Wade-Davis Bill
In 1864, during the American Civil War, Ohioan Benjamin Franklin Wade, a United States Senator, and Henry Winter Davis, a United States Representative from Maryland, introduced the Wade-Davis Bill. This legislation sought to create a policy for how seceded states would rejoin the United States following the war's conclusion. It required fifty percent of white Southern voters living in a seceded state to take an oath of allegiance to the United States before the state could apply for readmission to the Union. The bill easily passed Congress, but President Abraham Lincoln refused to sign it. Lincoln favored a much more lenient policy and the bill never became law.
Many members of the Senate and the House of Representatives were Radical Republicans and desired to punish the South for causing the American Civil War. The Congress repeatedly the relatively lenient plans of Presidents Lincoln and Johnson to reunite the country upon the war's conclusion.
Portrait of Benjamin F. Wade from Jefferson, Ashtabula County, Ohio, ca. 1894-1912. He served as United States Senator from Ohio from 1859 to 1869. Wade was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in 1868. Wade died in 1878 and this portrait was produced as a memorial to the Senator after his death.
References and Suggested Reading
- Dee, Christine, ed. Ohio's War: The Civil War in Documents. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. - Available from Amazon.com
- Donald, David Herbert. The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. - Available from Amazon.com
- Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1990. - Available from Amazon.com
- Mantell, Martin E. Johnson, Grant, and the Politics of Reconstruction. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1973. - Available from Amazon.com
- Reid, Whitelaw. Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Generals and Soldiers. Cincinnati, OH: Clarke, 1895.
- Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. - Available from Amazon.com
- Roseboom, Eugene H. The Civil War Era: 1850-1873. Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1944.
- Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991. - Available from Amazon.com
- Simpson, Brooks D. The Reconstruction Presidents. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. - Available from Amazon.com
- Trefousse, Hans Louis. Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers, 1963.
- Weisenburger, Francis P. The Passing of the Frontier: 1825-1850. Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1941. - Available from Amazon.com
Time Periods
Citation
"Wade-Davis Bill", Ohio History Central, July 1, 2005, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2083
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