Here's the excerpt from Amendment 14 Section 3:No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
And here's the 1872 Amnesty Act:Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each house concurring therein), that all political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Representatives of the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States.
My take: This looks to me like the Republican majority Congress of 1872 kept the insurrection clause in place retroactively during the Civil War years, but nullified it going forward after that (including their current Congress in 1872). The 36th Congress was inaugurated in 1861, the 37th was inaugurated in 1863. Thus beginning with the 38th Congress, inaugurated in 1865, the insurrection clause was no longer in effect. I read that as the Republican Congress in 1872 saying they're not going to use the 14th Amendment to undo laws passed from 1865 (the idea being some Dims who were prior confederates were elected in Congress before the 1872 Amnesty Act, but the Republicans count them as legit).
Past confederate officers who were still alive ran for office and served in government. For example, Alabama's US Senator John T Morgan (a Dim) was elected in 1876 even though he had been a brigadier general for the confederates. By being inaugurated in 1877 he was not part of the 36th or 37th Congress that the insurrection clause wasn't exempted by the Amnesty Act.
Another example was Lt Mosby from the confederates later served as Grant's consul to Hong Kong. Thus the Amnesty Act's "...and foreign ministers of the United States" evidently was meant to be nullified going forward as well.
Joseph Wheeler also
I still don’t understand why no one is contending with the Amnesty Act in the current discussion
But I’d say that Joseph Wheeler was an insurrectionist. He served in Congress, and in the military again under McKinley later.
If he was eligible, then, Jeff Davis (or RE Lee, or whomever) was eligible.
Which runs contrary to what we are hearing in the media. “If Confederate insurrectionists were not eligible, then neither is Trump”.
Confederates were not only eligible, they served.
But facts don’t matter in today’s world
Thanks. Good fodder for some thinking. Check this out, too, especially the 4th from bottom paragraph:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/politics/madison-cawthorn-civil-war-amnesty-law/index.html