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The Reconstruction Acts, or the Military Reconstruction Acts (March 2, 1867, 14 Stat. 428-430, c.153; March 23, 1867, 15 Stat. 2-5, c.6; July 19, 1867, 15 Stat. 14-16, c.30; and March 11, 1868, 15 Stat. 41, c.25), were four statutes passed during the Reconstruction Era by the 40th United States Congress addressing the requirement for Southern States to be readmitted to the Union.
The First Reconstruction Act had been passed March 2, 1867. On July 3, 1867, the House Select Committee on Reconstruction was created when the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution by Thaddeus Stevens which read, "Resolved that a committee of nine be appointed to inquire what further legislation, if any, is required respecting the acts of March 2, 1867, or other ...
The Reconstruction Acts, as originally passed, were initially called "An act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States". [118] The legislation was enacted by the 39th Congress, on March 2, 1867.
The customary method by which agencies of the United States government are created, abolished, consolidated, or divided is through an act of Congress. [2] The presidential reorganization authority essentially delegates these powers to the president for a defined period of time, permitting the President to take those actions by decree. [3]
In addition, the Reconstruction Acts and state Reconstruction constitutions and laws barred many ex-Confederate Southern whites from holding office and, in some states, disenfranchised them unless they took a loyalty oath. Southern whites, fearing black domination, resisted the freedmen's exercise of political power. [9]
The committee's decisions were recorded in its journal, but the journal did not reveal the committee's debates or discussions, which were deliberately kept secret. [7] Once the committee had completed work on the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, several of its members spoke out, including Senator Howard, who gave a long speech to the full Senate in which he presented "in a very succinct way, the ...
Relying on that understanding, the Reconstruction era Congress disestablished ten state governments during peacetime and placed them under military rule. The law, known as the First Reconstruction Act, found those states to be unrepublican under the Guarantee Clause. [5] [6] The Supreme Court acquiesced to the disestablishment in Georgia v.
The Wade–Davis Bill emerged from a plan introduced in the Senate by Ira Harris of New York in February, 1863. [2]It was written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, and proposed to base the Reconstruction of the South on the federal government's power to guarantee a republican form of government.