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Congressional Passage // Freedmen's Bureau Act // Race Riots
Early State Ratification // Congressional Elections // Southern Rejection
Congressional Reconstruction

The Civil Rights Act became law on April 9, 1866, but other issues remained unsettled.  At that point, the proposed constitutional amendment ensuring federal civil rights had been tabled in both chambers of Congress; the proposed constitutional amendment on apportionment of federal representation had received a two-thirds majority in the House, but failed to gain the same in the Senate; resolutions to disfranchise former Confederates and prohibit them from holding public office had been referred to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction; and the proposed constitutional amendment protecting the national debt and rejecting Confederate debt had passed the House with a two-thirds majority, but had not been considered in the Senate. 

At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction on April 21, 1866, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens introduced a plan for combining the various proposals into one amendment.  It comprised a section dealing with each of the four topics for which resolutions had been submitted previously, along with a fifth section to allow Congress to enforce the constitutional amendment with “appropriate legislation.”  Section Five was based on the enforcement clause of the Thirteenth Amendment.  A week later, after discussion and changes were made, the committee endorsed the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, 12-3, and ordered it reported to Congress.  On April 30, it was introduced into the Senate by Senator William Fessenden, chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and into the House by Congressman Stevens, ranking House member of the committee.  The House began debating the Fourteenth Amendment on May 8.   

The initial version of Section Three, which disfranchised and prohibited former Confederates from holding public office, proved to be the most controversial in the House, including with mainstream Republicans.  Congressman James Blaine feared that if the amendment overrode the President’s pardons, then the federal government would be open to the charge of making promises in bad faith.  Congressman John Bingham, author of Section One, worried that opposition to Section Three might torpedo passage of the entire amendment.  Congressmen Stevens insisted, however, that Section Three was the most important part of the proposed amendment because it was necessary to keep the Southern state governments in loyal hands during Reconstruction.   

Section Four, securing the national debt and prohibiting assumption of Confederate debt, was so generally agreeable that it provoked little comment and only token opposition from Border State congressman complaining about the ban on compensation to former slaveowners. 

The House passed the Fourteenth Amendment on May 10 by more than the required two-thirds majority, 128-37, sparking applause in the House galleries as well as on the floor.  The five negative Republican votes were congressmen from the Border States of Kentucky, Maryland, and West Virginia.  Although most supporters and opponents agreed that Section One incorporated the substance of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment as initially passed by the House did not include a clause defining national citizenship.  House participants may have assumed that the citizenship clause in the Civil Rights Act was sufficient to affirm that blacks were citizens. 

Debate on the proposed Fourteenth Amendment opened in the Senate on May 23.  Because Senator Fessenden was absent due to illness, Senator Jacob Howard represented the Joint Committee on Reconstruction by opening the debate and steering the Fourteenth Amendment through the Senate.  On May 29, Howard moved to amend Section One by adding a citizenship clause to read, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside.”  In addition, the Senate Republican Caucus decided to strike the disfranchisement clause from Section Three, and Senator Howard presented a substitute with that omission, which was approved by the full Senate, 32-10, on May 31. 

Senate opponents unsuccessfully attempted to thwart passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by dividing it once again into separate amendments.  On June 8, the Senate passed the Fourteenth Amendment by a two-thirds majority of those present, 33-11 (five senators were absent and one seat was vacant).  On June 13, the House approved the Senate’s version of the Fourteenth Amendment (with the citizenship clause and without the disfranchisement clause), 120-32, with all Republican voting in the affirmative.  The June 30, 1866 issue of Harper’s Weekly (published June 20) reported Congressman Stevens’s displeasure with the Senate version, which removed the disfranchisement clause.  Although accepting it as the best that could be accomplished at that time, he predicted the necessity of the federal government securing voting rights for black men (which later would be embodied in the Fifteenth Amendment).   

On June 16, 1866, the proposed Fourteenth Amendment was presented to Secretary of State William Henry Seward, who then submitted it to the states for ratification or rejection.  When Congress received notification from President Johnson on June 22 of the secretary’s action, the chief executive made it clear that he had not approved the proposed constitutional amendment.  Harper’s Weekly editor Curtis reacted in the July 7 issue (published June 27), expressing regret for the president’s disapproval and disagreeing with Johnson’s contention that the Fourteenth Amendment did not represent public sentiment.  The editor explained that presidents are not directly involved in the process of amending the constitution.  (Curtis mentioned the exception of Lincoln signing of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.  The editor was apparently unaware that in March 1861, a day before leaving office, President James Buchanan had signed the original pro-slavery Thirteenth Amendment, which was subsequently not ratified by the states.  For more information, visit HarpWeek’s Thirteenth Amendment website.)


Harper's Weekly References

1)  May 26, 1866, p. 323, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

2)  June 16, 1866, p. 371, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

3)  June 23, 1866, p. 387, c. 3
“Domestic Intelligence” column

4)  June 30, 1866, p. 403, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

5)  July 7, 1866, p. 419, c. 4
“Domestic Intelligence” column

6)  July 7, 1866, p. 418, c. 4 to p. 419, c. 1
editorial, “The President and the Amendment”


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Congressional Passage // Freedmen's Bureau Act // Race Riots
Early State Ratification // Congressional Elections // Southern Rejection
Congressional Reconstruction
 
 

     
 

 
     
 

 
     
 

 

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