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Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation effectively ended slavery in the United States, but it was an emergency war measure. Lincoln fully realized, however, that it was vulnerable to legal challenge after the War. The Taney Court had ruled in the Dread Scoot case (1857) that slaves even if freed could not claim civil citzenship and civil rights. Thus it was likely that the Taney court would over rule the Emancipation Proclamation if as was inevitable that former slave masters would demand thir property back after the War. The 13th Amendment made that impossible. But the Republicans went further than this. The 14th Amendment guaranteed their civil rights and ability of the freed slaves to obtain equitable treatment in the courts. The 14th Amendment read in part, "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." The key phrase was "equal protection of the laws". The Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868. The Southern states were required to ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to gain reamitance to the Union. This put emancipation and black citizenship beyond the reach of even the Taney court. The 14th Amendments was undermined by the prevalent racism of the day and eventually by "Plessy vs. Fergusson" (1896). Racists could not do away with the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. With Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, appointments were made to the Federal judiciary installed jurist that were willing to use these amendments to secure black civil rights.
One of the most significant institution in United States history was slavery. Slavery helped build America. It is a major reason why America developed differently than Europe. It is also a major cause of the disparities that now exist among Americas (much greater than in Europe), and the roots of major social problems are rooted in slvevery. Two historians write that the legacy os slavery, "... remains in the history and heritage of the South that it shaped, in the culture of the North, where its memory was long denied, in the national economy for which it provided much of the foundation, and in the political and social system it prfoundly influenced." [Horton and Horton] Despite the importance of slavery in the Americam epoch, slavery until recently has been a subjected avoided by American historians. To the extent that slavery was addressed, it tended to be discussed in terms that accepted the southern myth of idelic plantation life and benign white masters struggling to deal with lazy, workers ith a child-like mentality. This has changed in recent years as historians produce more realistic treement of slavery. One area in which progress has been disappointing is school textbooks. The egregiously racist treatment has been removed from textboks, but for the most part school rextbooks still give little attention to slavery and the discussion presented is usually not illuuminating. One problem here is the economics of school textbooks and the need to meet the editorial demands of large states. Here Texas is a particular problem. American schools have attempted to deal with the racial issue bu designating February as Black History Month. Unfortunately rarely does Black History Month address slavery. Rather it generally amounts to an innoucous effort to point out Blacks who have contributed to America which do little to explain social inequities in America. The avoidance of slavery is not just a matter of white unwillingness to address slavery, but many Black educators also seem reluctant.
The effort to pass the original 13th Amendment was rendered moot by the outbreak of the Civil War. With most of the slave states withdrawing from the Union, there was no longer any substantial support for reviving the slave trade. There were a variety of issues that had varying sectional appeal. All of these, however, were amenable to political copromise. It was slavery that inflamed passions making political compromise impossible. Thus the South led by South Carolina decided on secession to create an independent Confederacy. With te approval of Confederate officials, militia forces in South Carolina fired on Fourt Sumter, launching the Civil War (April 1861) and a military campaign to ensure Southern independence. Ironically the Federal Consitution backed with the considerable Congressional strength of the slaves states (in effect increased by partially counting the slaves) would have made it virtually impossible to abloish slavery,
President Lincoln on January 1, 1863 declared that all "... slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, ... then ... in rebellion ... forever free." Totally lacking in the Emancipation Proclamation was any attempt at retoric or moral justification. Rather the justification was military necessity. Buried in the text was authorization for balcks to enlist in the military. As one observer notes, the Emancipation Proclamation was as notable for what it did not say as for what it did say. There was not mention of citzenship and the right to vote. No mention of civil rights. [Guelzo, "Seven-Score"] One of the interesting aspects of the Emancipation Proclamation is its very legalistic tone, in sharp contrast to the soaring retoric of his Gettysburg Address or the eloquent plea for national reconciliation of the Second Inagural. The Emancipation Proclamation was very plainly written. In fact all the whereases, therefores, and aforesaids make it sound more like a contarct for a used car. Historian Richard Hofstadter commented that the Emancipation Proclamation "has all the moral grandeur of a bill of landing". Why did Lincoln draft a document that was so legalistic. Seeminly if ever a proclamtion cried out for soaring retoric it was the Emancipation Proclamation and few presidents were capable of the retoric that the occassions demanded. It was Lincoln's decission to draft such a plain if not flat, legalistic document. And the reason was the Supreme Court
President Lincoln had considerable reason to be concern with what the Supreme Court might do after the War. The Supreme Court was led by Chief Justice Roper P. Taney, appointed by Andrew Jackson. The Taney Court had delivered arguably the worst decession in American history--the Dread Scott decession (1857). The decession settled the the question the civil status of blacks. The Court held that blacks were not and could not be citizens. Teney was convinced that the decession would defuse the sectional tensions building at the time. He advised newly elected President Buccanan of this even before the decession was issued. It is critical to understand the Taney Court when studying the modern historical debate over the Emancipation Proclamation. The Court was composed of Democrats and could easily have struck down a more expansive Emancipation Proclamation. This is why Lincoln wrote such a legalistic document and why he alsp persued the 13th Amendment. There is no doubt that without the 13th Amendment that the Emancipation Proclamation would have been brought before the Court and almost certainly questioned. Slave owners would have used the courts to recover their "lost property". The Court had begun to strike down various actions taken by the Lincoln Administration. Court rulings on military tribunals (in Ex-parte Mulligan) and prize cases give an indication of court hostility to the Lincoln Administration. Chief Justice Taney died in December 1864, but the make-up of the court was still little changed.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation effectively ended slavery in the United States, but it was an emergency war measure. Lincoln fully realized, however, that it was vulnerable to legal challenge after the War. The Taney Court had ruled in the Dread Scoot case (1857) that slaves even if freed could not claim civil citzenship and civil rights. Thus it was likely that the Taney court would over rule the Emancipation Proclamation if as was inevitab;le that former slave masters would demand thir property back after the War. The 13th Amendment made that impossible. But the Republicans went further than this. The 14th Amendment guaranteed their civil rights and ability of the freed slaves to obtain equitable treatment in the courts.
