As finally approved by Congress, the amendment did not include black suffrage, but it sought to exact a price for treason. All those Confederates who had served in federal or state governments or in the military before the war and had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution were made ineligible for political office without a two-thirds vote of Congress. The proposed amendment also torpedoed Southern plans to have the United States assume the Confederate debt and pay pensions to Confederate soldiers. Both would now be unconstitutional.
