PART I
Statement of Historical Facts
A. The Constitutional Crisis Following the Civil War
The conclusion of the Civil War in 1865 presented the United States with constitutional questions of extraordinary magnitude. Approximately four million formerly enslaved persons had been emancipated through the combined legal effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, military victory, and, ultimately, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The abolition of slavery resolved the legal status of involuntary servitude but did not, by itself, comprehensively define the civil status, legal protections, or national citizenship of the formerly enslaved population. Congress therefore confronted the question of how to secure the civil rights and legal protections of those newly freed from slavery.
The Thirty-Ninth Congress addressed these questions through a series of Reconstruction measures, including the Freedmen’s Bureau Acts, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and, subsequently, the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
B. The Civil Rights Act of 1866
On April 9, 1866, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The Act represented the first major federal civil rights statute in American history.
Section 1 declared that certain persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, were citizens of the United States. It further guaranteed specified civil rights, including the rights to make and enforce contracts, to sue, to give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to receive the equal benefit of laws and proceedings for the security of person and property.
Other provisions established federal enforcement mechanisms, authorized federal judicial jurisdiction, prescribed penalties for deprivations of protected rights under color of law, and assigned responsibilities to federal officers in carrying out the Act.
This memorandum examines these provisions in detail in later sections.
C. President Andrew Johnson’s Veto
Prior to the Act becoming law, President Andrew Johnson returned the legislation to Congress with his objections.
His veto messages discussed the legislation extensively, describing both the intended operation of the Act and the classes of persons whom he believed would be affected by it.
Although Congress rejected his constitutional objections by overriding the veto, the veto messages remain part of the official historical record surrounding the enactment of the statute.
This memorandum later examines the extent to which those messages may serve as contemporaneous historical evidence concerning the Act’s original context, while recognizing that the legal force of enacted statutory text rests in the law adopted by Congress rather than in the objections expressed by the President.
D. Proposal and Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment
Following enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment.
Ratified in 1868, the Amendment introduced constitutional provisions concerning national citizenship, due process, equal protection, representation, public office, public debt, and congressional enforcement authority.
The relationship between the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been the subject of historical and legal debate for more than a century.
This memorandum examines that relationship through contemporaneous historical materials, statutory text, constitutional provisions, and judicial decisions.
E. Reconstruction as a Continuing Constitutional Framework
Reconstruction consisted of more than constitutional amendments alone.
It included legislation, executive implementation, military administration in the former Confederate states, federal judicial enforcement, and congressional oversight designed to restore the Union and protect newly recognized civil rights.
Understanding Reconstruction therefore requires examination of the interaction among statutes, constitutional amendments, executive action, and judicial interpretation, rather than consideration of any single measure in isolation.
This memorandum proceeds from that integrated historical framework.