Amending the Constitution proved to be a difficult effort. Despite the absence of the slave states, there was considerable opposition in Congress. The War from the beginning had been a war to save the Union. There was strong support throughout the North on this issue. Lincoln had turned the War into a war against slavery, but here support was not nearly as strong as to save the union. And citizenship for freed blacks was even more controversial than emancipation. . Almost all the Democrats in Congress opposed the proposed amendment. And unlike the 13th Amendment, President Licoln was no longer there to help persuade Congress.
The Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868. The Southern states were required to ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to gain reamitance to the Union. This put emancipation and black citizenship beyond the reach of even the Taney court.
The 14th Amendment read in part, "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." The key phrase was "equal protection of the laws".
After President Lincoln's assasination (April 1865) conflict developed between Democratic President Andrew Johnson and the Republican majority in Congress. Johnson believed in a soft peace and that by simply ratifying the 13th Amendment and afirming loyalty that the Southern states could resume sebding their delegations to Congress. This was quickly accomplished, a factor in the speedy ratification process. The Republicans in Congress, however, wanted a more demanding Reconstruction process. While the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, it did not address the issue of citizenship and voting rights. The Republicans in Congress wanted to ensure the civil rights of the liberated slaves. President Johnson believed that such actions under the Constitution were state perogatives.
After the Civil War, corporations used the 14th Amendment to block social legislation at the Federal level. The 14th Amendment creates a set of guarantees for United States citizenship; prohibits states from abridging citizens' privileges or immunities and rights to "due process" and the equal protection of the law. Corporate lawyers argued that the protection afforded by the 14th Amendment included not only individuals, but corporations as well. And thus Federal Government did not have the authority to restrict inter-state commerce. This include laws protecting workers, including women and children. This interpretation was upheld by the business-friendly Supreme Court. The principle pf "corporate personhood" was estanlished by the Supreme Court in "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company" (1886).
The 14th Amendments was undermined by the prevalent racism of the day and eventually by "Plessy vs. Fergusson" (1896). Racists could not do away with the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote.
After Reconstruction, whites gained controll of state legislatures and passed Jim Crow laws. These were essentially the same as the Black Codes that they had tried to enact in the aftermath of the Civil War. These laws as well as extra-legal violence effectively denied blacks their civil rights and reasonable access to public services and the judicial system. They were essentially made second-class citizens. The Jim Crow system was endorsed by the Supreme Court "Plessy vs. Fergusson" decession (1896) establishing the legal principle of "separate but equal".
Before The Jackson presidency (1829-37), Native Americans were not seen as U.S, citizens and eligible to vote or any other rights. They were citizens of th various Indian Nations with which the United States suined treaties. As the assimilation movement gained momentuum after the Civil War, displaced indigenous were offered land in exchange for becoming citizens. Once this began happening in large numbers and some Indians quallified and began voting, state Jim Crow laws, mosly in the South, were amended to use the word 'colored' a category in whichs Indians were considered alng with blacks and orientls. This varies from state to state. This affected arange of matters such as public accomodations and schooling. Voting was more complicared because of the 15th Amendemdnt guarateeing the right to vote. Blacks and Native Amricans were denied the right to vote through a range of legal and extra-legal measures. Native Americans were a very small prt of the population in most states and thus not such a hot-button issue specifying Indians as not eligible to vote. Reservation Native Americans were apecial issue. The 14th Amendment already defined as citizens any person born in the U.S., but only if 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof'. This clause had the effect of excluding anyone who was a already a foreign citizenship -- this included the Native American tribal nations. After World War I, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 (the Snyder Act) finally granted full U.S. citizenship to the country's indigenous peoples, called 'Indians' in the Act. President Calvin Coolidge siged the bill into law (1924). Support for the measure was generated in recognition of the thousands of Native Americans who served in the military during the War.
The American Civil Rights Movement is one of the most momentous epics in the history of the American Republic. I date it from the Brown vs. Topeka Supreme Court deseggregation decission (1954) to the passage of the Voting Rights Act (1965), but of course the struggle began long before that and continues today. The hope of real freedom for the emancipated slaves after the Civil War was quashed by racist state governments after the withdrawl of Federal trops in the 1870s. The gains achieved by blacksere gradually eroded by racist Jim Crow legislation and extra legal terror fomented by the Klu Klux Klan. Lynchings and mob vilolence througout the South cowed blacks into submission and precented them from voting. The economic deprivation and terror caused a small numbers of blacks to migrate north and after World War I (1914-18) this migration increased significantly. The Supreme Court countenced segreagation in the Plessy vs. Fergusson decission (1898) and a system of racial apartheid enforced by law and the lynch rope ruled the American South until after World War II (1939-45). President Truman prepared the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement when he desseggregated the military (1948) and took other steps which led to the landmark Supreme Court Brown decission. Brown Although the Brown decission did not immediately desegragate Southern schools, it did help foster a decade of nonviolent protests and marches, often carried out by teenagers and youths. These ranged from the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott to the student-led sit-ins and Freedom Rides of the 1960s. These protests were finalized by a massive March on Washington (1963). The Civil Rights Act (1964) which provided a frange of legal protections including access to public accomodations. The Voting Rights Act (1965) was the capstone of the movement, guaranteeing access to the voting booth and in the process fundamentally changing America.
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