More than a blueprint for rebuilding the postwar South, Lincoln saw the Ten Percent Plan as a tactic for further weakening the resolve of the Confederacy. The Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling theSupreme Courtsdecision inDred Scott v. Sandford(1857), which had held that Americans descended from Africans could not be citizens of the United States. Notably, no consideration for the rights of Black women was expressed during Reconstruction. Though they were repeatedly either ignored or flagrantly violated, the anti-racial discrimination Reconstruction amendments remained in the Constitution. [9] Although many slaves had been declared free by Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, their legal status after the Civil War was uncertain. b. The South created strict laws that disproportionally affected newly freed African Americans called Black Codes. Seeing this abuse by the Southern States, the government set out to enact more legal protections for newly freed African Americans. These effects resulted in the first of three, later named, Reconstruction Amendments that aimed to give equal rights and liberties to newly freed African Americans in the United States. 2. To be accepted back into the Union, the former Confederate states were required to abolish the practice of slavery, renounce their secession, and compensate the federal government for its Civil War expenses. In early 1866, Congress refused to recognize or seat representatives and senators who had been elected from the former Confederate states of the South and passed the Freedmens Bureau and Civil Rights Bills. It is fraught with great difficulty. Ratified July 9, 1868. The subsequent sections regard. It has also been referred to for many other court decisions rejecting unnecessary discrimination against people belonging to various groups. The results in voter suppression were dramatic, as voter rolls fell: nearly all blacks, as well as tens of thousands of poor whites in Alabama and other states,[23] were forced off the voter registration rolls and out of the political system, effectively excluding millions of people from representation. Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. that required all new voters to pass a literacy test before registration. However, members of Congress worried that the Act did not give enough constitutional power to enact and uphold this law. Since education was illegal for slaves in the South, few former slaves were literate and could pass these tests. By contrast, the Civil War and Reconstruction brought opportunities for progress and growth. 3. Once individuals were, . During this tumultuous time, the U.S. government attempted to deal with the reintegration of the 11 Southern states that had seceded from the Union, along with 4 million newly freed enslaved people. Together with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling inHarper v. Virginia State Board of Elections(1966), which forbade requiring poll taxes in state elections, blacks regained the opportunity to participate in the U.S. political system. Following this proclamation, African Americans from the North and South were recruited for the Union Army to form the United States Colored Troops division. Important Supreme Court decisions that undermined these amendments were the Slaughter-House Cases in 1873, which prevented rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause from being extended to rights under state law;[27] and Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 which originated the phrase "separate but equal" and gave federal approval to Jim Crow laws. 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. The Reconstruction Amendments - National Constitution Center Johnsons plan for restoring the splintered Union pardoned all Southern White persons except Confederate leaders and wealthy plantation owners and restored all of their constitutional rights and property except enslaved persons. In 1865 and 1866, during the administration of President Andrew Johnson, the Southern states enacted restrictive and discriminatory Black Codeslaws intended to control the behavior and labor of Black Americans. Their proponents believed that they would transform the United States from a country that was (in Abraham Lincoln's words) "half slave and half free"[5] to one in which the constitutionally guaranteed "blessings of liberty" would be extended to the entire populace, including the former slaves and their descendants. Amendments 13-15 are called the Reconstruction Amendments both because they were the first enacted right after the Civil War and because all addressed questions related to the legal and political status of the African Americans. Historian James Grossman explains the myths around slavery. Ratified Read More(1865) Reconstruction Amendments, 1865-1870 However, unforeseen results of the period from 1865 to 1876 would continue to impact Black Americans and the societies of both the South and North for over a century. The 14th Amendment changed a portion of Article I, Section 2. The 14th Amendment changed a portion of Article I, Section 2. Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. A portion of the 14th Amendment was changed by the 26th Amendment. Robert Longley is a U.S. government and history expert with over 30 years of experience in municipal government and urban planning. The 13th, 14th, and 15th. The Klan used violence and fear, mostly . actions. Section 2. The Second Reconstruction Act, enacted on March 23, 1867, supplemented the First Reconstruction Act by assigning Union troops to oversee voter registration and voting in the Southern states. Copyright 2021 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), all rights reserved. Reconstruction Amendments: 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments In 1870, Joseph Rainey of South Carolina was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first popularly elected Black member of Congress. In the crowd was John Wilkes Booth, who was angered at the outcome of the war and pledged to kill the President. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. This clause has also been used by the federal judiciary to make most of theBill of Rightsapplicable to the states, as well as to recognizesubstantiveandproceduralrequirements that state laws must satisfy. Send Students on School Field Trips to Battlefields Your Gift Tripled! Black History and Women Timeline 1860-1869, The Black Codes and Why They Still Matter Today, Women's Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, Indian Citizenship Act: Granted Citizenship but Not Voting Rights, Lynch, John R. The Facts of Reconstruction.. Constitution Classroom Resource Library | Constitution Center In the last video we were talking about the era of reconstruction and how after the Civil War when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery many Southern states enacted laws known . The American Battlefield Trust is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Historian Risa Goluboff explains the thirteenth, fourteenth & fifteenth amendments. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the, areas that were in rebellion against the United States, who worked under Confederate masters. These amendments were intended to guarantee freedom to former slaves and to establish and prevent discrimination in certain civil rights to former slaves and all citizens of the United States. However, the growing political power of Black people provoked a violent backlash from many White people who struggled to hold on to their supremacy. On April 9, 1866, the Civil Rights Act was enacted into law. Having been denied educations under slavery, many formerly enslaved people were forced by economic necessity to. These Reconstruction Amendments helped to move the United States into a more unified and progressive nation. [2] Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, 1860s. How were for former Confederate leaders, considered traitors by many in the North, to be dealt with? [16], The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. Now lacking land, most formerly enslaved persons were forced to return to working on the same plantations where they had toiled for generations. Though they were repeatedly either ignored or flagrantly violated, the anti-racial discrimination Reconstruction amendments remained in the Constitution. Much of this harassment played out in and near the voting booths. TheTwenty-fourth Amendment(1964) forbade the requirement for poll taxes in federal elections; by this time five of the eleven southern states continued to require such taxes. African Americans celebrated their newfound . [7], By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the narrow election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black voters was important for the party's future. After the Reconstruction measures of President Andrew Johnson in 1866 resulted in the continued abuse of formerly enslaved Blacks in the South, the Radical Republicans pushed for the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights laws. However, t, officially ended overt slavery, gave citizenship to newly freed African Americans, and established. 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. SECTION. adison, answer (a), (b), and (c). The amendments first section includes several clauses: theCitizenship Clause, thePrivileges or Immunities Clause, theDue Process Clause, and theEqual Protection Clause. Voting laws were established to limit African American's ability to vote. The caption reads (Johnson):Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever!! He announced his intention to appoint a military governor in each occupied state and . A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled The Rail Splitter at Work Repairing the Union. In order to not discriminate against poor white, illiterate farmers who usually voted Democrat, Grandfather Clauses were added to voting laws: if ones grandfather had the right to vote, then their descendants had the right to vote regardless of other tests and limitations. On April 14, Booth shot Lincoln at Fords Theater in Washington, D.C. At 7:22 a.m. the next morning, President Lincoln died. The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, 1870. In 1863, months after signing his Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln introduced his Ten Percent Plan for Reconstruction. [2]The Fourteenth Amendment (proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for all persons. [8], Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the original Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, which detailed how each state's total slave population would be factored into its total population count for the purposes of apportioning seats in the United States House of Representatives and direct taxes among the states.
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