Construction and Reconstruction
known as “equal suffrage,” the principle that every responsible adult person should be a citizen in the complete sense of the term, that every citizen should have one vote and no more, and that all votes should be of equal value.
The third section of this amendment provided that no person should hold office under the United States or under any state who, having previously held office and having therefore taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, had thereafter engaged in insurrection against the Constitution or had given comfort or aid to its enemies. But, it was added, Congress might, by a two-thirds vote of each House, remove such disability. The real purpose of this section was embodied in the last clause. It was not so much to impose the disabilities upon participants in the Civil War from the southern side as to vest in Congress, rather than in the President, the power to remove those disabilities; which the Republican Congress thereafter proceeded to do with a promptness and a completeness not approximated in similar circumstances by any other nation in the world.
Still another section had to do with public debts. It declared that the validity of the legally authorized public debt of the United States, including that incurred for bounties. and pensions for the national soldiers in the Civil War, should never be questioned; but that on the other hand neither the United States nor any state should ever assume or pay any debt contracted in aid of insurrection against the United States, or any claim for loss through the emancipation of any slave. This was intended to prevent any attempt to secure payments of the debt incurred on the bonds issued by the
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