Amnesty

an act declaring that certain offenses, usually political, have been overlooked. A pardon is the forgiving of an individual person for a crime committed. The offense is still an offense, and the person is still guilty, but is forgiven. In case of amnesty, proclamation is made that the offense is obliterated, and those concerned will not be punished. It is considered public policy to issue an amnesty proclamation at the close of a civil war or an insurrection. Sometimes individuals are excepted from the benefit of the proclamation. When the Stuart family was restored to England in 1660, Charles II issued a proclamation of amnesty excepting, however, thirteen persons by name, who were closely concerned in the execution of his royal father, Charles I. Two of these regicides, Goffe and Whalley, escaped to New England and lived for many years in partial concealment among their friends. At one stage of the American Revolution the British government offered a general amnesty to all Americans who should lay down their arms, John Hancock and Samuel Adams being excepted by name. The Continental Congress made a serious mistake in not issuing a proclamation of general amnesty at the close of the American Revolution. A large number of American royalists, people of intelligence and wealth, were compelled to leave for Canada and England to the corresponding loss of our own country. A general amnesty was proclaimed at the close of Shays' Rebellion, 1787; and another from which a few, notably Jefferson Davis, were for a time excepted, was proclaimed at the close of the American Civil War in 1865.