social figures and theatrical figures who were constantly in the press , constantly interviewed and whose clothing and jewelry or described in great detail in the latter part of the 19th century. the public followed them just as feverishly as our public follows our contemporary celebrities. >> it was given as a gift by a wealthy industrialist to an orthopedic surgeon. >> you've been watching a preview of american artifacts. visit c-span.org for schedule information and to view entire programs online. section one of the 14th amendment is known for granting citizenship to former slaves. another clause, section three, attempted to bar from public office anyone who took part in the confederate cause. professor taja-nia henderson

talks about the debate at the time to determine what offices would be affected and what level of participation what caused section three to apply. this talk from the new york public library is about one hour 10 minutes. mr. barksdale: we are pleased to introduce taja-nia henderson, a writer in the wartime study. she is an associate professor at rutgers school of law-newark. 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, the societal functions of jails and prisons in the slaveholding american south, and remedying discrimination against persons accused or convicted 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 in the wake of the american civil war. please welcome taja-nia henderson. [applause] professor henderson: thank you very much. it's great to be here. thank you to jay barksdale and the new york public library for providing a space for a writer and researcher to use the library's collections and also to have a quiet, serious place of contemplation. thank you for attending. i know the weather is not the best. i appreciate you being here. i have been for two years now knee-deep in congressional petitions. when i say knee-deep, 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, like the parents of toddlers, some adult 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, the plaintiffs in and out in a trust dispute challenged an earlier state supreme court ruling 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 section three of the 14th amendment, clearly required 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 of the three justices was null and void. on review, the state supreme court of alabama, this is the reconstructed state supreme court, rejected the plaintiff's 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's holding here was arguably a broad one, that is did the 14th amendment say what it appeared to? and what were the social, legal, and political effects of those words?

my research concerns these questions. today during my remarks i would like to offer my thoughts on two arguments derived from this work. 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 -- what legal scholars called 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 new southern nationalism, one that conceded confederate service or support of the confederate states while arguing that such service or support was an expression of the allegiance to the nation's 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. we know this because 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, an 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 corners. from the proposal of the amendment, it's initial introduction in 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. especially after having taken an oath to protect it. the democrats, in contrast 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. they saw it as a naked ploy to install and entrench 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 decried both the illegitimate the end the unlawfulness of the 14th amendment as well as other of congress' -- other congressional pronouncements dating from the era. contemporaneous accounts of southern newspapers confirmed this perception. an editorial in augusta, georgia, for example, 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 prescient in respect to this particular section of the amendment. the supreme court would never assert its prerogative. to be sure the decade between , the emergence of radical reconstruction and the triumphthe supreme court would never of redemption and white supremacist rule under 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 13th 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 were 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 -- to make and enforce contracts to sue and be sued, to give , evidence in court, and to inherit, purchase, lease, sell and hold real and personal property. additionally, the civil rights act of 1866 guaranteed to all citizens the full and equal benefit of the laws and proceedings for security of person and property. and like punishment, pain, and penalty. persons who denied these rights

on account of race or previous condition of servitude were deemed guilty of a federal crime. sorry. i'm having technical difficulties. the freedman's bureau's bills 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 including 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 courts which were determined to , have been hostile to enforcing the rights of the formerly enslaved with respect to these matters. congress faced testimony of freedmen being divested of their hunting rifles and of people being ousted from their land. each of these measures was met with cascading scorn from southern democrats. the scorn reached a boiling point with the passage of the 14th amendment in 1866. section one granted citizenship to millions of former slaves and forbade the state from infringing those rights. section three of the amendment

-- the text of which is in the handout -- simultaneously imposed unprecedented limitation on to citizenship rights of white southerners. the work of interpreting, enforcing and even challenging the amendment began with the amendment's text. usually, as a lawyer as a law , professor we are accustomed to talking to folks who are very familiar with the 14th amendment. i hope you will follow along with me. i think it is the first page in the set of slides you have with you. section three of the amendment purported to disqualify from public office holding any person who prior to the war had held an office of public trust, and had taken an of to uphold -- taken an oath to uphold the constitution. for those persons who have 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, an affected person could seek reprieve 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. and since congressional action could only be effectuated through legislation, the section appeared to mandate the enactment of private bills of relief along the same lines of our earliest claims for military pensions or money claims against the government. in response to this apparent need to obtain a private bill of relief thousands and thousands

