What is Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment?

0:05The most debated and discussed section of the 14th Amendment actually was not Section 1, it was Section 2. At this time, there was no right to vote. The 15th Amendment guaranteeing African American citizens the right to vote, at least African American men the right to vote had not yet been enacted. After the Civil War, when the newly freed population is now represented in Congress, what does that mean for the South? It means the South gets more political power than it had before the Civil War.

0:41Why? Before the Civil War, there was the three fifths clause, the so called three- fifths compromise. Now, this compromise was very bad. But not for the reason everybody thinks, it's not because they thought that African persons were somehow 3/5 of a person. On the contrary, the South wanted African persons, their enslaved persons to be five fifths of a person for purposes of this clause.

1:09Why? Because this clause meant that for every five enslaved persons in the South, the South got three additional persons for purposes of representation in Congress. In other words, the three fifths clause gave a three fifths bump to representation in the South. In other words, what the three fifths Clause meant was although enslaved persons couldn't vote in the South and had no political power in the South, their masters, their owners got extra representation in Congress because of the three fifths Clause for every five enslaved persons that would count as if there were three additional white persons in the South. It gave them more representation. Well, after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, now enslaved persons, formerly enslaved persons are five fifths. Their whole persons for purposes of representation. In other words, the South just fought the Civil War. They started the Civil War. They lost the Civil War,

2:12and now all of a sudden, they get more representation in Congress, even though the newly freed men and women in the South still had no political power, still couldn't vote, that would be unthinkable. It would be unthinkable to give the South more political power as a result of the Civil War. Section 2 targets this problem. It says, if you deny the right of the newly freed men and women to vote in the South, your proportion of representation in Congress is reduced proportionately to the number of those people that you exclude from the right to vote. In other words, it didn't guarantee the right to vote, but it did say if you deny the newly freed men in the South the right to vote, will reduce your representation in Congress accordingly. Section 2 was never ultimately that important because the 15th Amendment effectively makes it irrelevant to the Constitution, because the 15th Amendment effectively

3:12guarantees the right of African American men to vote directly.