Shortly afterwards, Lee applied to General Ulysses S. Grant for pardon. Grant enthusiastically forwarded it to the President "with the earnest recommendation" that Lee's request be granted. The White House apparently received Lee's application, but failed to act on it. Some say, because this separate Oath of Allegiance to the United States was not attached. The missing Amnesty Oath that Lee signed was submitted through the proper channels by Davidson, but was intercepted by a Washington Bureaucrat who decided to keep it as a memento of the Civil War, and it was pigeon-holed in his desk for many years and then forgotten. Some rights of citizenship were restored on Christmas Day 1868 when the President declared a general amnesty for all Confederate officials. Lee's citizenship could not be restored because of a provision in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution barring certain rights to anyone who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the U.S. Full citizenship could be restored only by a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress.
Actually Lee had never renounced his U.S. citizenship. That precious right was lost when he took up arms against the United States. Confederate General Robert E. Lee died without citizenship, a man without a country even though he had taken an Amnesty Oath of allegiance to the U.S. on October 2, 1865. More than a century after Lee's death the old general finally became a full citizen of the United States.
In 1970, a century after General Lee's death, a former school teacher unearthed a long lost paper that led to the restoration of U.S. citizenship for Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Elmer O. Parker found Lee's signed Amnesty Oath that had been buried in a 12 inch cardboard box in the National Archives. The 100 year-old oath immediately became the efforts of Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, to restore Lee's citizenship, which became embroiled in acrimonious Congressional debates over amnesty for draft dodgers and Vietnam deserters. A second attempt to pass the bill also failed, but was passed on the third attempt. Support came from as far away as Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Puerto Rico. The bill also had cosponsors representing states that had fought on opposing sides of the war. The Bill was finally passed by Congress and signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975, granting Lee citizenship 110 years later.
Charles A.Davidson was a Captain in Company E, 1st Va. Battalion, C.S.A serving under Lee. Several of his brothers were killed in the war, one of which was the noted Greenlee Davidson. He outlived all of his brothers, and he is said to have died in a sanitorium at Clifton Springs, New York in 1879, possibly of Tuberculosis. Davidson was responsible for the erecting of the Lee Memorials now displayed at Washington and Lee University and was a champion for the cause of ex-Confederates everywhere.
Shown here is a note signed by Charles A. Davidson dated 1860 taken from my personal collection. Davidson spent the remaining years of his life attempting to vindicate Robert E. Lee's memory and to establish his citizenship for the sake of Lee's heirs and all ex-Cofederates alike. Failing at this task, Charles A. Davidson had joined the ranks of the "Historically Obscure"
Jeff, your statement concerning the timing of Lee's "application" for special pardon is not correct. Lee addressed a letter to President Johnson dated June 13, 1865. This fact was reported in the New York Times on June 19, 1865. Can you share the source of information you rely on for the statement that Davidson, himself, submitted the amnesty oath to the Federal Government? What is the name of the "Washington bureaucrat" who pigeon-holed it?
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