Mass Pardons in America

"Some US presidents face the dramatic challenge of organized domestic resistance, insurrection, and rebellion-challenges to the authority of the government itself. Amnesty in America examines how presidents have issued mass pardons and amnesties to reconcile with Americans who rebelled against their government. It analyzes how presidents have used both deeds and words-proclamations of mass pardons and persuasive rhetoric-to deal with domestic rebellion and achieve political reconciliation. By analyzing the history, jurisprudence, and politics of presidential pardons, political scientist Graham Dodds explores cases of presidential mass pardons in American history. Beginning with old English and colonial-era precedents, as well as arguments by Alexander Hamilton and others at the American founding about the pardon power, Dodds combines jurisprudence, history, presidential studies, and political rhetoric to track the pardon power across time. Most of the book consists of in-depth case studies of the main instances of such pardons throughout U.S. political history: (1) George Washington and John Adams pardoning participants in armed insurrections in Pennsylvania in the 1790s, (2) James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland's pardons of Mormon insurrectionists and polygamists over several decades in the nineteenth century, (3) multiple pardons by Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson for Confederates both during and after the U.S. Civil War, and (4) Gerald Ford's clemency and Jimmy Carter's amnesty of Vietnam War draft evaders and military deserters. Dodds concludes that mass pardons are a main way in which the federal government can promote political reconciliation, and he provides substantial evidence that presidential rhetoric can be effective and even an essential part of that"--