Lee Pardon of Robert E. Lee

Barrycdog

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http://www.gdg.org/research/People/RELee/pardon.html

By Bob Huddleston.


  • "On July 4, 1868, President Johnson issued another proclamation of amnesty and pardon (15 Stat. 702) which was much broader in its application than that of May 29, 1865, in that it granted

    • "* * * unconditionally and without reservation, to all and to every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion, excepting such person or persons as may be under presentment or indictment in any court of the United States having competent jurisdiction, upon a charge of treason or other felony, a full pardon and amnesty for the offence of treason against the United States, or of adhering to their enemies during the late civil war * * *".
    "No oath of allegiance or other act was required of those who were pardoned by the amnesty of July 4, 1868, above cited.

    "It would appear that this amnesty proclamation operated to pardon General Lee for the offense of treason for, so far as is known, General Lee was not under presentment or indictment upon a charge of treason or other felony.

"It seems clear that General Lee was in fact pardoned by President Johnson, if not by the proclamation of July 4, 1868, then certainly by that of December 25, 1868, and that any politcal limitations to which he was subject by the Fourteenth Amendment were removed by the act of June 6, 1898.
 
lee-amnesty-l.jpg


From the National Archives:
Lee signed his Amnesty Oath on October 2, 1865, but was not restored to full citizenship in his lifetime. (General Records of the Department of State, RG 59)
http://www.archives.gov/global-page...e/2005/spring/images/lee-amnesty.caption.html
 
The pardons look so 'easy' and 'correct' in a 20th or 21st century view, but I am not sure about a late 19th century view.
Ten of thousands families in the north and in the south lost a father/husband/brother/uncle/son and tens of thousands more men on both sides lost an arm and or a leg. If I was looking at my empty farm with my dad dead on a distant battlefield I don't think I would be so forgiving.
Having said that, I do think in my 21st century frame of mind that hind sight has shown it was the correct thing to do.
Not easy but correct.
 
@theoldman makes a good point. Pardons are so obviously the right thing to do, to us, that it's maybe difficult to appreciate that, at least in the case of the senior leaders of the Confederacy, it was not so obvious or easy a decision then. It's not an accident that it took the United States nearly 100 years to formally designate Confederate as fully-eligible U.S. veterans, and even then it was after they had all gone -- it was an act of magnanimity to their widows and dependents, not to the old soldiers.

The other thing about CW pardons is that the sheer number awarded -- something like 13,500 over three years by the Johnson administration -- tends to make it look like a pro forma, largely-meaningless exercise, and obscures the moral import of what a pardon is. A pardon is official forgiveness for a concrete bad act, not an acquittal of having committed one. It's serious stuff, much more so than the routine parole papers issued to rank-and-file soldiers.
 
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This oath Lee took was conveniently lost for decades. It turned up in the Archives at some point, but I'm vague on when. Didn't it take an Act of Congress to posthumously restore his citizenship?
 
In 1975, Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint congressional resolution effective June 13, 1865.

At the August 5, 1975, signing ceremony, President Gerald R. Ford acknowledged the discovery of Lee's Oath of Allegiance in the National Archives and remarked: "General Lee's character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride."

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/spring/piece-lee.html
 
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