With Malice Towards None and Charity for All: Lincoln’s Clemency at Work, as He Pardons a Confederate Sympathizer
In the closing months of the war, he responds to the pardon request of Connecticut Senator Lafayette Sabine Foster
The woman whose son she hoped to see pardoned wrote that if the pardon was granted, “you shall receive our warmest thanks, and I trust, the blessing of God.”
Lafayette Sabine Foster was a U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867, and was afterwards a judge on the state supreme court...
The woman whose son she hoped to see pardoned wrote that if the pardon was granted, “you shall receive our warmest thanks, and I trust, the blessing of God.”
Lafayette Sabine Foster was a U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867, and was afterwards a judge on the state supreme court from 1870 to 1876. In February 1865 he received a letter from constituents Nathan and Lydia Wheeler. He knew the Wheelers, and had just sent Nathan an agricultural document that Foster thought would be of interest.
The letter, part of which survives, involves one of their sons, who had apparently sided with the Confederacy and was being held in a prisoner of war camp. The close of Mrs. Wheeler’s letter asked for “his releasement at an early day, and you shall receive our warmest thanks, and I trust, the blessing of God.” Mr. Wheeler wrote a note under that, which is complete. He told Foster, “My wife has written you a letter in good faith, and I humbly trust that you will get it an early hearing; any amount of certificates can be sent you to prove our loyalty if necessary. The agricultural document you sent me I appreciate highly, and thank you for it.” So Wheeler was prepared to document his own loyalty if necessary.
Senator Foster had no doubt of the Wheelers’ loyalty, and he sent the letter on to President Lincoln, endorsing it “I respectfully request the discharge of this man on his taking the oath.” The oath Foster refers to was specified by President Lincoln, who in a proclamation on December 8, 1863, granted a full pardon to any participant of the “existing rebelling” who was willing to take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Lincoln responded to these heartfelt pleas with his typical warmhearted clemency. “Let this man take the oath of Dec. 8, 1863, & be discharged.” This is an unpublished document.
Just two weeks later, Lincoln would deliver his famed second Inaugural Address, where he would cal for “Malice towards none and charity for all”, the very principle we see at work in this document.
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