e individual rights of
the citizen, contrary to the genius and spirit of our free institutions,
and exhaustive of the national resources, and ought not, therefore,
to be sanctioned or allowed except in cases of actual necessity for
repelling invasion or suppressing insurrection or rebellion; and

Whereas a retaliatory or vindictive policy, attended by unnecessary
disqualifications, pains, penalties, confiscations, and disfranchisements,
now, as always, could only tend to hinder reconciliation among the people
and national restoration, while it must seriously embarrass, obstruct,
and repress popular energies and national industry and enterprise; and

Whereas for these reasons it is now deemed essential to the public
welfare and to the more perfect restoration of constitutional law and
order that the said last-mentioned proclamation so as aforesaid issued
on the 29th day of May, A.D. 1865, should be modified, and that the full
and beneficent pardon conceded thereby should be opened and further
extended to a large number of the persons who by its aforesaid
exceptions have been hitherto excluded from Executive clemency:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Andrew Johnson, President of the
United States, do hereby proclaim and declare that the full pardon
described in the said proclamation of the 29th day of May, A.D. 1865,
shall henceforth be opened and extended to all persons who, directly or
indirectly, participated in the late rebellion, with the restoration
of all privileges, immunities, and rights of property, except as to
property with regard to slaves, and except in cases of legal proceedings
under the laws of the United States; but upon this condition,
nevertheless, that every such person who shall seek to avail himself of
this proclamation shall take and subscribe the following oath and shall
cause the same to be registered for permanent preservation in the same
manner and with the same effect as with the oath prescribed in the said
proclamation of the 29th day of May, 1865, namely:

I, ---- ----, do solemnly swear (or affirm), in presence of Almighty
God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend
the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States
thereunder, and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully
support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the late
rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves. So help me God.

The fo