Tags: Election.
Elections to the United States House of Representatives were held in 1866 to elect Representatives to the 40th United States Congress.The elections occurred just one year after the American Civil War in which the Union defeated the Confederacy ended.The 1866 elections were a decisive event in the early Reconstruction era in which President Andrew Johnson faced off against the Radical Republicans in a bitter dispute over whether Reconstruction should be lenient or harsh toward the vanquished South.Most of the congressmen from the former Confederate states were either prevented from leaving the state or were arrested on the way to the capital.
