President Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation
On the 29th of May President Johnson issued a proclamation granting amnesty to all persons who have directly or indirectly taken part in the rebellion, with the restoration of all rights of property except as to slaves, and except in cases where legal proceedings have been instituted for the confiscation of property, on condition of their taking an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States, and to obey all laws and proclamations which have been made during the rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves. There are excluded from pardon, except on special application to the President, the following classes of persons: Those who have, in order to aid the rebellion, left judicial positions or seats in Congress, or who have resigned commissions in the army or navy, or absented themselves from the country; those who were educated at West Point or in the United States Naval Academy; those who have engaged in any way in torturing our prisoners; those who have been engaged in the destruction of our commerce, or who have made raids from Canada into the United States; all persons in military, naval, or civil confinement as prisoners of war; all persons who have voluntarily participated in the rebellion, and the estimated value of whose taxable property is over twenty thousand dollars; all who have taken and violated the previous amnesty oath; and all officers of the Confederate service above the rank of colonel in the army or lieutenant in the navy.
I should mention the above referenced proclamation came in the year 1865. It was the first of several proclamations by Pres Johnson. That controversial 13th exception targeted a certain class of men who had all been worth at least $20,000 in the census of 1860. Preeminently these men were the elite planters who were the aristocrats that Johnson, and many in the North, blamed for a treasonous and catastrophic war. While some of the men may not have been serving the Confederacy in an official capacity, their wealth made them conspicuous. As members of the Confederate elite, wealthy planters came to symbolize two things in Union victory: the need to finally purify democratic society of aristocratic corruption and a patriotic desire to humiliate tyrants.