Section Three of
the Fourteenth Amendment prevented anyone who had “engaged in
insurrection or rebellion” against the United States—i.e.,
former Confederates—from holding any civil or military office in
federal or state government. Instead of presidential pardons,
as under President Johnson’s Reconstruction policy, Section
Three authorized Congress to remove the disability by a
two-thirds vote of each House. Section Three stopped those who
had supported the Confederate cause from controlling the
Reconstruction process to the detriment of ex-slaves and
Southern whites who had remained loyal to the Union during the
Civil War.
Like the other substantive sections of the
Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three was originally introduced as
a separate measure. Among the proposals Senator Charles Sumner
of Massachusetts made on the opening day of the 39th
Congress, December 4, 1865, was a resolution that included
restricting federal and state officeholders to those who were
“of constant and undoubted loyalty.” On December 20, a
resolution submitted by Republican Congressman John Broomall of
Pennsylvania specifically targeted “the active and willing
participants in the late usurpation” (i.e., Confederates) who
were to be “forever exclude[d] from all political power.”
Similar proposals were made by Republican Congressmen Rufus
Spalding of Ohio and
Roscoe Conkling of New York,
respectively, on January 5 and January 16, 1866.
The punitive resolutions were referred to
the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, but no action was taken
on them until after it was agreed to combine proposals on the
different topics—civil rights, apportionment, ban on
ex-Confederate officeholders, and the national and Confederate
debts—into one comprehensive amendment. In the committee,
Congressman George Boutwell, Republican of Massachusetts,
introduced on April 28, 1866, a proposition that served as the
basis for what became Section Three of the Fourteenth
Amendment. As presented to the full House on April 30, it also
included a clause (introduced by Republican Senator Ira Harris
of New York) disfranchising former Confederates until July 4,
1870. That clause was removed before final passage.
(The Amnesty Act of 1872 restored political
rights to all but 500 ex-Confederates, and complete amnesty came
in 1898.) |