This video from the National Constitution Center explains each of the sections of the 14th amendment and what they mean. You can read the full text of the Fourteenth Amendment at the Our Documents website. The 14th Amendment and Equal Protection Under the Law or given aid or comfort to the enemies ” the United States were barred from holding political (state or federal) or military office unless pardoned by two-thirds of Congress. As Radical Republicans had proposed in the Wade-Davis bill, individuals who had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion. It eliminated the Three-fifths Compromise of the 1787 Constitution, whereby slaves had been counted as three-fifths of a free white person, and it reduced the number of House representatives and Electoral College electors for any state that denied suffrage to any adult male inhabitant, Black or White. It gave citizens equal protection under both the state and federal law, overturning the Dred Scott decision. The Fourteenth Amendment stated, “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.” In July 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment went to state legislatures for ratification. Seeking to overcome all legal questions, Radical Republicans drafted another constitutional amendment with provisions that followed those of the 1866 Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court, in its 1857 decision forbidding black citizenship, had interpreted the Constitution in a certain way many argued that the 1866 statute, alone, could not alter that interpretation. Questions swirled about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Ignoring the existing state governments, military government was imposed until new civil governments were established and the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. This refusal led to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. State legislatures in every formerly Confederate state, with the exception of Tennessee, first refused to ratify it. Amendments must be passed by 2/3 of the Congress and Senate and then ratified by at least 3/4 of states. Form of the Letter of Transmittal of the Fourteenth Amendment to the several states for its ratification.
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