Jonathan T. Dorris, Pardon and Amnesty Under Lincoln and Johnson: the Restoration of the Confederates to their Rights and Privaleges, 1883-1898 (1953)

Jonathan T. Dorris, Pardon and Amnesty Under Lincoln and Johnson: the Restoration of the Confederates to their Rights and Privaleges, 1883-1898 (1953)

Jonathon T. Dorris provides an exhaustive overview of presidential amnesty under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. It includes a discussion of the legal implications surrounding both presidents’ personal outlook and design of the application of amnesty and pardon. Of note, Dorris cites legal doctrine dating several decades before the outbreak of the Civil War, through which each president was able to articulate the status of Confederates. Dorris reviews the status of pardon and amnesty under Lincoln and also links Johnson’s designs for amnesty to his overall plan for Reconstruction. Dorris provides several case studies, such as the discourse surrounding the pardons of both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. He additionally details the differing processes of amnesty for varying classes, such as property holders, civil leaders and soldiers, and goes into great detail describing the process of amnesty in pardon from the individual level to the president. The work also includes a discussion of resistance to amnesty in the North and the South. The only state focused on singularly in this work is North Carolina. North Carolina was given special treatment by Johnson and discusses how Johnson attempted to bolster the power of W.W. Holden through amnesty requests to further his plans for Reconstruction.

Dorris, Jonathan T.

1953-XX-XX

Book

The special consideration that President Johnson gave North Carolina in his program of reconstruction deserves notice. He was doubtless influenced by the manifestations there of loyalty to the Union during the war, and by the fact that he had many acquaintances and old associates in his native state. Having been instrumental in restoring Tennessee, he was in a position to help North Carolina regain her former status in the Union. There proximity of his native to the adopted state, therefore, may have influenced the President to begin his plan of restoration in the former. Other conditions, however, we ripe for such an undertaking.

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