Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/521

Rh of the President having reference to slaves. Pardon was given to all persons on taking this oath except civil or diplomatic agents, judges, congressmen, military officers above the rank of colonel in the army or lieutenant in the navy, officers who had resigned from the United States army to enter Confederate service, and all persons who had treated captured colored soldiers otherwise than as prisoners of war.

The plan of reconstruction proposed in connection with the proffered amnesty provided that whenever in any seceded State a number of voters not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such State in the presidential election of 1860 have taken the amnesty oath and re-established a State government, which accords with the terms of the oath, the State so reconstructed shall be reorganized and protected. The purpose made evident by this empowering of one-tenth of the voters to construct State governments according to a plan by which even the one-tenth were bound by oath made reconstruction more objectionable to the South than it was before the proclamation of amnesty. The iron-clad oath, the proscription of so large a class, and the commission of State government to a tenth only of the voters of a State, all of whom were put in one class by the required oath, gave the Confederates no encouragements to trust the restoration of the old constitutional relations of the States. The plan, however, was put into operation in such States as could be brought in part or entirely under military control.