The Civil Rights Act of 1867 is the popular name for the First Reconstruction Act, formally titled “An Act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States” and recorded at 14 Stat. 428. Congress passed it on March 2, 1867, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto. The law divided ten former Confederate states into five military districts under U.S. Army generals and set the conditions each state had to meet before its representatives could return to Congress: a new state constitution written by an electorate that included Black men, and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. It opened the period historians call Congressional Reconstruction.
Why Congress Imposed Military Rule
By late 1866, Republican lawmakers in the 39th Congress had concluded that President Johnson’s approach to reunification was not working.1Congress.gov. 39th Congress (1865-1867) Under Presidential Reconstruction, former Confederate states had reorganized their own governments with little federal oversight. Southern legislatures then passed “Black Codes” that effectively re-enslaved freedpeople through forced labor contracts and vagrancy laws. Former Confederate leaders returned to office. Violence against Black citizens went unpunished. Southern legislatures had also rejected the Fourteenth Amendment.
Tennessee was the exception. It had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and been readmitted in July 1866, which is why the Act left it out of the military district system. The remaining ten states faced a harder path back.
The Five Military Districts
The statute assigned the ten states to five districts, each under an Army officer no lower in rank than brigadier general.2Library of Congress. An Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States, 14 Stat 428
- First District: Virginia
- Second District: North Carolina and South Carolina
- Third District: Georgia, Alabama, and Florida
- Fourth District: Mississippi and Arkansas
- Fifth District: Louisiana and Texas
The President appointed the initial commanders. General Philip Sheridan drew the Fifth District. Each commander held authority over both military personnel and the civilian population within his territory.
What the District Commanders Could Do
Section 3 of the Act charged each commander with protecting all persons in their rights, suppressing disorder, and punishing crime. Commanders could let local civilian courts continue, or, when they judged it necessary, bypass those courts and organize military commissions to try offenders.2Library of Congress. An Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States, 14 Stat 428 Any attempt by state officials to interfere with military authority was declared void.
Section 6 went further. It declared that any civil government in these states was “provisional only” and subject to federal authority. A commander could remove a governor, replace a judge, or disband a local police force. Several did. Later supplementary acts, passed through 1867 and 1868, expanded that removal power explicitly and retroactively confirmed removals commanders had already carried out.3National Constitution Center. Reconstruction Acts 1867-1868
Who Could Vote and Who Could Not
Before a state could begin the process of rejoining Congress, it had to hold a constitutional convention. The rules for electing delegates to that convention were the Act’s most radical feature. Every male citizen aged twenty-one or older, regardless of race or previous condition of servitude, could register and vote, provided he had lived in the state for at least one year.2Library of Congress. An Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States, 14 Stat 428 For formerly enslaved men, this was the first legal guarantee of political participation they had ever received.
At the same time, the Act barred anyone who had sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution and then joined the rebellion from voting for delegates or serving as one.2Library of Congress. An Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States, 14 Stat 428 Former officeholders who had abandoned their federal oaths for the Confederacy were locked out. The prewar political class was disqualified; Black men and white Unionists formed the new electorate.
A supplementary act passed on March 23, 1867 required prospective voters to swear a loyalty oath before registrars would place them on the rolls, attesting that they had not held office under the Confederacy and had not given aid or comfort to the rebellion.3National Constitution Center. Reconstruction Acts 1867-1868
The conventions that met under these rules included Black delegates for the first time in southern history. Many of the constitutions they produced provided for public education, expanded civil liberties, and broad suffrage. Each new constitution had to be approved by the state’s voters and then reviewed by Congress.
Conditions for Readmission
Writing an acceptable constitution was only part of the requirement. The Act also required each state’s newly elected legislature to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before the state could send representatives back to Congress. Military rule would continue until ratification occurred and the amendment became part of the Constitution.2Library of Congress. An Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States, 14 Stat 428
This was the point of the whole design. The Fourteenth Amendment established birthright citizenship, guaranteed equal protection and due process, and reduced congressional representation for states that denied the vote to eligible male citizens. Southern legislatures had rejected it once. By making ratification the price of ending military occupation, Congress forced adoption over local opposition. There was no path back to self-governance that did not run through the amendment.
Johnson’s Veto and the Override
President Johnson vetoed the Act on March 2, 1867, the same day Congress sent it to him. In his veto message he argued that the bill placed ten states under “the absolute domination of military rulers,” imposed military governance in peacetime without constitutional basis, and coerced southerners into political positions they opposed. He called it “without precedent and without authority” and “utterly destructive” to liberty.
Both the House and the Senate overrode the veto that same day, clearing the two-thirds threshold. Johnson vetoed all four Reconstruction Acts. Congress overrode every one of them.
Court Challenges
Opponents turned to the Supreme Court. The most direct challenge came in Ex parte McCardle (1868). William McCardle, a Mississippi newspaper editor arrested by military authorities for publishing inflammatory articles, sought a writ of habeas corpus and challenged the constitutionality of military rule under the Reconstruction Acts. While his appeal was pending, Congress repealed the specific 1867 statute that had given the Court jurisdiction to hear this class of habeas appeal. Chief Justice Salmon Chase, writing for a unanimous Court, held that the Constitution gives Congress express power to make exceptions to the Court’s appellate jurisdiction and that the Court would not “inquire into the motives of the legislature.” The appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts was not tested through that avenue.
A separate case, Texas v. White (1869), addressed a related question. The Court held that the Union was “indissoluble” and that secession was legally impossible; Texas had remained a state throughout the rebellion, even while its government was in open revolt.4Library of Congress. Texas v White, 74 US 700 (1869) If the states had never left, then Congress was not admitting new states but restoring existing ones, and it could set conditions on that restoration.
How Readmission Played Out
The ten states moved through the process at different speeds. The first wave came in the summer of 1868: Arkansas, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia all met the conditions and had their representatives seated.
Georgia’s readmission did not hold. After the state legislature expelled its Black members and seated former Confederates disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress revoked Georgia’s readmission in 1869 and reimposed military rule. The commanding general removed the offending legislators, reinstated the expelled Black members, and required Georgia to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment as well. Georgia was readmitted for good in July 1870.
Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas were the last three to complete the process, all in 1870. Their readmission ended the formal military district system.
What Came After
The end of military rule did not end federal involvement in the South, but the commitment weakened through the 1870s. White paramilitary organizations used violence to suppress Black voters and Republican officeholders. Northern public opinion shifted. The contested presidential election of 1876 produced the final break. In the Compromise of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes secured the presidency in exchange for withdrawing the last federal troops actively intervening in southern politics, and within two months of taking office he ordered soldiers in Louisiana and South Carolina back to their barracks.
With that withdrawal, meaningful federal enforcement of the civil rights protections the Reconstruction Acts and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had put in place effectively ended. Jim Crow followed, and the system of legalized racial segregation and disenfranchisement it produced lasted nearly a century. The 1867 Act had reshaped the constitutional order on paper, but the political consensus needed to enforce it did not last out the decade.