{"id":2850,"date":"2019-01-30T19:30:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T19:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=2850"},"modified":"2026-02-11T06:06:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:06:22","slug":"civil-rights-act-of-1866","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/civil-rights-act-of-1866\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Rights Act of 1866: A Detailed Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was enacted on April 9th in 1866 during the presidency of Andrew Johnson.\u00a0 It was created following the\u00a0American Civil War<\/a>\u00a0as an attempt to help protect former slaves in the Reconstruction Era<\/a> of American history.\u00a0 For instance, the act dealt with matters related to citizenship and protected all citizens as equal under the law.\u00a0 This was significant at the time because there was fear in the Northern states that the former slaves in the South were not going to be afforded the same rights as the white citizens.\u00a0 Due to the timeframe in which it was passed, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, is considered significant to other related events, such as:\u00a0slavery in the United States<\/a>, the American Civil War, and the\u00a0Reconstruction Amendments<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 – SUMMARY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was written by Lyman Trumbull, who was a United States Senator from Illinois.\u00a0 Trumbull also co-wrote the\u00a0Thirteenth Amendment<\/a>, which is one of the \u2018Reconstruction Amendments\u2019 that were passed in the years after the end of the Civil War.\u00a0 In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished slavery in the United States.\u00a0 The Thirteenth Amendment was adopted on December 18th in 1865, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was written to support the overall goal of the Thirteenth Amendment.\u00a0 For instance, the Civil Rights Act of 1866\u2019s main goal was to protect the rights of all people born in the United States regardless of their race, color, or previous condition of slavery.\u00a0 As such, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was significant in terms of helping to protect former slaves who had recently been freed.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Civil
Lyman Trumbull (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In terms of the civil rights that the act was intended to protect, it focused on promoting equality between all people in the United States.\u00a0 For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 stated that all citizens had the same rights, including: to own property, sell property and to participate in judicial matters.\u00a0 For instance, the act dealt with matters related to citizenship and protected all citizens as equal under the law.\u00a0 This was significant at the time, because there was fear in the Northern states that the former slaves in the South were not going to be afforded the same rights as the white citizens.\u00a0 The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was especially significant to the \u2018Black Codes\u2019.\u00a0 Following the end of the American Civil War, several Southern states passed laws that are commonly referred to as \u2018Black Codes<\/a>\u2019 as a way of controlling the societal, political and economic activities of African Americans.\u00a0 In fact, the Black Codes were attempts by some states to continue with aspects of slavery after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 attempted to protect these civil rights by carrying out certain punishments for people who denied others their rights.\u00a0 These punishments included a fine of $1000 or up to one year in prison.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As stated above, the act was written by Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull and introduced into the Senate.  It eventually passed through the Senate and House of Representatives in 1865.  However, United States President Andrew Johnson vetoed the it soon after in 1865.  Johnson vetoed it again in 1866 after Congress attempted to pass it again.  Johnson\u2019s veto of the Civil Rights act of 1866 was related to the controversial nature of the bill.  In fact, some in Congress argued that the government did not have authority to enact such a law.  Others argued against the law on the grounds that they disagreed with extending rights to former slaves.  Regardless, the President\u2019s veto was overridden by Congress after a two-thirds majority of the members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives voted to make it law.  This was significant, as it was the first time that Congress had ever overridden the veto of a President of the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was enacted on April 9th in 1866.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of its passage by Congress, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was not formally ratified until two years later, in 1868, with ratification of the\u00a0Fourteenth Amendment<\/a>.\u00a0 This is because some worried that the act did not do enough to protect the equality of rights for all citizens, including African Americans.\u00a0 As such, the Fourteenth Amendment was introduced to further the protections laid out in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment dealt with citizenship rights and equal protection under the law for former slaves. It was ratified on July 8th, 1868, just three years after the Thirteenth Amendment, which had abolished slavery.\u00a0 There were many different proposals of the Fourteenth Amendment that were constructed throughout 1865 and 1866.\u00a0 The central issues of the time centered on voting rights for former slaves and equal protection under the law regardless of race.\u00a0 Finally, in April of 1866, a proposal was sent forward to Congress that included elements of both.\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the first federal law to define citizenship and guarantee equal protection under the law for all people born in the United States, regardless of race. It aimed to protect the rights of formerly enslaved individuals by outlawing discriminatory laws like the Black Codes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,30,58,55],"tags":[89,57,91,15,74],"class_list":["post-2850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reconstruction","category-american-civil-war","category-american-history","category-black-history","tag-american-civil-war","tag-american-history","tag-black-history","tag-history","tag-reconstruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5044,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions\/5044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}