In meticulous detail Mark Graber shows how in the run-up to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment congressional Republicans shaped the provisions eventually written into that provision with an eye to ensuring control of the government by Unionists, which is to say Republicans. He reorients our understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment away from the rights it undoubtedly guarantees to the political effects its framers sought to achieve, among which were Unionist control of state governments so that rights could be protected. Though today we do not pay much attention to the sections of the Fourteenth Amendment its framers cared most about, Graber’s arguments tell us a great deal about how we should understand what constitutions actually do."— Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, emeritus, Harvard Law School, and author of <i>The Constitution of the United States of America: A Contextual Analysis</i><p>"Mark Graber has opened our eyes not only to a lost history of the Fourteenth Amendment, but also to its Framers’ central purpose. They sought to create the conditions for a democratic politics that would protect and empower people, both Black and white, who had remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. This brilliant book, part of a projected multi-volume series, teaches that the way we shape our political institutions is every bit as important as abstract guarantees of constitutional rights."— Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School</p>
In this first of three planned volumes for the University Press of Kansas’s Constitutional Thinking series, Mark A. Graber aims to restore to contemporary memory the Fourteenth Amendment drafted by those Republican and Unionist members of Congress who supported congressional reconstruction.
In Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, Graber breaks new ground researching Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment, and constitutionalism by highlighting the importance of Sections 2, 3, and 4 to the representatives in the Thirty-Ninth Congress and their relative indifference to Section 1. His work underscores the importance and impact that legislative primacy and partisan supremacy had to Republican constitutional thinking about constitutional authority immediately after the Civil War.
Centered on Reconstruction and constitutional reform, Graber shows anew the Republican effort to prevent rebel rule by empowering and protecting loyalty.
Series Foreword
Acknowledgments
A Preface to the Forgotten Fourteenth Amendment Series
Introduction: Three Republican Soloists and the Republican Chorus
1. The Exclusion Debate
2. The Problem of Rebel Rule
3. Protecting and Empowering the Loyal
4. Guarantees
5. To Colorado and Beyond
Conclusion: Rebels, Loyalists, and Racial Equality
Appendixes
Table A.1: House Votes on the Fourteenth Amendment, the Exclusion Resolution, and Statehood for Colorado and NebraskaTable A.2: Senate Votes on the Fourteenth Amendment, the Exclusion Resolution, and Statehood for Colorado and Nebraska
Table A.3: References to “:Rebel” and “Loyal” in the House of Representatives
Table A.4: References to “Rebel” and “Loyal” in the Senate
Table A.5: References Paired with “Rebel” in the Thirty-Ninth Congress, First Session: All
Table A.6: References Paired with “Rebel” in the Thirty-Ninth Congress, First Session: Opponents of the Fourteenth Amendment
Table A.7: Conditions for Readmission of Former Confederate States: Members of Congress
Table A.8: Conditions of Readmission of Former Confederate States: Petitions
Calendar of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, First Session
Notes
Index