The Wade-Davis Bill, setting out stringent requirements for the readmission of former Confederate states, had passed the Congress just over two weeks earlier. Far more punishing than the president's current or future plans, Lincoln used the "pocket-veto" and refused to sign the measure. Notable among his reasons was that Congress had no right to ban slavery without a constitutional amendment. Radical Republicans were enraged, as the "Wade-Davis Manifesto" published three weeks later in the major newspapers demonstrated. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Charles P. Roland, An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 188.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
