June 21, 1865---Citizen Bobby Lee

JUNE 21, 1865:          

Although Robert E. Lee (along with the other Confederates under indictment) was never tried for treason, the indictment handed down by the Virginia Federal Court was never quashed, as Grant recommended. Instead it remained in force but unenforced.

This unusual legal maneuver has led some historians to speculate that perhaps indeed Robert E. Lee (and others) were tried for treason in a kind of Chambre Ardente affair. If this was the case they were almost all certainly convicted  in absentia and sentenced. Perhaps the sentences were suspended by circumstance --- the indictment and impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, or some other political machination --- until the sentences were rendered dead letters.

Though this seems unlikely, it should be remembered that the national mood in the summer of 1865 was a particularly ugly one. We need only look at the procedural and substantive abuses of due process suffered by the Lincoln assassination conspirators to imagine that almost any miscarriage of justice was possible at the time.

Though this is all largely speculation, several fascinating books exist on the subject. 

In the event, Lee was never pardoned despite his articulate letter and General Grant’s endorsement of it.  Although Lee had filed the correct paperwork and had taken the required Amnesty Oath (on October 2, 1865 the same day that Lee was inaugurated as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia), the U.S. Government never acted on the submission.  Although Lee was encouraged to resubmit the papers, he refused, assuming that the United States had denied his request. He died a U.S. national but not a U.S. citizen, and unpardoned.

 

In 1970, a State Department archivist discovered Lee’s paperwork among William H. Seward’s papers. The Secretary of State had apparently kept Lee’s documents as souvenirs and never bothered to submit them to the appropriate department.

In 1975, a full century after Lee had submitted his application, Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint congressional resolution retroactive to June 13, 1865, the date of Lee’s letter to Grant.

At the August 5, 1975, signing ceremony, President Gerald R. Ford acknowledged the discovery of Lee's Oath of Allegiance in the National Archives and remarked:

General Lee's character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride."