In March of 1867, the U.S. Congress declared "the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Arkansas" were places [Where] "..no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists...". This act made all the state governments put in place by President Lincoln and Johnson illegal, removing all civil representation of these states from the Union. Notice, Tennessee was not included. How true were their charges that no "adequate protection for life or property now exists"? The truth was it was their armies that were occupying these states, so how could this be?

March 2, 1867...Then enacted...

Sec. 5 "That when the people of any one said rebel States shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said state,...when such constitution shall have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and Congress shall have approved the same, and when said State, by a vote of its legislature elected under said constitution, shall have adopted the amendment to the Constitution of the the United States, proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, and known as article fourteen, and when said article shall have become a part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and senators and representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State: Provided, That no person excluded from the privilege of holding office by said proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States, shall be eligible to election as a member of the convention to frame a constitution for any of said rebel States, nor shall any such person vote for members of such convention."

Sec. 6. "That, until the people of said rebel States shall be by law admitted to representation in the Congress of the United States, any civil governments which may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only, and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States at any time to abolish, modify, control, or supercede the same..."

The War was officially declared over in 1866. Here the U.S. Congress, declares war again a year later on several states by making these states illegal and rebellious, although clearly the United States flag is flying from every state capitol since early 1865. Demanding that either these "rebel States" ratify the 14th Amendment or be "subject to the paramount authority of the United States". Here the U.S. Congress is clearly threatening the deep South with force in order to change the U.S. Constitution which an amendment to punish the South by removing Constitutional rights from certain citizens.

How is the act above in anyway "saving the Union" or in the spirit of American republicism and democracy?

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David Upton