EMERSON YARTAN -- 118th INFANTRY-WENT TO CANADA FOR THE WAR - The Adjutant General's Report of 1865 is disingenuous. It states that Emerson Yartan (Yattaw), who enlisted in Champlain on August 10, 1862, in Champlain to serve for three years and who was mustered into Company I on August 20, was discharged on May 23, 1865, at New York City. By his own admission on his Muster Roll Abstract, Emerson states that he deserted to Canada soon after enlisting. President Lincoln's proclamation of March 11, 1865, whose partial contents are listed below, gave amnesty to deserters and they were given Honorable Discharges....be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln. President of the United States, do issue this my proclamation, as required by said act, ordering and requiting all deserters to return to their proper posts; and I do hereby notify them that all deserters who shall, within sixty days from the date of this proclamation, viz, on or before the 10th day of May, 1865, return to service or report themselves to a provost-marshal shall be pardoned, on condition that they return to their regiments and companies or to such other organizations as they may be assigned to and serve the remainder of their original terms of enlistment and in addition thereto a period equal to the time lost by desertion. 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, this 11th day of March A.D. 1865, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.A braham Lincoln
You can read the whole proclamation, which gives future restrictions to the deserters at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-124-offering-pardon-deserters
Emerson rejoined his wife, Sophia, and his children after the war and resumed his occupation as blacksmith.
