Ironclad Oath

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IRONCLAD OATH

IRONCLAD OATH. In 1862, Congress mandated that civil servants and military personnel take an Ironclad Test Oath that they had never voluntarily aided the Confederacy. As Reconstruction evolved, the Ironclad Oath emerged as the strictest of several possible standards for the readmission of Southerners into the political life of the Union. The Radical Wade-Davis Bill (1864) would have required Southerners to take the oath before regaining the right to vote, but President Lincoln pocket-vetoed it. The Second Reconstruction Act (1867) made the oath a condition for holding federal office, but it was not consistently enforced.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dorris, Jonathan Truman. Pardon and Amnesty Under Lincoln and Johnson: The Restoration of the Confederates to Their Rights and Privileges, 1861–1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

JeremyDerfner

See alsoLoyalty Oaths ; Reconstruction .

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