Republican Senator Mitt Romney described President Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger’s Stone sentence as “historic, unprecedented corruption,” and many seem to agree. Yet a deep dive into the history shows another president’s relentless campaign of pardons as far more destructive to the nation at one of its most fragile moments.
Prior to the 1860, presidents used the constitutional power to pardon and commute sentences sparingly. But like so much else in American history, the Civil War changed all that. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the so-called Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. The order offered a full pardon to anyone who had joined the Confederate cause, save for a number of key exceptions: high-ranking officials and those who mistreated Black soldiers or their officers.
For Lincoln, this measure was less about pardons than undermining the Confederate war effort, offering amnesty in exchange for abandoning the secessionist, pro-slavery cause. Moreover, this was less a program than a tentative plan. Few took him up on the offer. In the end, Lincoln pardoned only 64 individuals for secession-related crimes.
When Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination, he revived the idea as a way to reintegrate states on the losing side of the war. In May 1865, Johnson issued a far more sweeping proclamation of amnesty that aimed to restore the white men who participated in the rebellion. With a single signature, he pardoned hundreds of thousands of people, but drew a line at those worth more than $20,000.
Those with more wealth were encouraged to apply directly to Johnson to clear their names. Otherwise, they could not acquire or transfer property or possess other economic rights. And, crucially, they could not participate in politics, much less hold political office.
Over the summer and fall of 1865, throngs of well-off Southern whites flocked to the White House to beseech Johnson for pardons. The more savvy of these applicants began hiring “pardon brokers” who had special access to the president.
Johnson soon began approving individual pardons with little regard for their merits, ultimately signing upward of 13,500 of them. As a result, many pardoned aristocratic planters and politicians who ruled in formerly Confederate states won the right to run for office in the next election. Thanks to Johnson’s assistance, they soon found themselves once again in charge of local and state governments. One of their first initiatives was passing racist “Black Codes,” laws used to limit the movement of freed slaves so that they could be forced to labor for their former masters at low wages. At the same time, white vigilantes operating under the newly formed Ku Klux Klan began terrorizing black communities.