JANUARY 20, 1864:
Even as
Arkansas Confederates were tearing down Confederate flags in protest at the
expanded draft, Arkansas Unionists were adopting a new State Constitution which
banned slavery. With the adoption of the new Constitution, Abraham Lincoln
issued an Order to the Military Governor of Arkansas, General Frederick Steele,
to permit elections for State offices.
On this same day, Lincoln commuted eleven more death
sentences given to Union deserters. Lincoln admitted that he “did not want to add
to the butchery.” As the war went on, Lincoln became more and more liberal in
extending clemencies to most who asked for them---he, however, had no mercy for
rapists, slave-traders, or men who brutalized others.
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