Categories: History

Overview of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment

These 3 amendments all were focused on helping African Americans and other minorities strive in America, and not be discriminated for their race. All information used from U.S. Constitution Online.

13th Amendment

Ratified by 3/4 of states on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery in the United States. It took just under a year from its proposal to ratification for the amendment to be put into law forever. Although at the time, slavery was only legal in Kentucky and Delaware, it sent a strong message throughout the country that slavery was not allowed. Michigan was the third state to ratify the 13th amendment, while the most recent to accept the amendment was Mississippi in 1995.

Prior to this amendment, Congress consistently passed bills to protect slavery. Although most states had already independently banned slavery prior to this, the amendment served as a milestone in the change of policy. This amendment was proposed while the southern states had not been reinstated into the union just after the civil war, but it still struggled after being rejected by the House of Representatives. The house accepted it the next year after President Lincoln made a strong push of support for the amendment

14th Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868. This amendment was first intended to secure the rights of former slaves but has since branched off to include other groups such as senior citizens, women, children, and people with disabilities and is the center of Equality in America.

The first section of the Fourteenth Amendment says that anyone who is born in the United States is a United States citizen and should never be deprived of Life, Liberty, or Property without due process of law or deny anyone equal protection of the law. There is also writing within the section to prevent Congress from making laws to prevent these equal rights or by having The Supreme Court try to rule it unconstitutional such as in the Dred Scott decision. This section has been upheld through court decisions such as Plessy vs. Ferguson and United States vs. Wong Kim Ark.

The second section overrode that counted slaves as 3/5 of a person when determining the number of seats per state in the House of Representatives and Electoral College. The section determined that if a state did not allow any male over the age of 21 to vote that they would have their number of seats in the House decreased.

The third section prevents the election or appointment into state or federal office if that person had engaged in treason, insurrection, or rebellion. This was mainly provided to prevent war leaders from the Confederacy to take part in the government.

The fourth section basically said that the United States would not pay for any of the Confederate states’ war debts or compensation for lost slaves.

The fifth section said that Congress would have the right to enforce everything within the amendment. Although this was seen broadly within the Supreme Court and in many cases in concerning the second section were ignored as this time was dominated by Jim Crow laws preventing blacks from voting yet the states kept all their states

15th Amendment

The 15th Amendment was written to protect the right of citizens to be able to vote, regardless of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Although this article promised a lot for African Americans of the time, states and local polls found loop holes in the legislation to prevent them from voting. De jure segregation continued to oppose African Americans from gaining a strong hold in politics. Poll taxes were used to discourage poor races from voting, along with literacy tests made it difficult. Property qualifications made it a requirement to own property in order to be able to vote. It wasn’t until nearly 95 years later that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, which enforced the promises of the 15th Amendment, along with the 24th Amendment, which banned the poll tax from being required to vote.

The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1970 after almost 1 year of deciding after the proposal of it February 26, 1869. Michigan was the 5th state to ratify the 15th amendment, while Tennessee was the latest to sign it in 1997.

Source:
“Ratification of Constitutional Amendments”, U.S. Constitution Online