{34} 4th. Those who had been engaged in destroying the commerce of the United States on the high seas, or upon the lakes and rivers separating the British Provinces from the United States, or in making raids from Canada into the United States; 5th. Those who were, or had been, absent from the United States, or had left their homes within the jurisdiction of the United States, and passed beyond the military lines of the United States into the pretended Confederate States, for the purpose of aiding the rebellion; 6th. Those who, at the time they might seek to obtain the benefits of the proclamation by taking the oath, were prisoners of war, or under civil or criminal arrest, and those who had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States since December 8, 1863, and had failed to keep it; And, finally, those who had voluntarily participated in any way in the rebellion and were the owners of taxable property to the value of more than twenty thousand dollars. [Sidenote: The effect of these exceptions.] These exceptions would have shut out almost all of the leading men of most of the "States" that passed secession ordinances from the benefits of the proclamation, except for the subsequent provision in the proclamation, which ordained that special application might be made to the President for pardon by any person belonging to the excepted classes, and held out the promise that such clemency would be as liberally extended as might be consistent with the facts of the case and the peace and dignity of the United States. [Sidenote: The President's plan in a sentence.] Briefly, the President proposed to pardon the rebel leaders, upon special personal application, as an act of high executive grace, and to amnesty every one else in a body; and upon the basis of {35} their re-established loyalty to use the old electorate of the South in reconstruction. How he succeeded we will now proceed to relate. [Sidenote: The realization of it.] [Sidenote: The administering of the oath.] In the first place, the machinery for administering the cleansing oath was made very simple and accessible. Any commissioned officer, civil, military or naval, of the United States, and any officer, civil or military, of a loyal "State" qualified by the laws of the "State" to administer oaths, was declared by the President, through his Secretary of State, to be competent to administer this oath of loyalty, a copy of which should be given to the person taking it as his certificate of restored citizenship, and another copy sent to the State Department at Washington to be there deposited and kept in the archives of the Government. [Sidenote: Reconstruction in North Carolina.]