Universal Amnesty and Section 3

After the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, a popular slogan in certain circles was "universal amnesty and impartial suffrage." This idea, most closely associated with Horace Greeley, was that the next step should be to remove all Section 3 disabilities and guarantee voting rights to Black men. In 1869, Greeley wrote a public letter to Congressman Benjamin Butler arguing that Section 3 waivers be given to anyone who pledged to support ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. After the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, the idea morphed into "amnesty in exchange for vigorous enforcement of Black voting rights," and Greeley campaigned on that compromise in 1872.

Throughout this debate, everyone assumed that universal amnesty could be achieved only by a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress. Nobody in 1869 or 1870 said that the answer was for Congress to refrain from passing Section 3 enforcement legislation because Section 3 could not be enforced without an Act of Congress. Likewise, after federal enforcement provisions were enacted in 1870, nobody said that "universal amnesty" could be achieved simply by repealing those enforcement provisions. There was a lengthy debate in Congress over what became the 1872 Amnesty Act. The fact that nobody suggested an alternative that would have required only a majority vote in each House is telling.