“Soon after the Fourteenth Amendment formally came into effect in mid-1868, America elected Grant president. Grant placed Brevet Major General Edward Canby in charge of Virginia’s Reconstruction. As Grant later explained in his memoirs, Canby was an officer “of great merit”— “naturally studious and inclined to the law.” Few, if any, army officers, wrote Grant, “took as much interest in reading and digesting every act of Congress. . . . His character was as pure as his talent and learning were great.”18
Shortly after the Fourteenth Amendment’s formal promulgation, Canby properly concluded that Section Three was self-executing. Any disqualified candidates in the Virginia elections, Canby announced, would not “be allowed to enter upon the duties of the offices to which they may have been chosen, unless their disabilities have been removed by Congress.”19 He kept at least two disqualified candidates-elect out of the legislature.20””
Answer: they didn’t get any due process.
Cc:
@825VOL
