26 Aug 2023 10:18 am
Yes they did. It cost 300,000 dead United States soldiers to put down that rebellion.
Republicans drafted and passed the 14th Amendment.
The 14th amendment has no exception for Trumpists.
And, using the 14th Amendment as it was intended would get a full vote count of members of Congress who could vote to remove the disability.
All Confederates who served the United States before the Confederacy were pardoned by Congress in 1872
Prior Enforcement
There is a relatively limited history of Section 3 enforcement, largely because Congress granted amnesty to former Confederates in 1872. However, the existing record establishes that a variety of actors, including state officials and courts, federal prosecutors, and Congress itself, have enforced the disqualification clause. Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act (also sometimes referred to as the “Enforcement Act”) shortly after ratifying the 14th Amendment.13 The legislation included a statutory directive to federal district attorneys to petition courts for a writ of quo warranto — a legal action that challenges the right of an official to hold office and allows a court to remove an unauthorized officeholder — to remove any covered official who would be disqualified from holding office under the 14th Amendment.14Federal prosecutors brought several cases under this provision.15Two years after passing the legislation, Congress “removed such disability” by passing the Amnesty Act of 1872, allowing most former Confederates to hold office despite the disqualification clause (and mooting several prosecutions then underway). The Ku Klux Klan Act was later repealed, so the explicit cause of action for district attorneys to enforce the provisions is no longer operative.16However, beyond this federal legislation, Congress also possesses its own internal mechanisms to enforce Section 3 against its members. The Senate and the House of Representatives have both exercised their exclusive constitutional authority to exclude or disqualify individuals by refusing to seat them and citing the disqualification clause.17States have also enforced Section 3 against their officials, both before and after the passage and repeal of the Ku Klux Klan Act. In one early example, county commissioners in North Carolina refused to induct a man who had been elected Sheriff due to his service to the Confederate government in the same position.18 This action was eventually approved by the North Carolina Supreme Court; the United States Supreme Court dismissed the sheriff’s appeal.19 The most recent Section 3 disqualification occurred in September 2022, when a New Mexico court disqualified county commissioner Couy Griffin in a state-law quo warranto lawsuit brought by New Mexico residents.20 Other enforcement actions earlier in 2022 have also yielded important legal precedent, even though they did not result in findings of disqualification.21p