The Oregon state legislature was narrowly divided between Unionists and Democrats but the legislation to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment passed with a vote of thirteen to nine in the state senate and twenty-five to twenty-two in the lower house. When a Democratic resurgence took strong control of the legislature in 1868, a vote to rescind Oregon's ratification passed in October 1868, despite the Fourteenth Amendment becoming an official part of the Constitution months before.  The Oregon legislature quietly over-turned this measure in May 1973.  (By John Osborne)

Tennessee's Republican governor, William Brownlow, had swiftly called a special session of the legislature in Nashville to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, only the third state to do so. Brownlow's action was met with an almost immediate reward when the grateful Republicans, with the approval of President Andrew Johnson, engineered the readmission of Tennessee to representation in the United States Congress.  The state became the first former Confederate state to have its representatives sit again in Congress. (By John Osborne)

William Brownlow, the Republican governor, called a special session of the Tennessee Legislature in Nashville to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  After some problems maintaining a quorum in the State House of Representatives, Tennessee became the third state to ratify. Brownlow's haste was met with an almost immediate reward when the grateful Republicans engineered the readmission of Tennessee to representation in the United States Congress on July 24, 1866.   The Amendment itself formally became part of the U.S. Constitution on July 28, 1868.  (By John Osborne)

At the state capitol in Concord, the Republican-controlled legislature voted at the end of its four week session to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, becoming the second to do so, after Connecticut the week before.  The Amendment formally became part of the U.S. Constitution on July 28, 1868.  (By John Osborne)

Only days after the Fourteenth Amendment had been submitted to the states for ratification, Connecticut became the first state to do so.  The Amendment formally became part of the U.S. Constitution on July 28, 1868.  (By John Osborne)

Effective this date, the War Department's Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands halted free distribution of relief rations to individuals across the South except in the most dire circumstances. Between June 1, 1865 and September 1, 1866, according to government figures, almost 30,000 rations per day had been issued, for a total number of 13,412,263 individual sets, roughly divided between white refugees and newly freed slaves. Emerging public perceptions of "handouts" harmful to the work ethic of newly freed slaves across the region helped force the end of the practice.  (By John Osborne)

Although Frankfurt am Main, one of the four "free cities" in the German Confederation, had remained neutral during the recent Austria-Prussia War, Prussia had annexed the area by proclamation backed with the threat of force on September 20, 1866. Two and a half weeks later, Prussian officials took formal possession of the city along with its 90,000 inhabitants and incorporated them into the Prussian state of Hesse-Nassau.  (By John Osborne) 

Although Frankfurt am Main, one of the four "free cities" in the German Confederation, had remained neutral during the recent Austria-Prussia War, the area was annexed into the Prussian state of Hesse by a proclamation backed with the threat of force. Two and a half weeks later, on October 8, 1866, Prussian officials took formal possession of the city and its 90,000 inhabitants.  (By John Osborne) 

British collector Henry Vaughan purchased John Constable's famous painting "The Hay Wain" at auction at Christie's in London for £1,365.  The previous record sale price for a painting in the United Kingdom had been for another Constable, "The Lock," for £865 ten years earlier.  This 1866 auction also featured J.M.W.Turner's "Seventh Plague of Egypt," and Edwin Landseer's "Taming of the Shrew."  Vaughan later gave "The Hay Wain" to the National Gallery in London, where it now has been voted the second most popular painting in any British gallery.  (By John Osborne)