Scholars Edition: Eric Foner, 14th Amendment

0:06[Music] the 14th amendment approved by Congress in 1866 and ratified by three-quarters of the states in 1868 is the longest amendment ever added to the Constitution and certainly one of the most important probably the most significant since the original Bill of Rights I think the best way to understand the 14th amendment is to see it as the attempt by the victorious North particularly the Republican Party to put into the Constitution their understanding of the consequences of the Civil War the meaning of the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the Union how do those two great events play out in constitutional terms and the 14th amendment in which is five sections long tries to deal with these consequences of the Civil War slavery of course had been abolished in the 13th amendment and the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment you might say is trying to

1:21work out what it means basically to be a free person in the United States and the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment declares first of all that anybody born in the United States is a citizen of the United States this made black people citizens the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott decision before the Civil War had stated that citizenship was only for white Americans that no black person could be a citizen in the country now a national standard of citizenship is established in the Fourteenth Amendment birthright citizenship we call it then it goes on to say well these citizens are all to enjoy the equal protection of the law and the privileges and immunities of citizenship now these are of course vague phrases the meaning of them has worked out over time in laws and Supreme Court decisions but the basic principle is equality before the law to try to separate being

2:18an American from the tyranny of race now the african-american former slaves into being integrated into the legal system as equal members of society with the same basic rights as white Americans that's a new principle it's put into the Constitution it applies to everybody not just black and white applies to Asian people applies to immigrants from Europe it creates the first standard of citizenship in the United States and makes the Constitution for the first time a document to which people can appeal if they feel their equal rights are not being respected by the state governments it says the states can no longer discriminate among citizens in their rights but then there's plenty of other sections in the Fourteenth Amendment many of them forgotten today but quite important at the time the second section tries to encourage the southern states to give black men the right to vote it leaves the voting

3:17requirements in the hands of the states but it says that if they don't give black men the right to vote they will lose some of their representation in Congress it has nothing to do with women's voting if you deprive women of the right to vote as every state did at that time you don't lose anything and many of the early feminists at that time were quite annoyed at the Congress for introducing this gender distinction into the 14th amendment then the amendment goes on in the third section to talk about who will hold office of the south or that is to say it bars from holding office leaders of the Confederacy it's worded in a rather convoluted way but basically they're trying to make sure that the governments that exist in the south Andrew Johnson the president who succeeded Lincoln had created all white governments in the south but many of the officials were ex-confederates and the Congress wanted to create loyal

4:11governments from their point of view who accepted the victory of the north and the Civil War and would implement the principle of equality that the amendment puts into the Constitution and finally there are other things which are sort of irrelevant today it says there cannot be any pterri compensation for the loss of slaves the Confederate debt is avoided nobody is going to get money back who loan money the Confederacy and bought bonds but the national debt the money borrow to pursue the war can never be questioned it says and then the fifth section says that Congress will have the power to enforce the amendment with appropriate legislation in other words it's really alters the federal system it gives Congress power over the states to oversee the space and make sure that they are abiding by these basic principles of equality and citizenship put into the 14th amendment so taken

5:07together the amendment really changes the Constitution it makes it something that protects the rights now of individual citizens not only against violation by the federal government which the bill of rights are done but against violations by the state governments and you know the states before the war have all discriminated in some way or another on the basis of race and of course it was state law that an established slavery in the first place so the 14th amendment makes the Constitution what it has become in our own time a vehicle for expanding equality and expanding the rights of all Americans and particularly groups whether they on the basis of race gender sexual orientation who have been deprived of equality throughout much of our history so that is in a nutshell the significance of the most important amendment ever added to our Constitution since the Bill of Rights

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