of white male southerners petitioned congress in what could be called a clarion call to expand and secure white civil rights. these petitions submitted to and adjudicated by three separate congressional committees formed the basis for hundreds of bills of relief, covering thousands of former confederates. section three, in fact, 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 a leadership gap in the southern politics. i mentioned to you before that

as predicted by the "podesta augusta telegraph," the supreme court never spoke about the validity of section three. the absence of meaningful oversight for the most radical aspect of reconstruction fostered a constitutional vacuum that the people, civil and military functionaries as well as regular citizens filled with , their own understandings and misunderstandings about how these legislative 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 or to a congressional representative, or a congressional committee followed by, where appropriate congressional fact-finding , during reconstruction. congress is engaged in several fact-finding missions. they are investigating racial atrocities, elections, and election impropriety. they are investigating what is happening with the freedman's bureau, and the rise of the ku klux klan. congress is engaged and active in fact-finding. one would think once a petition comes in that congress could engage in that type of fact-finding. 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 functionaries, local party officials 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 by some of the folks who theorized about popular constitutionalism, these committees of the people had a pivotal role in the limitation -- of the constitutional order flowing from the proposal of the amendment in 1866 through the passage of the amnesty act which would undo all of their work in 1872. once prescreened, these petitions for relief were then sent to a seated member of congress who upended to the petition a note regarding their recommendation. for example, one february 11

1870, senator thomas james robertson of south carolina presented the petition of 46 separate people seeking removal of section three political disabilities. after presentment 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 were barred from seats, in georgia for example 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 import of a gubernatorial

recommendation 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 -- what was caught at the time remonstrances including maneuvering, 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 in some cases nonexistent. to date, i have identified only

a handful of cases in either state or federal court where they are considering whether section three is a valid exercise of congressional authority. in 1869 the north carolina supreme court considered whether section three acted to disqualify from public office all those who had previously taken an oath and subsequently supported the confederacy or whether the mandate only covered those holding legislative or judicial offices. this was an important distinction. the thinking was if the mandate did not cover executive office , then the mandate does not cover law enforcement. if means sheriffs, constables, local mayors for example. these are members of the executive branch. all of this folks would be exempt from the mandate. in this particular dispute, a sheriff of moore county, north carolina, contended the provision did not preempt the state's own statute qualifying him to continue to serve as the

sheriff. his support for the confederacy had been undisputed, he had served as a sheriff before the war, during the war, and after the war. and in his official capacity of sheriff, he had 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 his seat, he applied to the state court the writ of mandamus -- it 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 writ and moore stood prepared to take his position, the north carolina supreme court held that -- and, 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 dispute i mentioned at the outset. here, in a case heard in the federal court in virginia, the court considered whether all public acts of disqualified 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

's prohibition of public office holding was in fact inoperative. it was ineffectual. so long as congress failed to legislate the matter. the amendment, the clause had no self enforcing or self effectuating power. the exercise of any public office by a disqualified person was in fact valid and enforceable. the third case showing you how , inconsistent and difficult it was to figure out at the time what section three means, it involved 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. davis' challenge was on a very narrow question of whether the disqualification clause of section three was in fact punishment. if his crime was treason, and section three's disqualification was punishment, then, davis argued that he could not then , later be tried for treason. that this was in effect a double jeopardy. and that any attempt to try him for treason should be nullified and his indictment should be quashed. the argument actually reached the supreme court and was certified by justice chase in order to review the validity of davis' indictment, the judges failed to agree on section three's mandate. they failed to agree on the effects of the section three

disqualification and eventually reached no decision before president johnson issued his proclamation announcing amnesty for treason for jefferson davis among others. , at the time of his indictment, and review of his indictment of supreme court, we have no judicial pronouncement about what this section of the constitution means. so with no controlling or precedential standards in place more than 16,000 petitions for , release flood the capital. the volume of the petitions that came rendered real-time implementation of the mandate onerous. for example, in 1871, a bill for the relief of 4000 people was presented and actually voted on in congress. this tsunami of petitions precipitated, among other things the creation of a special senate , committee on the removal of political disabilities in an

