Wade-Davis Bill in United States

Wade-Davis Bill (1864)

At the end of the Civil War, this bill created a framework for Reconstruction and the readmittance of the Confederate states to the Union.

In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln and the Congress began to consider the question of how the Union would be reunited if the North won the Civil War. In December President Lincoln proposed a reconstruction program that would allow Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their male population took loyalty oaths and the states recognized the “permanent freedom of slaves.”

Several congressional Republicans thought Lincoln’s 10 Percent Plan was too mild. A more stringent plan was proposed by Senator Benjamin F. Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis in February 1864. The Wade-Davis Bill required that 50 percent of a state’s white males take a loyalty oath to be readmitted to the Union. In addition, states were required to give blacks the right to vote.

Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, but President Lincoln chose not to sign it, killing the bill with a pocket veto. Lincoln continued to advocate tolerance and speed in plans for the reconstruction of the Union in opposition to the Congress. After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, however, the Congress had the upper hand in shaping Federal policy toward the defeated South and imposed the harsher reconstruction requirements first advocated in the Wade-Davis Bill.

For more information, visit The National Archives’ Treasures of Congress Online Exhibit.

Wade-Davis Bill (1864) is one of the 100 Most U.S. Influential Documents

Source: The People’s Vote, National Archives of the United States.

Wade-Davis Bill (July 2, 1864)

United States Constitution

According to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, about its article titled 448 WADE-DAVIS BILL (July 2, 1864) Republicans worried that under lincoln ‘ splan of reconstruction (December 8, 1863) , the old state leadership might reverse emancipation. On July 2, 1864, Ohio’s Senator Benjamin Wade and Maryland’s Representative Henry Winter Davis passed a state-restoration bill that
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Introduction to Wade-Davis Bill (1864)

In the context of the legal history: Legislation that was passed during Reconstruction that was designed to implement Radical Reconstruction and remove Lincoln’s more lenient 10 percent Plan. The legislation was based on the belief that the Confederate states had left the Union and they could not be readmitted until certain conditions applied. All hostility had to have ceased, a majority of white citizens had to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, then Senate had the power to authorize appointments of provisional governors, the states had to adopt a constitution renouncing secession, ending slavery, and taking the vote away from leading Confederate officeholders. The federal government would then repay Confederate debts. Lincoln used his pocket veto on the bill, which led to the Wade- Davis Manifesto. The Manifesto appearing in the New York Tribune attacked the president for being too lenient on the South.

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In the context of the legal history:

Wade-Davis Bill