Wade-davis Bill

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As the North progressed toward victory in the Civil War, Senator Benjamin F. Wade (Republican-Ohio) and Representative Henry Winter Davis (Unionist-Maryland) introduced a bill to reconstruct the Southern states after the war ended. In harsh language, the Wade-Davis Bill demanded that a majority of voters in the Confederate states must swear an “Ironclad Oath” of allegiance to the Union and that the former slaves must be assured their equality with whites. President Abraham Lincoln had proposed a much more lenient plan of reconstruction that would have required only 10 percent of each state's voters to demonstrate their allegiance to the Union in order for their state to be readmitted. Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill, slipping it into his pocket so that Congress would not have the opportunity to override his veto. Wade and Davis angrily accused President Lincoln of acting like a dictator. The Wade-Davis Bill served as an indication of the even greater battles that would follow between the executive branch and the legislature over reconstruction of the South.

See also Reconstruction, congressional; Veto power

Sources

• Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988)

Wade-Davis Bill, passed by Congress 2 July 1864, was a modification of Abraham Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction. It provided that the government of a seceded state could be reorganized only after a majority of the white male citizens had sworn allegiance to the United States and approved a new state constitution that contained specified provisions. Rep. Henry W. Davis of Maryland and Sen. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, sponsors of the bill, believed, along with other Radical Republicans, that Lincoln's policy was inadequate because it allowed white southern Unionists to determine the status, rights, and conditions for freed persons in their states. Abraham Lincoln's pocket veto of this bill on 4 July angered the radicals and presaged the contest over Reconstruction between President Andrew Johnson and Congress.

Bibliography

Hyman, Harold H. A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975.