney general, and on to the president, who directed the secretary of state to issue a warrant for a pardon. (Although these officials had ample opportunity to offer their input, the decision on each application ultimately rested with the president.) Finally, after Johnson signed those that had been approved, the pardons were forwarded to the respective governor's office. (5)
Two attorneys general under Johnson--James Speed and Henry Stanberry--along with Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed with Johnson's lenient stance. Matthew F. Pleasants, already an employee of the attorney general's office under the Lincoln administration, initially filled the position of pardon clerk, and at least one other man, F. U. Stitt, assisted with these duties. A rumor reported by Johnson's head of security, Gen. La Fayette Charles Baker, and perpetuated by historians Jonathan T. Dorris and Eric McKitrick, contended that Pleasants had been a Confederate officer before assuming the position of pardon clerk and that this caused a flood of applicants to assume they would be pardoned. However, the diary of Edward Bates, attorney general under Lincoln until November 24, 1864, and a longtime friend of the Pleasants family, mentions Pleasants in the Lincoln administration as early as November 25, 1863. Johnson's papers contain correspondence from the clerk as early as November 1864. Others might have confused Matthew F. Pleasants with a younger relative, John H. Pleasants Jr., a Confederate soldier and son of Bates's childhood friend, who had been taken as a prisoner of war. Lincoln arranged for the release of the younger John H. Pleasants from the Johnson's Island prisoner-of-war camp near Sandusky, Ohio, into the custody of Bates. The elder John H. Pleasants, founder and editor of the Richmond Whig and the Washington Independent, was killed in a duel by another newspaper editor, who accused Pleasants of planning to establish an abolitionist newspaper. Finally, it is highly unlikely that the president would have selected a known former Confederate officer for such a position so soon after the war. (6)
Johnson and his attorneys general, particularly Stanberry, shared similar attitudes regarding which applicants should be pardoned. Initially, according to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the cabinet agreed on a strategy to refuse amnesty to, or at least to scrutinize more closely, any applicant who had been educated at West Point or Annapolis (eighth exception), former high-ranking Confederate military officers (third exception), and high-ranking civil and military figures who had vacated similar positions in the United States in order to assist the rebellion (fourth and fifth exceptions). (7)
Such a policy that focused primarily on the most prominent ex-Confederate military figures likely appealed to many people around the South. Certainly, the two very different men who during this period served as governor of Texas, the state under question in this study, offered no resistance to the policy. Andrew Jackson Hamilton, a Unionist who left Texas in 1862 rather than support the Confederacy, served as Johnson's appointee as provisional governor, supported the president's policies, and had his own rule of refusing to endorse the applications of individuals with West Point educations. According to historian William L. Richter, Hamilton divided the Texas public into three groups--former Unionists pleased with the results of the war; poor men...
|
