The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed by Congress in part to counterattack:?

Question

A. Grandfather clauses.
B. The three-fifth clause
C. the work of the KKK.
D. President Johnson's Reconstruction policies.
E. Black codes.


D? or B? or maybe C...help!

Answer 1

The most correct answer is actually E.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made all people born in America citizens, specifically without regard to race and so on. The rights such citizens were entitled to included the right to own property, make contracts, give evidence, and a few other similar things. Further, anyone trying to bar these rights would be guilty of a federal crime.

Black codes, on the other hand, were initially established in response to freed blacks. The originated in a number of new states and spread to many of the others. They usually prevented black people from travelling through certain areas or staying for longer than a short period unless they paid a substantial sum of money and additionally had permission from some white people. Some of the black codes were stricter even than that. Since the Civil Rights Act unilaterally give all people the right to own any property, all these laws were thrown out.

The Act WAS passed against President Johnson's veto, and the KKK certainly wasn't too happy about it, but it didn't really have much to do with Johnson's reconstruction program per se, nor did it stop the KKK which operated outside the law anyway.

As to the other answers... well, that's a bit longer. But here you go, if you're interested:

The original 'grandfather clause' was included in harsh voting laws. The laws made it almost impossible to vote, but you were exempted from the law if your grandfather could vote. This left all the recently freed black people and all recent immigrants out in the cold. Most grandfather clauses, however, did not appear until well after 1866 (blacks didn't even get the right to vote until the 15th Amendment in 1870!), and were overturned by the 24th Amendment.

The three-fifths clause was actually a compromise reached during the original drafting of the constitution. Northern states wanted to only count free citizens for census purposes (which determined the number of representatives in congress) while southern states naturally wanted to count the copious numbers of slaves as well. The deal decided that a slave would count as three-fifths of a person for those purposes. And this decision also became pointless with the 13th Amendment in 1865, when everyone was freed.

Hope that all helps. An interesting time in history, I'd say.