We are pleased to introduce tajania henderson, a writer in the wartime study. She is an associate professor. She teaches courses on procedure, property and punishment, and american law and history. Publications include work on the viability of the 13th amendment for civil rights legislation, and the slaveholding american south, and remedying discrimination against persons accused of crimes. A graduate of Dartmouth College and new york university, her Current Research centers on the use of disqualifications from Public Office holding as punishment for former confederates and their support during the american civil war. Please welcome tajania henderson. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you to Jay Barksdale and the New York Public Library for providing a space for a writer and researcher to use the Library Selections and also to have a quiet, serious place of contemplation. Tthank you for attending. I know the weather is not the best. I appreciate you being here. I have been for two years now kneedeep in congressional petitions. When i say kneedeep, i mean literally. There are three foot stacks of documents lined around the walls in my office. As a result, i am looking forward to some mental conversations. It is a pleasure to be here. I look forward to your questions and hope we can have a Robust Exchange today. In 1869, in alabama, a challenge of earlier state Supreme Court rulings on the grounds that the judges who had issued the earlier ruling had no Lawful Authority to serve on the bench. According to the plaintiffs, since the judges had no Lawful Authority they could not bind the litigants to their rulings. The 14th amendment specifically sections three require the justices to either abdicate the bench entirely or obtain relief from congress from constitutionally imposed civil disabilities associated with their participation in or support of the Confederate States of america. Having done neither, the rulings word novel and void. They rejected the plaintiff argument out of hand, concluding that so long as the judges were permitted to hold their offices and to discharge the duties of a judge, their judgments were valid. The question lurking in the Court Holding here was arguably a broad one, that is did the 14th amendment say what it appeared to . What were the social, legal, and political effects of those words . My Research Concerns these questions. During my remark i would like to offer my spot thoughts on two arguments. The first is, in the six years that the prospect of disqualification from Public Office for supporters of the former Confederate States was part of the american political imagination, the people and not the congress, and not the court responded to the repercussions of war and regime change by improvising a set of standards rules, and other principles to govern implementation of the amendment. Those efforts a popular constitutionalism, are on display among other ways in the personal petitions seeking relief from Section Three disabilities that flooded congress in the wake of its ratification. The second argument is that in their presentation for release disqualified southerners cast their rebellion, in other words their treason as patriotism. In doing so they narrated a southern nationalism, one that conceded that are it federal service while arguing that such service or support was an expression of the allegiance to the loftiest ideals. The restrictions imposed by the 14th amendment constituted an infringement of the political and civil rights of white men. Its reach was not limited to those residing in the south. Petitions for release came from california to the state of new york and everywhere in between. The crisis that emerged in the wake of the amendment ratification was a national crisis, and american crisis. Not merely a regional one, attracting attention commentary, and often rebuke from all corners of the nation. Much of this rebuke not surprisingly stemmed in large part from southern democratic supporters from the proposal of the introduction of june 1866, the republicans understood Section Three to be a necessary compromise in the quest to deal fairly and justly with those who had waged war against the nation. After having taken a note to protect it especially. Democrats understood Section Three as a bar to citizenship and full political participation , including both Public Office holding and the right to vote. Especially disconcerting for southern democrats is that the impact of the amendment seem to rest squarely on the shoulders of white men. Assad is a naked ploy to install an entrenched republican controlled governments in each of the former Confederate States , and they were completed that the radical republicans intended to trade the vote of white men for the votes of the formerly enslaved. With all of this, southern democrats deprived both the illegitimate the end the unlawfulness of the 14th amendment as well as other of Congress Congressional pronouncements dating from the era. Contemporaneous accounts of Southern Newspapers confirmed this perception. Editorials lamented the radical republicans legislative policies would not stand for an hour if the Supreme Court dared assert its prerogative. As it turned out the newspaper was precedent in respect to this , the Supreme Court would never assert its prerogative. The decade between the emergence of radical reconstruction and the triumph of redemption and white supremacist rule under president pays president hayes was marked by legislation designed to protect the civil and Political Rights of formerly enslaved persons in the south. The 13th amendment ratified in late 1865, barred slavery and involuntary servitude from our shores. The amendment was quickly followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which declared in no Uncertain Terms that people born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power for citizens. Without respect to their race, their color, or any previous condition of slavery or servitude. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 also proclaimed any citizen had the same rights of white citizens to make an enforced contract, to sue and be sued, to give evidence in court and to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, and told real and personal property. Additionally the Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteed to all citizens the full in the benefit under the laws and proceedings for security of person and property. And like punishment and pain. Those denied these rights were deemed guilty of a federal crime. Sorry. Im having technical difficulties. The friedmans euro bill were similarly brought. And they provided for the distribution of confiscated or abandon confederate land to former slaves, as well as the creation of a regionwide system of public schools. The bills provided that the rights enumerated therein include the right to hold property and give evidence, and the right to bear arms could be enforced in specially constituted military tribunals which were believed at the time to be preferable to local civil court which were determined to have been hostile to enforcing the rights of the formerly enslaved with wrist act to these matters. Congress faced testimony of friedman being divested of their hunting rifles and of people being ousted from their land. Each of these measures was met with cap dating for rum each of these measures was met with cascading they granted Citizen Rights to millions of former slaves and forbade the state from infringing those rights. Section three of the amendment simultaneously imposed unprecedented limitation on the citizen ship of white southerners. The work of interpreting and challenging the amendment began with the amendment text. Usually as a law professor we are accustomed to i think it is the first page in the set of slides you have with you. Section three of the amendment purported to disqualify any person who prior to the war had held an office of public trust and had taken a nose to hold the constitution. For those persons who have me either participated in the rebellion or given aid or support to rebellion, the