Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation, issued in December, 1863, exemplifies
the perpetual attempt to infuse mercy into that intestine warfare,
which always grows more fierce by oil thrown on the flames, and only
once, in our case, terminated in the brothers becoming brothers again.
He replied thus to a public criticizer of the document:
"When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives
satisfactory evidence of the same, he can safely be pardoned, and there
is no exception to the rule."
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