Amnesty

Amnesty refers to a formal procedure by which a group of people is forgiven for past misdeeds, while a pardon is official forgiveness for a single individual. During the Civil War and Reconstruction period, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, along with the U. S. Congress, issued several proclamations of amnesty and pardon. These proclamations must be placed in the context of the unfolding policy of Reconstruction during and after the war. Two questions dominated: What would be the best way to bring the rebellious states and people back into the Union? and Who should control the process, the president or Congress?

Even as war was being waged on the battlefields, large portions of the South had come under Union military occupation. President Lincoln desired that loyal Southerners regain control of their states as soon as possible. He also sought to demonstrate to the South that returning to the United States could be relatively easy, in hopes of convincing the Confederacy to abandon its rebellion. On December 8, 1863, Lincoln issued the first “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,” in which he used his constitutional war

Anderson, Robert 9

Powers to seize control of the reconciliation process for the executive branch. Known in history as Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, it offered a full pardon to all “insurgents,” or people who had engaged in the rebellion against the United States.

Of course, there were conditions and exemptions. Several classes of Southerners, including high Confederate officials and military officers, were not to be granted amnesty under Lincoln’s act. Eligible applicants, a category that included the majority of Southerners, had to take an oath pledging their loyalty to the U. S. Constitution, including all acts and laws passed regarding the ex-slaves. As soon as 10 percent of the voters of 1860 had taken the oath, their rights and privileges as citizens were restored fully. They could then re-form their state governments and hold ELECTIONS for national offices. If these steps were followed, the U. S. government would accept Southern states back into the Union, as well as their national representatives back into the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Lincoln’s proclamation, which was put into action in Louisiana, stirred protest by a group of men who would shortly be called the RADICAL REPUBLICANS. Led by Senators Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Benjamin Wade of Ohio, they put forward a different and far harsher plan for Reconstruction that emphasized punishment for Southern white “traitors.” Many wanted to reward the newly freed and loyal African Americans with the vote, making them the focus of a reconstructed South. Most importantly, they wanted Congress and not the president to control Reconstruction. The issue was put on the back burner for most of 1864 and into 1865 as the presidential elections, the end of the war, and the ASSASSINATION Of Abraham Lincoln commanded the attention of the country.

With Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson was left in control of Reconstruction. Acting on the authority given in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States,” Johnson issued the next “Proclamation of Amnesty” on May 29, 1865. Like Lincoln’s proclamation, Johnson’s offered amnesty to all insurgents who took the oath. Since the war was over, Johnson dispensed with the 10 percent plan and instead appointed provisional GOVERNORS who would preside over the reestablishment of loyal governments. Johnson’s plan expanded the list of people who were exempted from amnesty, including those whose taxable income was worth more than $20,000. These individuals could apply to the president for a personal pardon. Despite the many bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining the pardons, Johnson granted thousands of them over the summer of 1865. Johnson would go on to issue two more Proclamations of Amnesty on July 4, 1868, and on December 25, 1868, that clarified the details and enlarged the scope of the earlier ones.

Johnson’s proclamations formed the basis of a generous Reconstruction for the South. So generous was it, in fact, that congressional Republicans revived the struggle over control of the timing and nature of reconciliation. From 1866 to 1868, Congress and the president presented competing versions of Reconstruction to the nation during a period of rising Southern white violence against African Americans. Northern voters in the 1866 fall elections rejected decisively Johnson’s lenient Reconstruction policy. Congressional Republicans, powerful and united by their desire to remake the South more like Northern society, put the entire defeated region under control of the military with a series of RECONSTRUCTION Acts. Many citizens in the South were thrown into confusion as Johnson’s proclamations of amnesty were rendered null and void. Instead, Congress declared that the more exclusionary FOURTEENTH Amendment was the guideline for citizenship.

As the popular support for a harsh Reconstruction declined, so too did congressional resistance to leniency toward former rebels. In 1872 Congress passed another Amnesty Act that removed office-holding disabilities for everyone except a few of the highest-ranking officials and officers of the former Confederacy. In 1898 Congress issued a universal amnesty for all those who had not been granted it in earlier acts. In the long and bumpy road toward sectional peace, the North in the end had decided on a sectional reconciliation that emphasized harmony and forgiveness over the rights of freedmen.

Further reading: Jonathan Truman Dorris, Pardon and Amnesty under Lincoln and Johnson: The Restoration of the Confederates to their Rights and Privileges, 1861-1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953); William C. Harris, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997).

Anderson, Robert (1 805-1 871) commander at Fort Sumter

Born in Kentucky, Robert Anderson became a career army officer, veteran of four wars and, in his defense of Fort Sumter, SOUTH Carolina, the first hero of the Civil War.

Graduating in 1825 at the middle of his West Point class, Anderson joined the army as a second lieutenant. Through service in the Black Hawk War (1832), the Seminole War (1837-38), and the Mexican-American War (1846-48), Anderson rose to the rank of major (1857). In 1845 he married Elizabeth Bayard Clinch from Georgia, with whom he would have four children.

In November 1860, Anderson was appointed commander of Fort Moultrie, an obsolete island post in South Carolina that was easily accessible from the mainland and vulnerable to capture from its rear. One mile away, at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, workers were completing Fort Sumter, a man-made granite island with brick walls 40 feet high and 8 feet thick. Sumter was designed in such a way that with a full force of 650 soldiers manning 146 large guns, it could halt any craft entering or leaving the harbor.

When South Carolina seceded in December 1860, Anderson was placed in a precarious position. Although a Kentuckian and a slaveholder, he remained loyal to the Union and worked to keep Forts Sumter and Moultrie in Northern hands. He knew that any misstep on his part could lead to war, as Charleston militiamen stood prepared to attack the Federal force. Anderson requested guidance and received ambiguous orders from Washington that he interpreted as allowing him to move from Moultrie to Sumter if he thought it necessary to deter an attack. He did so under the cover of darkness on the evening of December 26. The people of the North were elated, those of the South indignant.

At Sumter, Anderson faced a severe shortage of supplies. Fort Sumter’s symbolic value was high, but Anderson could not hope to resist if the North could not resupply him. He made an urgent request for food and other necessities that President Abraham Lincoln ultimately decided to grant. When Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard learned of this, he began shelling Fort Sumter. The shelling began before 5 A. M. on April 12 and continued until April 14, when Anderson and his men (127 total, including civilian employees) were forced to surrender.

Anderson’s struggle to keep Fort Sumter for the Union made him the North’s first war hero. He was rewarded with a promotion to brigadier general and assigned to the Department of the Cumberland. Soon, however, he was forced to give up his command to William T. Sherman because of ill health. He retired in 1863 but returned to Charleston at the end of the war to replace the American flag that had been torn down in 1861. After the war Anderson and his family relocated to France. He died in Charleston on October 26, 1871.

Further reading: David Detzer, Allegiance: Fort Swmter, Charle. ston, and the Beginning of the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, 2001); W. A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter (New York: Scribner, 1957).

—Richard J. Roder