amendment acted to automatically disqualify them from Public Office holding. There was to be no room for discretion. Once disqualified, and affected person could secret free via a single avenue of relief. The last line of the section provided that disqualification could be removed by a two thirds vote of each house of congress. Since congressional action can only be effected through legislation the section appeared to mandate the enactment of private bills of relief along the same lines of our earliest claims for military or money claims against the guide their meant government. Thousands and thousands petitioned congress in what could be called a clarion call to expand and secure white civil rights. These petitions submitted to the adjudicated three separate Congressional Committees formed the basis for hundreds of bills of relief, covering thousands of former confederates. Section three outpaced section one and section two as a source of public consternation. This probably should not surprise us given that by operation of the provision, an entire generation of southern Political Leadership was barred from reconstituting itself leaving its leadership gap in the southern politics. I mentioned to you before that as predicted by the augustine telegraph, the Supreme Court never spoke about the validity of Section Three. We have nothe absence of meaningful oversight fostered a constitutional vacuum that the people, civil and military as well as regular citizens filled with their own understandings and misunderstandings about how these innovations ought to function. The improvisation of standards rules, and principles to govern the implementation of the mandate in Section Three fell to the people. In theory, implementation should have been a straightforward process involving a direct petition to congress for a congressional representative, or a Congressional Committee followed by where appropriate congressional factfinding during reconstruction. Congress is engaged in several factfinding missions. They are investigating racial atrocities elections, and impropriety. They are investigating what is happening with the friedmans bureau, and the rise of the ku klux klan. Congress is engaged and active in factfinding. One would think once a petition comes in that congress could engage in that fine factfinding. Most requests for relief were prescreened before they ever reached congress. Before they ever ripened into a real petition. This prescreening process involved the local Republican Committee function air convincing those officials that the applicant for relief was in fact presently loyal and ready to uphold and defend reconstruction and the other laws of the federal government. As observed in other contexts like the folks who their rise about constitutionalism, they had a pivotal role in the limitation of the cans too short order flowing from the proposal of the amendment in 1866 through the passage of the amnesty act which was undue all of their work in 1872. Once prescreened, these petitions for relief were then sent to a seated member of congress who was tended to the petition a note regarding their recommendation. For example one february 11 1870 tom is James Robertson presented the petition of 46 separate people seeking removal of Section Three political disabilities. The petitions were referred to the reviewing committees and in all but a few of the thousands of petitions we have reviewed, the sponsoring member recommended relief being granted. In jurisdictions where congressional delegations are barred from defeats where they were barge, the petitions were prescreened by local Party Officials and provisional governors who then appended a gubernatorial recommendation to the petition. I have included an example of one of these petitions which we will talk about that include an endorsement from provisional governor from georgia, the important gubernatorial recommendations cannot be overstated here. Once in committee, the petitions were reviewed together with any supporting documentation associated with the petitioner. On rare occasions the document included opposition, or were monstrous cysts. Remonstrsists. Ballot box impropriety also racially motivated atrocity. For at least our purposes, judicial pronouncements on the effectiveness or validity or mandate of Section Three were inconsistent lethargic, or nonexistent. To date, i have it in a fight only a handful of cases in either state or federal court where they are considering whether Section Three is a valid exercise of congressional lordy. In 1869 the North CarolinaSupreme Court considered whether Section Three acted to disqualify from Public Office all those who had previously taken an old and supported the confederacy whether the mandate only cover those holding legislative or Judicial Offices. This was a distinction. The thinking was if the mandate did not cover executive office is in the mandate does not cover law enforcement. If means sheriffs, constables, local mayors for example. Heresthese are members of the executive branch. In this particular dispute a sheriff contended the provision did not preempt the states own statute qualifying him to continue to serve as the chair. Worthy support for the confederacy had been undisputed, he had served as a share before the war, during the war, and after the war. In his official capacity of sheriff he the organized donation drives in support of confederate troops. He had also won an election. After winning his election and believing the state law entitled him to his seat, the writ of mandamus was designed to force the county commissioner to install him in the seat of sheriffs. The county commissioners disputed his eligibility because of the operation of Section Three. After a lower court issued the desired risk and more stood prepared to take his position the North CarolinaSupreme Court held that the appellant in this case presented no challenge to the validity of the amendment and therefore the court had no jurisdiction to consider whether his writ had been properly issued. The second case involved a similar question to the one related to the alabama trust this dude i mentioned at the outset. In a case heard in the federal court in virginia, the Court Considered whether all public acts of disqualify officeholders were nullified or whether only certain acts of those officeholders fell within the mandate of Section Three. The dispute was over the validity of a writ of habeas corpus which would have released a prisoner which was deemed to be a dangerous prisoner into the public. The federal court in virginia concluded that Section Three prohibition of Public Office holding was in fact in operative. It was ineffectual. So long as congress failed to legislate the matter. The amendment, the clause had no self important or self effectuating power. The exercise of any Public Office by a disqualified person was valid and enforceable. The third case number showing you how inconsistent and difficult it was to figure out at the time what Section Three means, it involves judicial interpretation of Section Three concerning a double jeopardy challenge that was brought by confederate president jefferson davis. Davis had challenged not whether Section Three applied to him or even whether he had in fact engaged in insurrection. Those were facts that were known to the court. His challenge was on a very narrow ration of whether the disqualification of Section Three was in fact punishment. If his crime was treason, and Section Three was punishment, ben davis argued that he could not then later be tried for treason. That this was in effect a double jeopardy. That any attempt to try him for treason should be nullified in his indictment should be quashed. The argument reached the Supreme Court and was certified by justice chase in order to review the validity of his indictment, the judges failed to agree on Section Three. They failed to agree on the effect of the Section Three disqualification, and regional decision before president johnson issued his proclamation announcing amnesty for treason for geoff davis, among others. At the time of his indictment, and review