Constitution Series: The Fourteenth Amendment – Original Intent and Unintended Consequences

Constitution Series 14th Amendment

  This is the nineteenth of twenty-five weekly articles in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Series. Students in grades 8 through 12 can sign up here to participate in The Tennessee Star’s Constitution Bee, which will be held on September 23 from 9 a.m. to noon at Sycamore High School, 1021 Old Clarksville Pike, Pleasant View, Tennessee. by John Harris   The Fourteenth Amendment was one of three amendments made to the United States Constitution in the five years following the end of the Civil War. These amendments were the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. These three amendments were all adopted as part of the Northern efforts to address circumstances in or related to the Southern states following the war. The Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment addressed several issues concerning the former slaves including the issue of citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of a person’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed and then passed just as the Civil War was ending. It was proposed at the same time that the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 was enacted. Congress proposed it to the States as an…

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