Civil Rights Acts

Civil Rights Act of 1866

When Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and when it went into effect on January 1, 1863, African Americans around the United States rejoiced. The “Day of Jubilee” had finally arrived, a day many thought they would never live to see. Unfortunately, this dream—and the rights many felt should go along with it—was denied to many African Americans through various tactics, and although Congress passed several civil rights acts in order to guarantee the freedom of the former slaves, many did not fully gain that freedom for a century. What is often overlooked is the fact that these civil rights acts did benefit other minorities within society, helping them gain citizenship or other rights previously denied them.

On December 18, 1865, the 30th state ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, once and for all legally abolishing slavery in the United States. Many knew this was merely the first step, but the reaction from the south exceeded what many in President Andrew Johnson's administration expected. Around the same time, Congress decided to treat the former slaves as wards of the state by creating the Freedmen's Bureau to provide government assistance to them and others in need in the war-ravaged south. For many reasons, one of which was lack of presidential support, the Freedmen's Bureau was an overall failure, and though they were no longer slaves, many African Americans did not see a marked improvement in their daily lives.

During late 1865 and early 1866, every former Confederate state passed black codes, a series of laws that differed from state to state but that all took measures to return the former slaves to a status as close to slavery as possible, or slavery without the chains, as it was often called. Southern whites insisted that the codes were necessary to maintain law and order, but most northern congressmen, radical and moderate, saw them as an effort to oppress the newly freed members of society. In response to the black codes, as well as [Page 514]to the growing instances of violence in the south, moderates in Congress joined with the radicals, who had always championed African American rights, to look for a solution to the problem and to bring equality to everyone. They decided that equality before the law was essential and that enforcement by the federal government was an option if the individual states did not comply. They also felt that each southern state must comply with these ideals before they were to be readmitted to the Union.

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