[1] In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proposed the Ten percent plan, which suggested that a state in rebellion could be reintegrated if a similar oath, with an additional pledge to abide by the nationwide abolition of slavery, was taken by 10% of its voters.
Given the temporary disenfranchisement of the numerous Confederate veterans and local civic leaders, a new Republican biracial coalition came to power in the eleven Southern states during Reconstruction.
B., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I have never voluntarily borne arms against the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto; that I have neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever, under any authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power or constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto.
And I do further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.The oath was a critical factor in removing many ex-Confederates from the political arena during the Reconstruction era of the late 1860s.
The historian Harold Hyman says that in 1866, northern Representatives "described the oath as the last bulwark against the return of ex-rebels to power, the barrier behind which Southern Unionists and Negroes protected themselves.
[11] Hyman says, "most Southerners, even good Republican supporters, were disfranchised by the ironclad oath's blanket provisions rather than by the Fourteenth Amendment's highly selective disabilities.
"[12] Perman emphasizes that the Republican ascendancy in the South was "extremely precarious" because Congress had defined the electorate, and "many potential opponents had been disfranchised, while others have simply refused to participate in what they regarded as a rigged election.
"[13] Perman argues that while the Radicals had controlled the state constitutional conventions, they increasingly lost power inside the Republican Party to conservative forces, which repudiated disfranchisement and proscription.
[17] In the South, the most support for the Ironclad Oath came from white Republicans from the Hill Counties, where they needed it to gain local majorities.