President Abraham Lincoln announced a grant of amnesty for
Emilie Todd Helm, his wife Mary Lincoln’s half sister and the
widow of a Confederate general.
The pardon was one of the first under Lincoln’s Proclamation
of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which he had announced less
than a week before.
The plan, the president’s blueprint for the reintegration of the
South into the Union, allowed for former Confederates to be
granted amnesty if they took an oath to the United States.
The option was open to all but the highest officials of the
Confederacy. Lincoln’s sister-in-law received the pardon,
but never took the required oath.
Emilie Todd Helm (1836 – 1930)
