GENERAL ORDERS, 
No. 128. 
WAR DEPARTMENT, 
Adjutant General’s Office, 
Wusliivgtun, March 30, ]864. 
By the President of the United States of America. 
A PROCLAMATION. 
Whereas it has become necessary to define the cases in which insurgent 
enemies are entitled to the benefits of the Proclamation of the President 
of the Uniied States, which was made on the eighth day of December, 
1863, and the manner in which they shall proceed to avail themselves 
of those benefits; 
And whereas the objects of that Proclamation were to suppress the 
insurrection and to restore ihe authority of the United States; and 
whereas the amnesty therein proposed by the President was offered with 
reference to these objects alone: 
Mow, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President cf the United States, 
do hereby proclaim and declare that the said Proclamation dees not 
apply to the cases of persons who, at the time when they seek to obtain 
the benefits thereof by taking the oath thereby prescribed, are in 
military, naval, or civil confinement or custody, or under bonds, or on 
parole of the civil, military, or naval authorities, or agents of the United 
States, as prisoners of war, or persons detained for offenses of any kind, 
either before or after conviction; and that, on the contrary, it does apply 
only to those persons who, being yet at large and free from any arrest, 
confinement, or duress, shall voluntarily come forward and take the 
said oath, with the purpose of restoring peace and establishing the 
national authority. Prisoners excluded from the amnesty offered in the 
said Proclamation may apply to the President for clemency, like all 
other offenders, and their applications will receive due consideration. 
I do further declare and proclaim that the oath prescribed in the 
aforesaid Proclamation of the eighth of December, 1863, may be taken 
and subscribed before any commissioned officer, civil, military, or naval, 
in the service of the United States, or any civil or military officer of a 
State or Territory not in insurrection, who, by the laws thereof, may 
be qualified for administering oaths. All officers who receive such oaths 
are hereby authorized to give certificates thereon to the persons respect- 
ively by whom they are made. And such officers are hereby required 2 
to transmit the original records of such oaths, at as early a da? as may 
be convenient, to the Department of State, where they will be deposited 
and remain in the archives of the Government. The Secretary of State 
will keep a register thereof, and will, on application in propSr cases, 
issue certificates of such records in the customary form of official 
certificates. 
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the 
seal of the United States to be affixed. 
Done at the city of Washington, the twenty-sixth day of March, in 
j-( s j the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
four, and of the independence of the United States the 
eighty-eighth. 
the President: 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
William H. Seward, 
Secretary of State. 
order of the Secretary of War : 
E. D. TOWNSEND. 
Assistant Adjutant General. 
Official: 
Assistant Adjutant General.