attempt to relieve the overwhelmed and presumably out of their depth judiciary committee. the theme of clemency unfolding at the capitol was noteworthy because it turned constitutional clemency on its head. before section three authorized congress to adjudicate disabilities, the constitution and that of several of the states had firmly and exclusively ensconced the pardon power with the executive, not the legislature. article two of the constitution empowers the president alone with the pardon power. alexander hamilton had advocated this allocation of power. writing as a general rule of thumb, this is from federalist 1974 "one man appears to be a

more eligible dispenser of the mercy of government than a body of men." this was true even in cases of treason were hamilton argued that substantive and procedural concerns militated in favor of vesting the executive of the power of reprieve. even as late as 1862, as the war was underway, congress had enacted legislation reinforcing this constitutional structure and authorizing the president of the united states to extend pardon and amnesty to persons who had participated in rebellion. this procedure written into section three for the removal of political disabilities marked a significant and mysterious departure in the adjudication of claims of amnesty under our constitutional system. subsequent congressional legislation purporting to

relieve all but a select few persons reinforced the singularity of the provisions. as i mentioned there was no , judicial pronouncement about the mandate, about what the mandate meant or how it should be applied. this was part of a constitutional amendment. one might expect there to be an on high determination of what the amendment means. the absence or vacuum that i have described to you lead to significant mass confusion. petitioners' entreaties, in their petitions a widespread belief that the process for the removal of disabilities included not only the right to hold public office that the right to vote, even though there is nothing in section three about a ban on the right to vote. a ban on the federal election

franchise had in fact been included in the original house version of the amendment but had been roundly rejected by the senate. in a unanimous vote, it was struck from the draft that would ultimately be adopted. despite its commission -- despite its omission from the june 1866 version that would become the ratified amendment, the specter of disenfranchisement loomed large over southerners' petition for release. the petitions reflect a belief that the provision's bar on office holding extended far broader than its text. the provision technically required only those who had violated an oath of office taken to uphold the constitution of the united states, only those folks were eligible for the section three disqualification.

in other words, individuals who had held no both taking office -- no oathtaking office prior to the war were excluded. this construction was either mistrusted or misconstrued by hundreds of petitioners. for example, two years after ratification in 1870, a georgian wrote he held no legislative executive or judicial office previous to the war had engaged -- but had engaged in the rebellion in the ranks of the confederate army. he had been elected speaker pro tempore of the georgia house of representatives and desire to take his seat. despite his efforts he had been , blocked.

the provisional governor of georgia along with several other , leading republicans affixed , their support for his petition on to the petition itself before sending it along to congress. his petition was among the 46 petitions that i mentioned presented by the senator from south carolina in february of 1870. this confusion extended even to those who may not have held such lofty positions. malcolm walling'ssford of washington, d.c. was another such supplicant. his petition is included in your packet.

as a boy wallingsford had worked as an assistant to the mail carrier of the united states senate. an informal position that did not require an oath of office. for his labor at the senate he earned two dollars per day and an extra allowance of $200 per year. at the start of the hostilities wallingsford he had traveled south, and in his words, which you can see there in the package et, he had "embarked his fortunes with the confederacy." he had not served as a soldier. he is not served as an officer. he had in a way kept to what he knew and he worked as a clerk for the confederate post office. for this man, who had no oath

required, and for others, this prospect of a private bill of relief regarding their civil and political rights helped d substantial symbolic if not legal import. many of georgia's petitions assumed an identical form. in what appears to have been in many cases identical handwriting. these petitions, i called them the boilerplate petitions, consisted of caller sentences. the first being that the petitioner was at the time laboring under political disability. and requesting relief, the second being a statement of loyalty and support for the active reconstruction. -- the acts of reconstruction. whether longer, more detailed communication regarding the history of prior office taking

the prior oath taking of these , individual petitioners was admitted to the state republican committee is difficult to know because none of the information actually reached the congressional committee that reviewed their petition. this sort of widespread confusion over the scope of the amendment's prohibition was fueled by public officials' interpretation of the text. in a may 1867 opinion, attorney general stanton declared the prohibition applied only to state-level offices and not local offices. your sheriff from moore county north carolina would be free. , in the wake of a public reprimand, stanton backpedaled issuing a hastily drafted second opinion saying all of the executives or judicial officers

of any state who took an oath to support the constitution were subject to disqualification. and in these, he continued, i include county officers. if they were required to take as part of their official oath the oath to support the constitution of the united states. the potential implications for widespread popular confusion on the enforcement or meaning of the provisions in section three cannot be understated especially since the reconstructive state looked to the 14th amendment as a model for the newly ratified reconstruction constitution. virginia's 1867 constitutional convention incorporated almost identical language in its provisions. the petitions and supporting material submitted to both the

