Answer: Long before the Union victory, Congress had been preparing for the many challenges the nation would face at war’s end, particularly the integration of four million newly emancipated African Americans into the political life of the nation. Led by the Radical Republicans in the House and Senate, Congress passed the Wade-Davis bill on July 2, 1864—co-sponsored by Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Davis of Maryland—to provide for the admission to representation of rebel states upon meeting certain conditions. Among the conditions was the requirement that 50 percent of white males in the state swear a loyalty oath, and the insistence that the state grant African American men the right to vote. President Lincoln, who had earlier proposed a more modest 10-percent threshold, pocket-vetoed the Wade-Davis bill, stating he was opposed to being “inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration.” When the 38th Congress came to an end on March 3, 1865, the president and members of Congress had not yet reached an agreement on the terms of Reconstruction. Then, on April 9, General Lee surrendered. Less than a week later President Lincoln was assassinated and Vice President Andrew Johnson, a former senator from Tennessee, became president.
Explanation:
There have always been conflicts between individual rights and national security interests in democracies. Limits on civil liberties during wartime, including restrictions on free speech, public assembly, and mass detentions, have been the most serious threats to individual freedom. Even in peacetime, counter-terrorist measures including profiling, detention, and exclusion, along with the use of national identification cards, have raised concerns about racism, constitutional violations, and the loss of privacy. With the passage of new anti-terrorist laws after September 11, 2001, these tensions have increased. Supporters of broader governmental powers insist that they are part of the increased security measures necessary to safeguard national security. In contrast, many civil rights groups fear that the infringement upon individual rights is another step in the erosion of democratic civil society.
Wartime measures. The severest restrictions on civil liberties have occurred in times of war. In September 1862, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) suspended the right of habeas corpus in order to allow federal authorities to arrest and detain suspected Confederate sympathizers without arrest warrants or speedy trials. Well aware of the drastic nature of such a step, Lincoln justified it as a necessary wartime measure. After the United States Supreme Court found Lincoln's abrogation of habeas corpus an unconstitutional intrusion on Congressional authority, Congress itself ratified the measure by passing the Habeas Corpus Act in September 1863. Through 1864, about 14,000 people were arrested under the act; about one in seven were detained at length in federal prisons, most on allegations of offering aid to the Confederacy but others on corruption and fraud charges.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/espionage/In-Int/Intelligence-and-Democracy-Issues-and-Conflicts.html#ixzz4XX37pHRv
Until all legally enforced public segregation (segregation de jure) was abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
An example of discrimination that exists today is harrasment. harrasment is such as, inappropriate jokes, name calling or displays like posters or cartoons directed at a person because of their race, colour, sex or gender, sexual orientation etc.
