'Resolution To Restore General Lee’s Citizenship'

Confederate General Robert E. Lee

(The following article appeared in the Jan. 31, 1957 edition of The Evergreen Courant newspaper in Evergreen, Ala.)

Resolution To Restore General Lee’s Citizenship:

Senator Lister Hill announced today that he is co-sponsoring a Senate Joint Resolution to restore posthumously the full rights of citizenship to General Robert E. Lee and to commemorate Lee’s 150th birthday.

Hill pointed out that although President Andrew Johnson issued four amnesty proclamations during the years 1866-1868, General Lee was never given his full citizenship rights. At the time of his death on Oct. 12, 1870, Lee was permitted to vote, but could not, because of a provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, hold any civil or military office or serve on any jury.

The Fourteenth Amendment provided that any person who had previously taken an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution and who fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States, could not hold any State or Federal office, unless such disability were removed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress.

Lee, a graduate of West Point Military Academy, served before the War as an officer in the United States Army and later became Commanding General of the Confederate Army. Hill called attention to the fact that although Congress by a two-thirds vote could have removed Lee’s disability, it had not done so at the time of his death.

The resolution co-sponsored by Hill and today introduced in the Senate declared, “That in commemoration of the 150th birthday of General Robert E. Lee and in honor of the knightly virtues of courage, patriotism and selfless devotion to duty which he so amply displayed during his lifetime, General Robert E. Lee of Virginia be, and he now is, posthumously restored to his full rights of citizenship retroactive to the date of his application for Presidential pardon, namely, June 13, 1866.”