house reconstruction committee and the senate select committee on political disabilities reflect this persistent uncertainty that surrounded used -- standards to be used in the review in the petitions as well. was an oath required there is a lot of oath taking happening at the time. which oath was required? was it the ironclad oath, the test oath, some other section three oath? what would we use? one historian has termed this era of reconstruction the era of the oath because of the proliferation of oaths in the federal government and state government. could the petitioner who has publicly criticized reconstruction be relieved from political disability?

what about a petitioner that written editorials in newspapers about reconstruction as unconstitutional and illegal? did a petitioner need to have conceded the military authority of the federal government in order to be relieved? was corroboration evidence required? was hearsay evidence acceptable? these questions and other similar questions about the minimum standards for review permeate the petition files and also appear again and again in the congressional debate over certain particularly contentious petitions that made it to the floor. i have mentioned to you the boilerplate positions. in a state like georgia they , were very common. many of georgia's positions assumed this form. they include no information about confederate service.

one may wonder having received a boilerplate petition, how would either a congressman or a congressional committee know that the person who has prepared this petition has not been involved in any of the anti-reconstruction acts anti-reconstruction conduct that the process was designed to weed out? how would they know that more importantly, -- more importantly how would they , know that individuals who prepared boiler plate petitions were even affected by section three? should there be some prescreening before the prescreen to note whether people were even to be affected i section three's mandate? in the absence of any evidentiary rules, standards of proof, and in receipt of thousands of boilerplate petitions devoid of any detailed information, legislators frequently debated the sufficiency of evidence in

contested petitions for relief. this is a process that for lawyers is interesting because it raises questions about congressional fact-finding and the appropriate limitations of congressional power in such circumstances. in virginia, in georgia, north carolina and likely in other jurisdictions, the state republican central committees spearheaded the investigation. those investigations were not always reported to congress, only recommendations were reported to congress, leaving a gap between who knew and who had been involved in what. was this a proper delegation of congressional authority? does the constitution require more? does the constitution speak to the possibility that congress can delegate its authority to local political parties? to be sure, while the removal of

most of the political disabilities imposed pursuant to section three confess be characterized as perfunctory, we cannot get deeper than that if we are working with thousands of boilerplate petitions, but not all were resolved favorably. several were the subject of citizen remonstrances, including coalitions of white and black voters who protested the petitions for relief. filed by certain members of the community. judges more than other civil servants bore an inordinate share of the criticism over their attempts to have their rights stored. in virginia, the superintendent of the state penitentiary sent multiple missives to the chair of the house reconstruction committee noting how the state democratic judges persistently sentenced black defendants for hard time in the state prison over minor infractions.

in early 1869, the superintendent reported that "negroes are sent here for stealing one single bushel of corn from a cornfield valued at one dollar, in open violation of the law which requires that one should steal up to $20 before he can enter this institution." according to wardwell, the state's judges openly flouted these laws. he maintained that the responsible parties in congress need only read the indictment describing the offenses against certain of these freedman defendants to know that, "an american traitor with a heart black with perjury and hands red

with blood should never be trusted on the judge's bench in a state like virginia." as an aside, wardwell was a new england quaker and had himself spent more than two years as a political prisoner in one of the deadliest confederate prisons after refusing to take an oath of fealty to to the confederate cause. it was after this case that i first became interested in the section three experiment. my dissertations examine the state penitentiary in 1800. as i tracked the penitentiary over the next 90 years i noticed that wardwell had sent these colorful missives to congress, guys what are you doing? you're not paying attention. they are sending these freed men to our stolen things or been

gates when they have only stolen things or been accused of things that would be minor, that would not give rise to a felony charge, and yet they are being incarcerated anyway. i would argue that petitions for the removal of the 14th amendment disability reveal much about the local and national politics of reconciliation and the search for memory and meaning and loyalty amid what can only be described as the devastation of the region. some of these tales paint a tableau of war scarred towns, men and women, formerly enslaved people who fought to maintain families despite significant hardships. others however sought to recast their support of the confederacy in the rhetoric of necessity. a georgian ja howard recounted in his petition that he had been

