Amnesty.
The first regular session of the 42d Congress met Dec. 4th, 1871. The Democrats consumed much of the time in efforts to pass bills to remove the political disabilities of former Southern rebels, and they were materially aided by the editorials of Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, which had long contended for universal amnesty. At this session all such efforts were defeated by the Republicans, who invariably amended such propositions by adding Sumner’s Supplementary Civil Rights Bill, which was intended to prevent any discrimination against colored persons by common carriers, hotels, or other chartered or licensed servants. The Amnesty Bill, however was passed May 22d, 1872, after an agreement to exclude from its provisions all who held the higher military and civic positions under the Confederacy—in all about 350 persons. The following is a copy:
Be it enacted, etc., (two-thirds of each House concurring therein,) That all legal and political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of the amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congress, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of Departments, and foreign ministers of the United States.
Subsequently many acts removing the disabilities of all excepted (save Jefferson Davis) from the provisions of the above, were passed.