• On December 8, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction outlining lenient Reconstruction terms for the South.
• On February 17, 1863 Republican Senator Ira Harris of New York introduced a bill (S. 538) To guarantee in certain States a republican form of government. The bill enumerated various conditions for the reestablishment of constitutional governments in the Confederate states following the war.
• Senate bill 538 served as the foundation of a Reconstruction measure co-authored by Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade and Maryland Congressman Henry Winter Davis in 1864.
• On February 15, 1864, Maryland Congressman Henry Winter Davis reported a bill from the House Select Committee on the Rebellious States entitled, A Bill to guarantee to certain States whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government (H.R. 244), commonly known as the Wade-Davis Bill.
• The Wade-Davis Bill prescribed harsher terms for reconstruction than President Abraham Lincoln’s plan.
• The House of Representatives passed the Wade-Davis Bill (H.R. 244) on May 4, 1864.
• The Senate approved an amended version of the Wade-Davis Bill (H.R. 244) on July 1, 1864.
• Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill (H.R. 244) on July 2, 1864.
• President Abraham Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade and Davis Bill.
• In addition to pocket vetoing the Wade-Davis Bill, President Abraham Lincoln took the unusual step of issuing a presidential proclamation on July 8, 1864 outlining his reasons for not signing the bill.
• Outraged by President Abraham Lincoln’s pocket veto of the Wade-Davis Bill, Senator Benjamin Wade and Congressman Henry Winter Davis issued the Wade-Davis Manifesto on August 4, 1864.
• The Wade-Davis Manifesto was entitled “To the Supporters of the Government.”
• The Wade-Davis Manifesto was first published in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune.
• The Wade-Davis Manifesto was highly critical of President Abraham Lincoln.
• Viewed by many as a treasonable attack on the office of the presidency in the midst of war, the Wade-Davis Manifesto backfired. Republican moderates and voters in the North rallied behind Abraham Lincoln to reelect him by a wide margin of electoral votes in the November 1864 presidential contest.
• Many of the principles expressed in the Wade-Davis Bill eventually resurfaced in legislation enacted under Congressional Reconstruction.

• Written by Harry Searles