sty
was extended to about one thousand persons, and during the remainder
of the Congress some five hundred more were relieved from political
disability. In the Forty-first Congress the liberality of the majority
did not grow less; and during the two years thirty-three hundred
participators in the rebellion--among them some of the most prominent
and influential--were restored to the full privileges of citizenship;
the rule being, in fact, that every one who asked for it, either
through himself of his friends, was freely granted remission of penalty.

At the opening of the Forty-second Congress it was evident that the
practice of removing the disabilities of individuals would not find
favor as in the two preceding Congresses. There was a disposition
rather to classify and reserve for further consideration the really
offending men and give general amnesty to all others. To this end,
Mr. Hale of Maine, on the 10th of April, 1871, moved to suspend the
rules in order that a bill might be passed removing legal and political
disabilities from all persons who had participated in the rebellion,
except the following classes: _first_, members of the Congress of the
United States who withdrew therefrom and aided the rebellion; _second_,
officers of the Army and Navy, who, being above the age of twenty-one
years, left the service and aided the rebellion; _third_, members of
State Conventions who voted for pretended ordinances of secession. It
was further provided that before receiving the benefit of this Act
each person should take an oath of loyalty before the Clerk of a
United States Court or before a United States Commissioner. Debate
was not allowed and the bill was passed by more than the requisite
two-thirds--_ayes_ 134, _noes_ 46.

When the Bill came before the Senate, Mr. Robertson of South Carolina
attempted to put it on its passage, but objection being made it was
referred under the rule, and thereby postponed for the session. With
this result the pressure for individual relief of the disabled persons
became so great, that at the next session of Congress a bill was
prepared and passed in the House, containing some seventeen thousand
names, to which the Senate proposed to add some three thousand. But
the effect of this was still further to impress upon Congress the
necessity of some generalization of the process of relief. The
impossibility of examining into the merits of individuals by tens of
thousands, and of es