"forced into the war for a time." that he had "sought and accepted public office under confederate rule in order to avoid military service against the united states government." these claims were believable primarily because there was a confederate draft, and people were conscripted into confederate service who were conscripted nonconsensually. supplicants thought to frame a narrative of emotions justifying their participation in antiunion campaigns and excusing what could be arguably seen as a momentary lapse in prounion nationalist sentiment. by 1869, only a year after the amendment was ratified, congress appeared to have tired of this

experiment. more than 16,000 partitions had been reviewed. countless unidentifiable other pre-petitions had been made at the local level. and either quashed by the party or the provisional government. in a sense, the radical republicans were hanged by their own rope. that year, 1869, a bill was introduced to permanently remove all section three disabilities. the bill languished, however that was not the last word on the subject because in 1872, the experiment reached its nadir. the return to southern democratic party control left little of the mandate. congress enacted legislation the amnesty legislation,

purporting to rescind en masse all section three disabilities for everyone affected by the mandate with the exception of 500 enumerated confederate officeholders. in a demonstration of their waning power in the branch republicans in congress argued that there were no more men more undeserving of amnesty than the men to be touched by the legislation. amnesty was debated at the same time as an amendment to the bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of race. and would have barred discrimination on the basis of previous condition of servitude. this was legislation introduced by senator sumner, who paired the antidiscrimination bill with the amnesty bill with this interesting attempt to couple the granting of rights for the former confederates with the granting of civil rights for the formerly enslaved.

for his colleagues, who argued that the caller issues should be entirely separate, sumner reported you -- sumder rner retorted "you must be just to the colored race before you are generous to the former rebels." despite his impassioned pleas and over 24 hours of debate, congress punted on civil rights for the formerly enslaved and amnesty was passed with a super majority vote 10 both houses. the civil rights amendment that had been sumner's baby would go on to become the civil rights act of 1875, which was struck down by the supreme court in the civil rights cases. the implementation of this disqualification and the mandate of section three had substantially eroded public confidence in the north and south, and by now also west, so by the time of the enactment of the amnesty bill, democrats

had regained control in 4 state governments formally part of the confederacy and were on their way to regaining the entire region. at the same time that the republican party saw its influence in the region dissipate, the import of section three dwindled almost to nothing as only a trickle of petitions were still to be heard. most of those 500 people who were excluded from the amnesty bill would go on to hold public office in democratic-controlled states and local governments and in other words, as the disqualification itself, noncompliance with the amnesty bill by the people frustrated the purpose and the intent of the congressional experiment. interestingly enough, the arguments of those who claimed that congress could not by legislation abrogate a provision

of the constitution were unpersuasive. this is an area in which among law professors we have seen significant scholarly inquiry, especially following the enactment of the defense of marriage act and the ongoing debate about gun control. what does congress have the power to legislate? my students and i are tracking public debate over this aspect of amnesty and i hope to better be able to articulate public response to this seeming expansion of congressional authority. while the enduring significance of section three may be unquantifiable, it may even turn out to be one of those forgotten sections of the constitution. we can however look to its failed implementation and the implementation of other efforts to quantify or judge loyalty as

a cautionary tale. the first governance ordered issued by the coalition for provisional authority in iraq in 2003 was a debaathification mandate that disqualified from public office holdings in the member of the baath party the party of saddam hussein in the wake of this propagation the baath party did not die, it did not disappear. it went underground and violence surged. a development that has remained constant in the decade or more sense. this outcome ought not to have been a surprise given similar observable trends in the 1870's and the here in this country, 1880's and the modest sentiment -- estimate that close to 50,000 black americans were killed by klan-related or other white

supremacist violence in this country. whether these violent surprises can be attributed to congress taking away from one group what it purported to give to the other is outside my scholarship. the question is an interesting one to consider. thank you so much and i look forward to your thoughts. [applause] >> yes. >> were there any particularly heinous crimes during the war that were prosecuted? professor henderson: the question is, were there any particularly heinous crimes during the war that were prosecuted? the answer is, yes. there were some, there are prosecutions in virginia related to conduct that happened at the virginia penitentiary. there are prosecutions related

to some of the treatment, some are military prosecutions related to the treatment of union prisoners of war. you don't see that, those prosecutions featuring much in these conversations. those aren't necessarily being investigated at the same time by the same people that are investigating whether certain individual should have their section three disabilities removed. but we do see that. yes? [inaudible] professor henderson: the question is, to be devil's advocate, weren't there lots of people who had to express loyalty to the confederacy because of the job or position they held? could those folks be considered opportunistic? the second part, maybe they were the best qualified for those jobs and perhaps they should not have been replaced with presumably unqualified people. i don't think that is to play devil's advocate.

