Ch. 2.3. Primary Sources: The Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments

The War’s Aftermath and New Freedom. Perhaps surprisingly from our perspective today, the goal of ending slavery and attempting to ensure equal citizenship for African-Americans only emerged fully and clearly as the war ended and, even more so, in the war’s aftermath. This process took place mostly during the period of northern military rule of the South, known as Reconstruction, from 1867 to 1877.

Even as late as January, 1865, when the war was winding down and when Northern victory became all but inevitable, political support for the end of chattel slavery was by no means assured. Thus an intense political battle preceded the passage by Congress, on Jan. 31, 1865, of the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially prohibited slavery.

Congress made the ratification of the 13th Amendment necessary for the re-admission of the former Confederate states. Under the relatively easy terms of readmission favored by both Lincoln and, after his assassination on April 14, 1865, his Vice President and successor, Andrew Johnson, all the former Confederate states had been re-admitted by the end of 1865.

Southern whites were by no means reconciled, however, to the granting of real civil and political equality to African-Americans. In the face of intense, often violent southern resistance to anything like racial equality, an increasingly radical, i.e., abolitionist, Republican majority in Congress established a military regime for governing the South, known as Reconstruction.

The Republican-dominated Congress also passed two additional constitutional amendments that sought to spell out the idea that all those born in the U.S. were entitled to equal rights. These became the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, ratified, respectively, in 1868 and 1870. The importance of both the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which banned racial discrimination in voting, should not be underestimated.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 1: The New Founding. Arguably, however, of the three Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments the one that has had the most significance in the long term is the Fourteenth, and especially its first section. This paragraph establishes birthright citizenship (all those born in the U.S. are citizens), guarantees due process rights for all people under U.S. jurisdiction, and, finally, writes the concept of equality explicitly into the Constitution, by guaranteeing to all persons “the equal protection of the laws.”

New Federal Authority. All three of the Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments also include an “enforcement clause,” which explicitly gave Congress the power to enforce the terms of each of these amendments by “appropriate legislation.” Moreover, both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments specifically frame the rights they affirm as restrictions on the power of the states. As the Fourteenth Amendment states, “No state shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Together, these features of these amendments endowed the federal government with unprecedented authority.

AMENDMENT XIII

Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

AMENDMENT XIV

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

AMENDMENT XV

Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 1870.

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Source: The National Archives, “America’s Founding Documents,” under Amendments 11-27.