Jefferson Davis contended in 1868 that Section Three was self-executing to avoid his treason prosecution..

Do the MAGaTs calling for civil war realize that the 14th amendment happened because of … the civil war?

Jefferson Davis contended in 1868 that Section Three was self-executing to avoid his treason prosecution and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase agreed with those arguments as a circuit judge presiding over the proceedings in Virginia.

When asked by the Mississippi Legislature, Jefferson stated "It has been said that I should apply to the United States for a pardon. But repentance must precede the right of pardon, and I have not repented". He later also added that "If it were all to do over again, I would again do just as I did in 1861."

Davis never stood trial for treason.

States v. Jefferson Davis, a legal determination was required to determine whether or not Section 3 imposed a simple disqualification or an actual punishment.13 In 1868, a preliminary ruling in favor of the criminal sanction argument was utilized for the benefit of a most unlikely party – namely, Jefferson Davis.14 Could those who pushed for the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, those who some historians consider the last vestiges of the abolitionist movement, have foresee that a section of the Amendment enacted to guarantee the rights of freed blacks would be used to free the man who symbolized the slaveocracy that they so despised?15 And moreover, could they have foreseen that the person who utilized this untended consequence would be Salmon P. Chase, one of the primary architects of anti-slavery litigation?

Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. When Davis doddered into that courtroom, many of the faces he saw were Black. Among the two hundred spectators, a quarter were Black freedmen. And then the grand jury filed in. Six of its eighteen members were Black, the first Black men to serve on a federal grand jury.

Jefferson Davis graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1828. By 1836 Davis was a plantation owner, and in the 1840s he owned over 70 slaves.

Ultimately, the case of United States v. Jefferson Davis never went to trial, a decision finalized in 1869. The federal government reached its decision in part because it feared that Davis would either prove to a jury that secession was legally permitted under the U.S. Constitution or he would be transformed into a martyr if convicted and executed.

Davis’s lawyer Charles O’Conor argued that Section 3’s ban on holding office was a form of punishment and that to try Davis for treason would therefore amount to double jeopardy.

The Amnesty Act was amended to allow almost all former Confederates, except for several hundred former high-ranking officials (such as Davis), to hold public office and vote. So while Davis became eligible for a general pardon, he didn’t have full citizenship rights if he wanted to hold elected federal office

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In 1876, Davis was specifically excluded from a universal amnesty bill that restored the full citizenship rights of the remaining former Confederates. The former Confederate president did not fight the decision. If former Confederates were sent back to public office they could arguably do by legal means that which they did not succeed in doing by virtue of the Civil War. (Which is what Trump will try to do if re-elected)

While Sections 1 and 2 of the Amendment have been the subject of much litigation, Section 3 has been generally ignored as a remnant of the Civil War.8 On its face, Section 3 was enacted to disqualify from public office those who had taken an oath to support the Constitution and then joined the rebellion; a provision which was bitterly resented in the former Confederacy.9 In the minds of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was in the best interest of the nation to place its administration, both state and national, in the hands of those who had never been in insurrection against it.

His U.S. citizenship wasn’t restored until 1978.

An amnesty bill that restored citizenship to Confederate leaders in 1876 specifically excluded Davis, and the former Confederate president did not fight the decision. “It has been said that I should apply to the United States for a pardon. But repentance must precede the right of pardon, and I have not repented,” Davis told the Mississippi Legislature in 1884, before adding, “If it were all to do over again, I would again do just as I did in 1861.” Davis remained a man without a country for more than a century until President Jimmy Carter on October 17, 1978, signed a measure passed by the U.S. Congress that restored American citizenship to Davis.

https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1163&context=akronlawreview

When the Thirty-Ninth Congress convened in December 1865, Senators and elected Representatives from the ex-Confederate States showed up ready to take their seats. Among those members-elect were many rebel leaders, including Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President, two Confederate Senators, four Confederate Congressmen, and several military officers of the Confederate Army.[18] The presence of these unrepentant rebels infuriated most Republicans in Congress. As the Joint Committee on Reconstruction explained in its report, the elections in the South “resulted, almost universally, in the defeat of candidates who had been true to the Union, and in the election of notorious and unpardoned rebels . . . who made no secret of their hostility to the government and the people of the United States.”

Alabama is the last state to have a legal holiday set aside solely to commemorate the birth of Davis. Mississippi marks Davis’ birthday but includes it in the Memorial Day celebration. In Texas, Davis’ birthday is part of “Confederate Heroes Day” while other Southern states, including Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee, have a holiday for Davis on the books but do not give employees a day off.

https://constitutionalcommentary.lib.umn.edu/article/amnesty-and-section-three-of-the-fourteenth-amendment/