The History of the Loyal Denominator

• Author: Christopher R. Green
• Position: Associate Professor of Law and H.L.A. Hart Scholar in Law and Philosophy, University of Mississippi School of Law. Thanks to Bruce Ackerman, Larry Alexander, Akhil Amar, Will Baude, Tom Colby, Clark Gibbs, John Harrison, Gerard Magliocca, Jack Nowlin, Mike Ramsey, David Upham, and especially Mike Rappaport for discussion, and to the Lamar Order...
• Pages: 47-146

The History of the Loyal Denominator Christopher R. Green * TABLE OF CONTENTS! Introduction .................................................................................... 48! I. An Exposition of Loyal Denominatorism ...................................... 52! A. The Traditional Account and a Timeline ................................. 52! B. Thirteenth Amendment Legitimacy Requires a Loyal Denominator ............................................................................ 57! C. Loyal Denominatorism as Recognition of the Naysaying Power of Article V .................................................................. 60! D. Loyal Denominatorism as Legitimation for the Reconstruction Acts: Ackerman, Harrison, Amar, and Colby Contrasted .............................................................. 62! II. A History of Fourteenth Amendment Loyal Denominatorism....... 64! A. Various Textual Homes for Loyal Denominatorism ............... 65! B. A Chronological Tour .............................................................. 69! 1. 1861: Andrew Johnson’s Assumption of a Loyal Denominator. ..................................................................... 69! 2. February 1862: Sumner’s State Suicide Theory................ 71! 3. December 1862: West Virginia. ........................................ 72! 4. 1861 to 1864: Disputes over the Quorum. ........................ 75! 5. 1864 and 1865: Wade-Davis, the Thirteenth Amendment, and Article II................................................ 77! 6. Late 1865 and 1866: Disputes over Thirteenth Amendment Legitimacy. ................................................... 86! 7. 1866 to 1867: The Fourteenth Amendment and Reconstruction Act. ........................................................... 89! 8. Later in 1867 and Beyond. ................................................ 95! C. A Canvass of Arguments and Support for Loyal Denominatorism ...................................................................... 99! 1. Officials ............................................................................. 99! 2. Newspapers ..................................................................... 103! 3. Treatises .......................................................................... 106! 4. Others’ Recognition of Widespread Support .................. 106! 5. Agnosticism ..................................................................... 107! 48 LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 79 Conclusion .................................................................................... 108! Appendix: Loyal Denominatorism in Context ............................. 109! 1. Expressions of Loyal Denominatorism ........................... 109! 2. Indications of Widespread Loyal Denominatorism ......... 140! 3. Loyal-Denominator Agnosticism .................................... 143! INTRODUCTION Americans rightly regard The Fourteenth Amendment as the jewel of our Constitution. But why exactly is it legitimate? In recent years, Bruce Ackerman has reawakened the legal academy to the issues of Fourteenth Amendment legitimacy after a long dogmatic slumber, proposing a novel theory to answer the two chief concerns regarding Fourteenth Amendment legitimacy. 1 The Amendment’s legitimacy faces two challenges: (1) Congress’s tainted proposal of the Amendment in 1866 while excluding Southern representatives long after Confederate armies surrendered and President Andrew Johnson installed new Southern governments; and (2) tainted Southern ratifications that Congress coerced in 1867 through militarily imposed black suffrage and required as the price of readmission to Congress. After Congress fervently debated these problems early in Reconstruction, 2 such discussion largely died down after 1872—when the Copyright 2018, by CHRISTOPHER R. GREEN. * Associate Professor of Law and H.L.A. Hart Scholar in Law and Philosophy, University of Mississippi School of Law. Thanks to Bruce Ackerman, Larry Alexander, Akhil Amar, Will Baude, Tom Colby, Clark Gibbs, John Harrison, Gerard Magliocca, Jack Nowlin, Mike Ramsey, David Upham, and especially Mike Rappaport for discussion, and to the Lamar Order of the University of Mississippi for support. Please send comments to crgreen@olemiss.edu. 1. See Bruce Ackerman, The Storrs Lectures: Discovering the Constitution , 93 YALE L.J. 1017 (1984); BRUCE ACKERMAN, WE THE PEOPLE: FOUNDATIONS (1991); BRUCE ACKERMAN, WE THE PEOPLE 2: TRANSFORMATIONS 99–252 (1998) [hereinafter ACKERMAN, TRANSFORMATIONS]. 