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the President appended to that message a proclamation, in which he offered full pardon and restoration of all rights of property, excepting as to slaves, to all persons (with specified exceptions)1 who had participated in the rebellion, who should take a prescribed oath of allegiance to the Government.2 In it he also offered a prescription for reorganizing civil governments in States in which rebellion existed, by which the people might be restored to all the political privileges guaranteed by the National Constitution; at the same time pointing to the fact that the vital action necessary to consummate the reorganization by the admission of representatives of those States to seats in Congress, rested “exclusively with the respective Houses, and not to any extent with the Executive.”
3
1 The persons excepted were all who were or had been civil or diplomatic agents of the so-called Confederate Government; all who had left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who were or had been military or naval officers of the so-called Confederate Government above the rank of colonel in the army and lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the National Congress to aid the rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the National army or navy, and afterward aided the rebellion; and all who had engaged in any way in treating colored persons, or white persons in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war.
2 The following was the form of the oath: “I,--------, do solemnly swear, 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support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress or by decision of the Supreme Court; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existence of the rebellion having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decisions of the Supreme Court. So help me God.”
3 The President proclaimed “that whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such States at the Presidential election of the year of our Lord 1860 each having taken the oath aforesaid, and not having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and excluding all others, shall re-establish a State Government, which shall be republican in form.”
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