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Information about Ironclad Oath

The Ironclad Oath was a key factor in the removing of ex-Confederates from the political arena during the Reconstruction of the United States in the 1860s. It required every white male to swear he had never borne arms against the Union or supported the Confederacy — that is, he had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United States," had "voluntarily" given "no aid, countenance, counsel or encouragement" to persons in rebellion and had exercised or attempted to exercise the functions of no office under the Confederacy.

Congress originally devised the oath in July 1862 for all federal employees, lawyers and federal elected officials. It was applied to Southern voters in the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which President Abraham Lincoln vetoed. President Andrew Johnson also opposed it. Both Johnson and Lincoln wanted Southerners instead to swear to an oath that in the future they would support the Union.

In 1866, the Radical Republicans used the ironclad oath to prevent all former Confederates from voting or even serving on juries. In 1867 the United States Supreme Court held that the federal ironclad oath for attorneys and the similar Missouri state oath for teachers and other professionals were unconstitutional, because they violated the constitutional prohibitions against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws. Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277 (1867); Ex parte Garland, 4 Wall. 333 (1867). However, it was still applied by the Radical Republicans wherever they held power. The oath was effectively ended in 1871 and finally repealed in 1884. Hyman (1959), pp. 264-5.

References

  • Belz, Herman. Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era 1978
  • Belz, Herman. Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War 1969
  • Benedict, Michael Les A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 1974
  • Harris, William C. With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union 1997.
  • Hyman, Harold M. A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution 1973
  • Hyman, Harold M.' To Try Men's Souls: Loyalty Tests in American History 1959.
The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, and CSA) was the government formed by eleven southern states of the United States of America between 1861 and 1865.
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Reconstruction was the attempt from 1863 to 1877 in U.S. history to resolve the issues of the American Civil War, when both the Confederacy and slavery were destroyed. Reconstruction addressed the return to the Union of the secessionist Southern states, the status of the leaders of
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The Wade-Davis Bill of 1864 was a program proposed for the Reconstruction of the South written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland.
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Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the sixteenth President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1861 until his death on April 15, 1865. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery, he won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was
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Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31 1875) was the seventeenth President of the United States (1865–1869), succeeding to the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

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Radical Republicans may refer to:
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A bill of attainder (also known as an act or writ of attainder) is an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime, and punishing them, without benefit of a trial.
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ex post facto law (from the Latin for "from something done afterward") or retrospective law, is a law that retrospectively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law.
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