2. The 1868 Democratic Party platform called the Reconstruction Acts, which required Fourteenth Amendment ratifications as the price of readmission to Article I rights, “unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void.” See Gerhard Peters & John Woolley, Political Party Platforms: 1868 Democratic Party Platform , AM. PRESIDENCY PROJECT, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29579 [https://perma.cc/Z7MK-7FSE]. Francis Blair, Jr., the vice-presidential candidate in 1868, called the Reconstruction Amendments “fraudulent amendments” as late as 1871. CONG. GLOBE, 42nd Cong., 1st Sess. app. 134 (1871). For more on the congressional debate over legitimacy in 1871, see Christopher R. Green, The 2018] THE HISTORY OF THE LOYAL DENOMINATOR 49 Democratic Party platform treated the issue as settled 3 —with only a small flare-up during the Civil Rights movement. 4 Since Ackerman started work on the legitimacy issue in 1984, however, the issue has received significant scholarly treatments from John Harrison, 5 Akhil Amar, 6 and most recently, Tom Colby. 7 Does the Fourteenth Amendment lack basic legitimacy under Article V? If so, its legitimacy in contemporary American legal culture is problematic. Clarifying the exact nature of the Amendment’s legitimacy Original Sense of the (Equal) Protection Clause: Subsequent Interpretation and Application , 19 GEO. MASON U. CIV. RTS. L.J. 219, 229 n.28 (2009). 3. The 1872 Democratic platform stated, “We pledge ourselves to maintain the union of these States, emancipation and enfranchisement; and to oppose any reopening of the questions settled by the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of the Constitution.” Gerhard Peters & John Woolley, Political Party Platforms: 1872 Democratic Party Platform , AM. PRESIDENCY PROJECT, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=%2029580 [ https://perma.cc/8ZAL-P C3P]. 4. See Walter J. Suthon, The Dubious Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment , 28 TUL. L. REV. 22 (1953); Joint Resolution of Georgia General Assembly, Mar. 8, 1957, available at http://goo.gl/XnURIj [https://perma.cc/6GCN-7EWW]; David Lawrence, There is No “ Fourteenth Amendment ” ! , U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Sept. 27, 1957, at 140, available at http://www.constitution.org/14ll /no14th.htm [https://perma.cc/TJ99-QSLT]; Pinckney G. McElwee, The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and the Threat That It Poses to Our Democratic Government , 11 S.C.L.Q. 484 (1959); Joseph L. Call, The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Skeptical Background , 13 BAYLOR L. REV. 1 (1961); Ferdinand F. Fernandez, The Constitutionality of the Fourteenth Amendment , 39 CAL. L. REV. 378 (1966); Dyett v. Turner, 439 P.2d 266, 269–74 (Utah 1968). A later addition to the literature was Forrest McDonald, Was the Fourteenth Amendment Constitutionally Adopted? , 1 GA. J. SOUTHERN LEGAL HIST. 1 (1991). 5. John Harrison, The Lawfulness of the Reconstruction Amendments , 68 U. CHI. L. REV. 375 (2001). 6. AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICA’S CONSTITUTION: A BIOGRAPHY 364–80 (2005) [hereinafter AMAR, AMERICA’S CONSTITUTION]; AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICA’S UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION 79–88 (2012) [hereinafter AMAR, AMERICA’S UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION]; Akhil Amar, Lindsey Ohlsson Worth & Joshua Alexander Geltzer, Reconstructing the Republic: The Great Transition of the 1860s , in TRANSITIONS (Austin Sarat ed., 2012) [hereinafter Amar et al., Reconstructing the Republic ); Akhil Reed Amar, The Lawfulness of Section 5 — and Thus of Section 5 , 126 HARV. L. REV. FORUM 109 (2013) [hereinafter Amar, Section 5 ]. 7. Thomas Colby, Originalism and the Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment , 107 NW. U. L. REV. 1627 (2013). 50 LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 79 has significant practical importance. If the Fourteenth Amendment is akin to an improperly issued check, concern that the Amendment has “come back marked ‘insufficient funds,’” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said of constitutional guarantees, is less justified. 8 Different theories of the Fourteenth Amendment’s legitimacy also affect theories of the Amendment’s exact content, as well as the legitimacy of other parts of our constitutional culture. Who issued the Fourteenth Amendment check, and on what bank account, matters. This Article and its companion 9 defend a view that aims to fit the text and history of the Constitution, preserve Fourteenth Amendment legitimacy in a simple, appealing fashion, and clarify the Fourteenth Amendment’s author by framing the Fourteenth Amendment as an expression of the victorious Union’s Republican principles. The Fourteenth Amendment was a Northern-authored check on the bank of the Union that the South tried to invalidate. I call the view “loyal denominatorism.” The disloyal South was not entitled to resume its Article I and Article V powers—including the “denominator power,” i.e., the right to be counted among the total of which three-fourths of the states’ ratifications were required, and so to be counted as voting “no” prior to ratifying—until Congress was satisfied with reestablished Southern loyalty. Accordingly, unrepresented former Confederates should be excluded from the denominator of Article V’s “three fourths of the several States” 10 ratio. 11 Only states deemed sufficiently loyal to be represented in Congress—i.e., included in “the 8. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream , Aug. 28, 1963, available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm [https://perma.cc /ZCL5-M9BW] (“In a sense...