By Joseph Patrick Kelly, College of Charleston 
and David Cason, University of North Dakota 

Donald Trump is the third U.S. president to pardon a large group of insurrectionists. His clemency toward those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection – including seditious conspiracy and assaults on police officers – was different in key ways from the two previous efforts, by Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Ulysses S. Grant in 1873.

But they share the apparent hope that their pardons would herald periods of national harmony. As historians of the period after the Civil War, we know that for Johnson and Grant, that’s not what happened.

When Johnson became president in 1865 after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he faced a combative Congress. Though Johnson had opposed the secession of the Southern states before the Civil War began, he agreed with former Confederate leaders that formerly enslaved people did not deserve equality with White people.

Further, as a Southerner, he wanted to maintain the social conventions and economic structure of the South by replacing enslavement with economic bondage. This economic bondage, called sharecropping, was a system by which tenant farmers rented land from large landowners.

Tenants rarely cleared enough to pay their costs and fell into debt. In effect, Johnson sought to restore the nation to how it was before the Civil War, though without legalized slavery – and sought every avenue available to thwart the plans of the Radical Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress to create full racial equality.

Johnson signed an amnesty that gave a blanket pardon to all former Confederate soldiers. However, he required formerly high-ranking Confederate officials to individually seek pardons for their involvement in the rebellion. These officials faced permanent disfranchisement and could not hold federal office if they did not seek a pardon.

When Congress was in recess, Johnson vetoed two bills that had been passed: one to help find homes for formerly enslaved people who could no longer live on the property of their enslavers, and the other to define U.S. citizenship and ensure equal protection of the laws for Black people as well as White people.

Johnson also told Southern states not to ratify the 14th Amendment, whose purpose was to enshrine both citizenship and equal protection in the Constitution.

When Congress came back in session, it continued its effort of Reconstruction of the former Confederate states – reforming their racist laws and policies to comport with the liberty and equality the Union was committed to – by overriding Johnson’s vetoes and requiring former Confederate states to ratify the 14th Amendment as a condition of readmission to the Union, but Congress could not override the pardons the president had granted.

This continued political warfare resulted in Johnson being impeached – but not convicted or removed from office. But the back-and-forth also stalled Reconstruction and efforts toward racial equality, ultimately dooming the effort.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was not covered by Johnson’s general amnesty. As a former Confederate general, he had to apply for a personal presidential pardon, which Johnson granted on July 17, 1868. Two months later, Forrest represented Tennessee at the Democratic Party’s national convention in New York City.

He also took command of the Ku Klux Klan, the unofficial militant wing of the Democratic Party. Forrest initiated the title “Grand Wizard,” a bizarre title derived from his Civil War nickname, “Wizard of the Saddle.” He became a leader of former Confederates who resisted Reconstruction through violence and terror.

After his pardon, Forrest perfected a rhetorical technique for his extremism. His biographer Court Carney described it as a multistep process, starting with, “Say something exaggerated and inflammatory that plays well with supporters.” Then, deny saying it “to maintain a semblance of professional decorum.” Then, blur the threats with “crowd pleasing humor.” It proved an effective way of threatening violence while being able to deny responsibility for any violence that occurred.

Under Forrest’s leadership, membership in the violent, racist Ku Klux Klan spread almost everywhere in the South. Records are sketchy, so it’s impossible to say how many people were lynched, but the Equal Justice Initiative has documented 2,000 lynchings of Black Americans during Reconstruction. Black women and girls were often raped by klansmen or members of its successor militias.

It’s also not possible to say how many pardoned ex-Confederates participated in the lynchings. But the violence was so widespread that just about everyone, North and South, thought the political violence was a resumption of the Civil War.

In the Piedmont of the Carolinas, klan violence amounted to a shadow government of White nationalists. Grant ordered the U.S. Army to apprehend the klansmen, and a newly minted Department of Justice prosecuted the insurrectionists for violating Civil Rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments.

After several trials that proved to be what the federal judiciary’s official history calls “dramatic spectacles,” federal judges handed down conviction after conviction.

The federal government’s decisive action allowed for a relatively free presidential election in 1872. Black voters helped Grant win in eight Southern states, contributing to his landslide victory.

But after his reelection, Grant appointed a new attorney general, who dropped the pending klan cases. Grant also pardoned klansmen who had already been convicted of crimes.

Grant hoped his gesture would encourage Southerners to accept the nation’s new birth of freedom.

It didn’t. The pardons told former Confederates that they were winning.

John Christopher Winsmith, an ex-Confederate who embraced racial equality and whose father had been shot by the KKK, wrote to Grant in 1873, “A few trials and convictions in the U.S. Courts, and then the pardoning of the criminals” had emboldened what he called “the hideous monster – Ku Kluxism.”

And a new gang arose, too: the Red Shirts, who began to murder Black people openly, not even in secret as the klan did. Two of the Red Shirts were later elected to the U.S. Senate.

Paramilitary groups established anti-democratic one-party rule in every former Confederate state, imposing discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow, which were enforced by lynchings and other forms of racial violence.

The federal government took no substantive action against this for a century, until the 20th century’s Civil Rights Movement sparked change. And it wasn’t until 2022 that Congress passed an anti-lynching bill.

Joseph Patrick Kelly is professor of literature and director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston, and David Cason is associate professor in Honors, University of North Dakota 

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By Andrea Vale

Stacker News

1863: The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

Lincoln’s remarks for his annual message to Congress were highly anticipated in 1863, as the general public expected it would indicate the president’s plans for reconstruction. Not expected, however, was the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction: an official pardon, acceptance into the Union, and restoration of property—except enslaved people—to members of the Confederacy who vowed to accept the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Proclamation introduced the Ten Percent Plan, which laid the groundwork for rejoining the Union and Confederacy by accepting the readmission of the Confederate States, where 10% of voters declared allegiance to the Union.

