On This Day: Amnesty for Confederates contributes to "virtual apartheid" for Black Americans - May 22, 1872
(edited from Wikipedia)
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Amnesty Act
The Amnesty Act of 1872 is a United States federal law passed on May 22, 1872, which removed most of the penalties imposed on former Confederates by the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted on July 9, 1868. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the election or appointment to any federal or state office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion, or treason. However, the section provides that a two-thirds vote by each House of the Congress could override this limitation. The 1872 act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress and the original restrictive Act was passed by the United States Congress in May 1866.
Specifically, the 1872 Act removed office-holding disqualifications against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War, except for "Senators and Representatives of the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States."
[All but 500 pardoned]
In the spirit of the act, then United States President Ulysses S. Grant, by proclamation dated June 1, 1872, directed all district attorneys having charge of proceedings and prosecutions against those who had been disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment to dismiss and discontinue them, except as to persons who fall within the exceptions named in the act. President Grant also pardoned all but 500 former top Confederate leaders.
The 1872 law cleared over 150,000 former Confederate troops who had taken part in the American Civil War.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_Act
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History Argues for Disqualifying Trump
David French
Jan. 18, 2024
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...
[Virtual apartheid substate]
The result wasn’t “pacification.” It was Jim Crow. It turned out that when Congress gave the keys to the state kingdoms back to Confederates, they created the closest thing they could to a renewed version of the Confederacy. Slavery was abolished, but in the almost-century between the end of Reconstruction and the passage of the Civil Rights Act, generations of Black Americans lived and died in a virtual apartheid substate. The fatigue and fear of the North enabled systematic lynching and oppression in the South.
I’m not arguing that the Amnesty Act was the sole cause of Jim Crow. It took years of capitulation, culminating in the Compromise of 1877 — in which Southern Democrats permitted the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to become president in exchange for the removal of Union troops from the South — before the federal government completely abandoned Black Southerners.
[Misguided mercy]
But the Amnesty Act does stand as an example of the high cost of misguided mercy. While defeated Confederates and seditious Trumpists are not morally equivalent — slavery and white supremacy are among America’s cardinal sins — they do share a common characteristic: continued commitment to their rebellious cause.
[Unrepentant insurrectionists]
But history’s lesson is clear. Unrepentant insurrectionists use their power to continue their insurrection. In the post-Reconstruction South, that meant recreating the conditions of the Confederacy as much as the white Southern elite could. In the modern context, refusing to apply Section 3 means granting vindictive rebels access to state power as an instrument of personal revenge.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opinion/trump-14th-amendment-history.html
(edited from article)
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AMNESTY AND SECTION THREE OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Gerard N. Magliocca
7/6/2021
Until January 6, 2021, Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment was one of the vestigial portions of the Constitution. Designed to exclude many former Confederate officials and soldiers from federal or state office, Section Three was quickly neutered by Congress. In 1872, more than the required two-thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives passed an Amnesty Act removing disabilities from all of the former state officers covered by Section Three.
Then in 1898, comparable supermajorities in Congress removed the few remaining disabilities as a gesture of national unity during the Spanish American War. After that Section Three was almost completely forgotten, except for posthumous disability removals given to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the 1970s.
This Article provides the first detailed account of Section Three and argues that the provision’s application was a microcosm for the arc of the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction. Section Three began as a broad restructuring of state government that was given effect before the Fourteenth Amendment was even ratified by supplying the standard for disenfranchising ex-Confederates in elections for their state ratifying conventions. Section Three was then the first part of the Fourteenth Amendment construed by the courts. Following these inconsistent rulings, Congress enacted a Section Three enforcement statute and federal prosecutors brought many actions to oust ineligible officials, including half of the Tennessee Supreme Court. The reforming zeal of Reconstruction was at its peak.
[These questions haunt us still]
By 1871, though, political pressure for sectional reconciliation led President Ulysses S. Grant to ask Congress to remove the Section Three disabilities. Senator Charles Sumner then led an unsuccessful effort to forge a grand bargain under which Section Three relief would be combined with a new civil rights measure that would, among other things, bar racial segregation in public schools. The failure of that compromise, along with Congress’s decision to grant a freestanding Section Three amnesty, was a harbinger of Reconstruction’s doom and
the contraction of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Supreme Court. The amnesty debate also raised deep questions about the meaning of representation, the way in which divided societies should be reunited, and whether the Fourteenth Amendment was mainly concerned with legal neutrality or ending white supremacy. These questions haunt us still.
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https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/80bd1ae0-b274-4f49-94d1-e0fb78a92412/content
(edited from article)
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The pardon of Jefferson Davis and the 14th Amendment
October 17, 2016
On this day in 1978, President Jimmy Carter officially restored the full citizenship rights of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis, signing an act from Congress that ended a century-long dispute.
Davis is most remembered today as one of the leaders of the Confederacy, along with General Robert E. Lee. In 1976, Lee’s citizenship was restored by Congress, also about a century after Lee’s death after the Civil War. The restoration of Davis’ citizenship soon followed.
“In posthumously restoring the full rights of citizenship to Jefferson Davis, the Congress officially completes the long process of reconciliation that has reunited our people following the tragic conflict between the States,” the resolution read on October 17, 1978.
“Earlier, he was specifically exempted form resolutions restoring the rights of other officials in the Confederacy. He had served the United States long and honorably as a soldier, Member of the U.S. House and Senate, and as Secretary of War. General Robert E. Lee’s citizenship was restored in 1976. It is fitting that Jefferson Davis should no longer be singled out for punishment,” the resolution said.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/pardon-jefferson-davis-14th-amendment-163609181.html
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https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016377977
On This Day: Lincoln signs Homestead Act, opening 84 million acres of public land to settlers - May 20, 1862
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016377890
On This Day: Leninist youth organization begins; 2022 version sanctioned for Ukrainian abductions - May 19, 1922
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016377816
On This Day: Bread and circuses to quell revolution and distract from political corruption - May 18, 332
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016377760
On This Day: Brown v. Board of Education 9-0; three SC challenges follow for desegregation - May 17, 1954
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016377694
= new reply since forum marked as read