i think that is actually a statement of fact. yes there were people who had to , express loyalty to the confederacy. people were shot down in the street for not confessing or proclaiming their loyalty. the expressions of loyalty were necessary. we see these continuing enforcement of this loyalty to the confederacy that happens even long after the war. i agree with you. that is true. in terms of maybe these folks were the most qualified, i don't think that we should presume that the expectation in congress was that these people would be replaced with unqualified officeholders. but whether the presumption was they would be replaced by republican officeholders. people who had maybe held offices in other places. you have a large number of people who were traveling south,

serving in military governments in this, provisional governments. people are moving south as representatives. the notion that the replacements would be unqualified i think is a presumption that is false. i do agree with you though that this is the sort of -- we think about the crux of the southern debate over this issue. when we see southern public opinion in the newspapers for , example, because we scour newspapers through the former confederate states. when you see southern opinion in newspapers, people say i am the best person for this job. i've held this job for 25 years. who can do this job better than me? even if we as historians and after-the-fact observers should not presume that they were replaced by unqualified republicans, there was definitely a belief that somehow

these local governments would collapse if these people were not able to serve, and maybe in a sense they were right. because after four years, five years at most six congress , abandons the experiment and determines that it is better to let the southern local governments reconstitute themselves however they need to do so without federal interference. yes? [inaudible question] professor henderson: not just chimpanzees, dolphins. whales. there's been a lot of litigation about the rights of whales. to be free from an appearance. i have no opinion on the rights of animals. i think those cases have been fought hard by my own friends and have not done well. the courts have not been particularly receptive to enforcing any notion of civil rights or even animal rights on

nonhuman animals. >> corporations can be people as well? professor henderson: as far as the corporation goes, the courts have been incredibly receptive to construing the rights of corporations to match the rights of humans. with animals, non human animals, we have drawn a distinction. with respect to the question, it was a comment about the efforts of governor cuomo and other p governors to reintegrate in a way that is fair and safe people who have been convicted of crimes, this is an enduring problem. i think places like new york city, large urban areas, los angeles, these cities are taking the brunt of this reintegration project. they are hard-pressed to know what to do. luckily there are enough people who are interested in the issue

and are committed to actually using evidence to push policy and not simply allowing our inflamed passions or our sort of biases express, or implicit to guide policymaking. folks are working with local governments, they are working with community-based organizations, state governments, the federal government is interested. eric holder has been talking extensively about what happens to people once they are released from prison. we are on an upswing in terms of brainstorming ways to keep communities safe, but also to keep people integrated in our society to maintain their status as citizens once they have been released. whether we will be able to maintain that, i don't know for sure. [inaudible question]

professor henderson: yes. it is always a moneymaking opportunity. prisons have always been a money making opportunity. from the first prisons in this country, prisoners were put to work. the work prisoners were doing led to coin in the coffers of the state legislature. this idea that prisons are now for-profit institutions is not a new one. this is endemic to the prison project in the united states. yes? [inaudible question] professor henderson: the reconstruction governments are always accused of being corrupt. southerners say they are corrupt. i have not yet uncovered bribery. that is probably because i am not looking at a record source that would record bribery. any allegations or evidence of bribery would be cleared would be expunged from the record that is sent to congress. this is an interesting question. i don't think it is a stretch to

presume even having not seen evidence of bribery that there may be some inconsistencies in how these petitions are reviewed. this is why i focus on the lack of standards. when there are no standards, when discretion rules, there is always the opportunity for several people to get favorite other people don't get. and other people don't get. i would not be surprised in the least to learn that it is some of these jurisdictions, say georgia for example, or north carolina, or even california where people are petitioning and that there is not something happening there whereby certain you happening there whereby certain people are held out as fully reconstructed. you and you they talk about the and reconstructed rebels. people are deemed to have been reconstructed and others are not. and they have been engaged in the exact same conduct and behavior.