Lincoln likely aimed to use the Ten Percent Plan to coax Confederates into accepting the Emancipation Proclamation by making it conditional with land retention. The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction was initially relatively well-received by Unionists, including both Democrats and Republicans.

1865: Congress proposes the Thirteenth Amendment

Lincoln realized the Emancipation Proclamation alone would not be enough to ensure the full liberation of the enslaved; it would have to be accompanied by a constitutional amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment, which proposed the abolition of slavery, was first passed through the Senate in April 1864; it did not initially pass through the House, however, causing Lincoln to add it to the Republican Party platform for his 1864 bid for reelection. This strategy worked, and the House passed the bill proposing the amendment in January 1865, after which Lincoln submitted the Amendment for ratification by state governments.

The Thirteenth Amendment was officially ratified on Dec. 6, 1865. It stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This action marked, at least, a constitutional answer to the question of slavery—although cultural, economic, and social acceptance would still be years in the making.

1865: The end of slavery in Texas

Although the Emancipation Proclamation legally went into effect on the first day of 1863, its implementation was far from instantaneous or smooth.

Liberating enslaved persons across the Confederacy was a long process that often required the efforts of Union troops. The most geographically remote Confederate state, Texas, became the final stronghold for slavery, even after the Civil War ended. Many enslavers had migrated into Texas throughout the war, and by 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved in the state. 

On June 19, 1865, Union Troops arrived in Galveston, Texas—posting written announcements from Maj. General Gordon Granger that declared: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.”

That date, now known as Juneteenth, marks the formal end of slavery in the United States, though, after its official eradication in the Confederacy, two Union border states—Delaware and Kentucky—did not emancipate enslaved people until December of that same year. Juneteenth celebrations began on the first anniversary of Granger’s ordinance just one year later, and today continue nationally.

1865: Lincoln’s final speech

On April 11, 1865, Lincoln delivered what would be his final public address—though, at the time, no one was aware of its significance. Through his words, Lincoln hinted at his larger plans for reconstruction, including praising Louisiana’s example of abolishing slavery, widening education access to African American children, and allowing some African Americans to vote. Lincoln openly supported the proposition of giving “very intelligent” African Americans the right to vote, along with those who had fought in the Union Army.

One crowd member, however, was fatally unhappy with these remarks: John Wilkes Booth, who turned and remarked to a friend, “That is the last speech he will ever make.” Three days later, Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre.

1866: Civil Rights Act

Following Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency. Johnson, however, had much less progressive views regarding slavery than Lincoln and thought the Civil War was to preserve the Union, which dramatically altered the path ahead for reconstruction.

Johnson advocated for a policy of “Presidential Reconstruction,” which did not mandate that Southern states guarantee African Americans the right to vote or participate in writing new state constitutions.

When the Civil Rights Act was first proposed in 1866, offering equal rights and citizenship to formerly enslaved people, Johnson vetoed it. Congress met him with opposition, overriding his veto shortly after.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 officially granted African Americans citizenship and equal rights. It also theoretically barred discrimination in significant areas like housing or employment, but officials hardly enforced these protections. It would take another century, during the Civil Rights Movement, for these rights to be fully embraced. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 would lay the groundwork for the Fourteenth Amendment.

1867: Reconstruction Acts

As the reconstruction progressed, Congress passed a series of acts aimed at solving some of the central questions of how to integrate formerly enslaved people into society, as well as reintegrate Confederate states, despite continued objections from President Johnson.

Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act in February 1867 and proposed the full enfranchisement of all citizens (except for Confederates). When it arrived on Johnson’s desk for review, he attempted to veto it, claiming it would “coerce the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which it is known that they are opposed.”

Frustrated by former Confederate officials attempting to organize governments and undermine Reconstruction in the South, Congress overrode him.

The rest of the Reconstruction Acts would divide the Confederacy into military districts to oversee the establishment of new governments, limit former high-ranking Confederate military officials’ rights to vote and hold office, and, conversely, grant formerly enslaved males those same rights.

1868: The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified

In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in Scott v. Sanford that African Americans—whether free or enslaved—were not U.S. citizens. This ruling was not overturned effectively until the Fourteenth Amendment, which was passed by Congress in June 1866 and ratified in July 1868.

When sending the amendment to the states for ratification, President Johnson declared openly to Congress that his doing so should “be considered as purely ministerial, and in no sense whatever committing the Executive to an approval or a recommendation” of its contents.

The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”—including formerly enslaved people—as well as equal protection under the law, stating, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The amendment was a landmark in expanding civil rights beyond federal protections by directly addressing states. Its success was limited during the Reconstruction era, however. For years after its passing, the Supreme Court ruled the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend the rights of the first eight amendments to the states. Despite this, it did mobilize Black and white citizens with the promise of what could be.

The amendment’s legacy is more prominently apparent in the 20th century. Its phrase “equal protection of the law” has been used across court cases and enabled several historic civil rights protections in more modern eras, including Brown v. Board of Education (on racial segregation in public schools) and the University of California v. Bakke (on racial quotas in education).

The struggle didn’t end with the Fourteenth Amendment.

The country continues to work for freedom in the 21st century. It is a challenge that continually plays out in modern-day society and politics. As author, poet, and writer Elizabeth Alexander points out, “…freedom does have to do with the condition of being enslaved or not being enslaved. I think we also all know and experience that there is much more to it than that.”

Vote by vote, legislation by legislation, conversation by conversation, the country continues to contentiously make its way toward a truer sense of freedom and a society where all are truly equal.

Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn.

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