AMNESTY (ante). In the absence of specific statutes on the subject, the exercise_ of A. in the United States was assumed to lie with the president. Washington, without participation by congress, granted A., or pardon, to persons who took part m the "whisky rebellion." .John Adams proclaimed full pardon of those engaged in the house-tax insurrection. and Madison did the same in the case of the Barataria pirates. During the rebellion, Lincoln and Johnson issued four or five proclamations of A., one of the .a.est ocmg so broad in its conditions that it raised in congress the question whether the president bad the right to such action, and the judiciary committee of the senate, in Feb. 1869, decided that he had not. "A." is so closely connected with "pardon," and " reprieve." that it is difficult to distinguish them. In one message president Lincoln asserted his exclusive authority 'constitution, and his independence of congress in respect to the pardoning power, even more emphatically than in the procla mation. In 1862, congress had passed an act giving full power to the president, but he considered the act unnecessary, claiming that the constitution gave him the necessary authority. Then, in 1867, the act of 1863 was repealed; and all A. proceedings were remanded to their original basis in the second article of the constitution, until further defined in later amen Iments. The supreme court had decided in the case of Garland
that for pardon the president's power was perfect; yet that is not held to include gen eral amnesty. But in 1868 the fourteenth amendment to the constitution, prohibiting rebels from holding certain offices unless their disabilities should first " be removed by a vote of two thirds of each house," seemed to diminish the rauge of executive authority. Still, the supreme court has held in several cases to the absolute power of the president to grant amnesty and pardon, and that neither congress nor any authority less than an express change the federal constitution can reverse, abridge, or direct that power. The court, through chief justice Chase, says: "It is the intention of the constitution that each of the great co-ordinate departments of the government, the legislative, the execu tive, and the judicial, shall be in its sphere independent of the others. To the executive alone is intrusted the power of pardon, and it is granted without limit. Pardon includes amnesty. It blots out the offense pardoned, and removes all its penal consequences."