Source: Common Dreams
by Jeffrey C Isaac
“On May 6, 1866, exactly one hundred and sixty years ago today, Thaddeus Stevens, US Congressman from Pennsylvania and the leading Radical Republican in the House of Representatives, rose to introduce the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution on the floor of the. Stevens, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was also co-chair of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction set up by Congress, in late 1865, to promote a radical Reconstruction, a program advanced over the consistent objections of President Andrew Johnson. … The Amendment passed in the House on June 13, by a vote of 138 in favor and 36 opposed, having passed in the Senate five days earlier, on June 8, by a vote of 33 in favor and 11 opposed. In other words, roughly a quarter of US Representatives and Senators, serving in houses of Congress that did not include representatives from the seceded Confederate states, voted against the amendment.” (05/06/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/history-of-14th-amendment