The Proclamation Of Amnesty: A Comparative Analysis

Both the Wade-Davis Bill and the Proclamation of Amnesty came about after the civil war as a means to try to kick start the reconstruction process by dealing with the former Confederate states. Both plans accounted for the wrongdoings of the Southerners and the Confederate leaders and went to punish them accordingly but to also act as forgiving pardons in their own ways. While both the bill and proclamation may have used different levels of intensity or different ways or persuasion, they shared a common goal in trying to merge the South back into the Union. The Wade-Davis bill and the Proclamation of Amnesty both had lots of similarities between them that link the two documents together. One of the biggest similarities is the fact that both of them are willing to grant pardons to the people and states of the Confederacy,
One of the most profound differences between the documents was the tone with which they were presented. The Proclamation of Amnesty had a very forgiving tone and was willing to compromise to a certain extent with the people of the Confederacy. The Wade-Davis bill, on the other hand, can be seen as a stricter version of the proclamation as the tone of it seems to be more towards an authoritative stance. It is a more direct ultimatum directed towards the South than the proclamation was. A second noticeable difference between the two documents can be seen in the willingness to compromise. In the Proclamation of Amnesty, Lincoln set fourth his plan on reuniting the South, and soon put forth the idea that only ten percent of a states voter’s were needed to allow it to reenter the Union. Then in the Wade-Davis bill, that number was raised to a staggering five times the amount previously needed and the willingness to compromise goes drastically down in the Wade-Davis bill as it becomes more of an ultimatum than