the question is, have any governors from the southern states given me any support in my research? the answer is no, but i don't take it personally. i think that is because i have not asked. you i imagine if i asked, there would be no problem to me coming is an in and researching in the state archives and legislative archives. and i'm traveling to tennessee and kentucky in a couple of months to do that in the kentucky state legislature and also the tennessee state archives. i am hopeful. my dissertation research took me throughout the south and i was greeted with nothing but generosity. i have no doubt the same will be true with this project. people are sensitive about the war that they are other topics. i get that. i think it will be fine. yes. >> [inaudible]

>> yes, ma'am. the question is am i working on a book, yes. >> can you reveal what the project will look like? >> the question is can i reveal what the project will look like. the answer is whatever the publisher wants it to look like. that is not decided. not yet decided. thank you for the question. sir. >> [inaudible] >> the question is, to what extent did the double jeopardy argument resonate with congress? i think it resonated with southern democrats more than the radical republicans. to the extent southern democrats recognized that this penalty i'm sorry, this sanction was a penalty for participating in the rebellion, they understood it to

be a punishment. if it was a punishment, then they believed that those same punished individuals should not be called for treason or military atrocities, or other charges, the killing of soldiers outside of the pow context. so it does resonate. it does not get traction. this is why i am interested in the question of congressional authority and what could be argued as overreaching, because if you have an enactment that works a penalty in the lives of certain classes, then one could argue that if you have punished them once, you can't do it again. the radical republicans tend to

be dismissive of that argument and maintain that whatever punishment meet the former confederates was well deserved. yes. yes, sir. i'm sorry. in case there are other people. go ahead. it is all you. the question is if abraham lincoln had not been assassinated, would reconstruction have gone differently? the historian in me wants not to answer the question. i will try. i suspect that reconstruction would have gone differently. i'm not confident that lincoln would have battled with congress in the same way. so johnson vetoes the first

reconstruction act. he tries to veto the second freemans bureau act. some of his vetoes survive. some of his vetoes are overruled. you have this lingering, it is not lingering. it is a rabid mistrust between the executive and the legislature, which i'm not sure would have existed had johnson not been in the office. whether it was lincoln or someone else, i don't know for sure. i suspect that same level of distrust and rancor would not have existed. it was pretty tense. we sort of think our congress is against our president. this is a congress who sort of called the president to the carpet regularly and said he does not know what he is doing.

we have to override him. let's do it. were there any other questions? i will be here for a while. i'm sorry go ahead. , >> i understand law school is now 50% young women. does that mean that the women are going to take over this country? the question was answered by the lady in the back. thank you so much. thank you. [applause] >> tonight at 6:30 p.m. eastern time espionage historians talk about the atom bomb and the soviets in the 1950's. the role of anti-semitism and the controversial execution.

that is tonight on american history tv. >> next weekend marks the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday when voting right activists were met with violence from alabama state troopers. american history tv will be live from selma. each night at 8:00 p.m. eastern, we will so highlights of our coverage. here is john lewis reflecting on selma 50 years later. >> i was with congress lewis and i walked across the bridge. as you get to the top of that bridge, i was struck by how much you can see before you rented to those alabama state troopers. my first thought was i have to turn around. had you deal with fear?

how do you deal with comrades that were lost. the violence you suffered on bloody sunday. how does the movement do with that pressure? >> you grow. you come to that point in your life. you have an executive session with yourself. you say, i'm not afraid. i'm not afraid. i canback in 1961, the same you the president obama was born, we were prepared to die. some of the signed notes and wills that if it took our death as dr. king said to redeem the

soul of america, some of us were prepared. i thought i was going to die on that bridge. but i was not afraid. you have to continue to move on. you get beaten, arrested, thrown in jail, but maybe you will survive. >> join american history tv next saturday and sunday for live coverage from selma, alabama. at 8:00 p.m. eastern each day, highlights of our coverage. >> the c-span city's jewelers take book tv and american history tv on the road to learn about city's history and literary life. next week, galveston, texas.

>> the opening of the suez canal , sailing ships were dealt a death blow. coal-fired ships at a shorter route to the far east, india, all of those markets. the sailing ships really needed to find a way to make their own living so instead of high-value cargo, they started caring: oil, cotton, etc.. she found her niche in caring cargo that did not require getting to market at a fast pace. >> watch all our events from galveston at noon eastern on c-span twos book tv and sunday, march 8 at 2 p.m. eastern on c-span three.