The Forgotten Side of Lincoln's Clemency Policy

While much has been written about Lincoln's exercise of clemency, we find little systematic discussion of Lincoln's clemency decision making and skewed emphasis on military pardons and amnesty provisions. In this paper, we briefly review this problematic literature and, in a distinct departure, we examine the 343 clemency warrants Lincoln issued to those convicted in civil courts. We believe these documents are among the richest sources of indisputably accurate information with respect to Lincoln's decision making processes. In our examination of the distribution of warrants among the states and territorial regions, we find considerable evidence Lincoln employed the pardoning power in a strategic manner. While war-related offenses constitute a large number in the population, we find the majority of Lincoln's civil warrants dealt with offenses related to (1) counterfeiting (2) postal violations (3) theft/burglary/larceny and (4) murder/manslaughter. Our examination of the rationales provided in clemency warrants reveals an impressive effort on the part of Lincoln to provide explicit justifications for each decision and a willingness to extend clemency upon recommendation of both prominent individuals and mass publics