Sir—Your petitioner, Nicholas Bartlett Pearce, a citizen of the County of Benton, State of Arkansas, most respectfully solicits special amnesty and pardon, as he comes under the eighth exception of the amnesty proclamation of the 29th May 1865, being a graduate of the Military Academy of West Point of the class of 1850. Your petitioner further states that he comes under no other of the exceptions included in the said Amnesty proclamation.
When the question of secession was raised in Arkansas, your petitioner was opposed to it and did all in his humble power to stay the wild fanaticism of the people of his state. Your petitioner never believed in the principle of secession, as he opposed it honestly believing it destructive of any government into which such a pernicious principle should be engrafted. I therefore voted against secession and my county sent two strong Union members to the state convention. The fact that the first session of the convention did not pass such an ordinance is well known to Your Excellency. At a subsequent meeting of the convention an ordinance of secession was passed. All the members present voted for it with the exception of our present Governor.
By an ordinance of the convention I was appointed Brigadier General and assigned to the command of the 1st Division of the Army of Arkansas. As commander of that Division I participated in the Battle of Oak Hills (or Wilson's Creek, Mo.) Soon after that battle the troops under my command were mustered out of the service by an order from the Governor & Mil. Board of the State and I was relieved from duty. I was subsequently assigned to duty in the Subsistence Department of the Confederate States Army and did not again serve in the field during the war.
Your petitioner would represent that he had never been engaged in any vigilance committees organized for trying men for disloyalty to the so called Confederate States or for what was termed their Union sentiments. That he has never taken part in or ordered or countenanced in any way the persecution of Union men or the hanging of any Union men during the Rebellion, nor has he ever taken part in hunting down Union men with dogs, but has ever been opposed to all such proceedings.
Your petitioner was born & raised in the South, and when his state seceded believed it his duty to go with his state & people. He is fully satisfied then as now that the principle of secession is wrong & that the course of the South has been erroneous. He therefore feels no hesitancy in renouncing the now exploded idea of a state to the right to secede from the Union. He does also inform Your Excellency that he recognizes the absolute destruction of the right of former owners of slaves & that the institution of slavery is finally & forever destroyed in the United States & asserts his intention & willingness to abide by the decision made by the sword and to comply as far as in him is the ability to conform to all laws & proclamations of the Congress & President of the United States on the subject of slavery.
Your petitioner further states that since the disbanding of the Rebel army he has to the utmost of his ability endeavored to support & assist the United States authorities in their efforts to reestablish civil government & restore law and order.
He further represents to Your Excellency that he wishes to resume his allegiance to the Constitution & laws of the United States and to conduct himself in all things henceforth without reserve or evasion, becoming a good citizen, all of which he solemnly swears is his earnest intention, that he has taken the amnesty oath as required by the Proclamation, which is hereto appended. Your petitioner therefore prays for special amnesty & pardon and to be restored to all his civil rights as a citizen of the United States.
Your petitioner further states that he has not had control of any prisons in which Union soldiers have been confined & has had nothing to do with any ill treatment of any Union prisoners.
I have the honor to remain, Your Excellency's obedient servant,
N. B. PEARCE.
Sworn to and subscribed before me at Austin, Texas, this 19th day of October, 1865.
W. A. SNOW,
Capt. & Pro. Mar.
Address care of Gov. Isaac Murphy, Little Rock, Arkansas.
P.S. Your petitioner further states that at the time of the breaking our of the rebellion he was not in the U.S. Army, having resigned his commission in April 1858.
Resp'ly,
N. B. PEARCE.