Why did the Reconstruction Republicans push for the Fourteenth Amendment?

0:04Slavery ended, but the Southern states refused to treat the now free Black Americans in their states as citizens. They denied them citizenship, they denied them equal civil rights, they denied them an equal right to contract for purposes of labor or engage in a trade or to buy property or to live and cultivate land outside of the cities, and they also passed draconian really awful vagrancy laws that allowed local police to arrest any Black American who didn't have a job.

0:38Of course, they didn't have a job, because they were denied all rights. Any person who didn't have a job or any means of support could be arrested and then sold off for involuntary labor often to their former owner under slavery. They were denied equal rights, denied the rights of citizenship. These Black codes were rendering free Black Americans in the South. Quasi slaves all over again.

1:05Republicans saw very quickly that even though they passed the 13th Amendment, if they really wanted to secure freedom and liberty for Black Americans in the South, something more needed to be done. As soon as the 39th Congress met in December of 1865, they heard the 13th Amendment had been ratified. They realized we needed to do more and they began discussions right into 1866 about doing something more. One approach was to pass a new statute called the Civil Rights statute of 1866, which demanded that Southern states give equal civil rights to all Black Americans in their territory. The problem was it wasn't clear that Congress had power to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866. They could say that they had power under the 13th Amendment, but it was not clear at all whether the 13th Amendment did anything more than getting rid of hereditary chattel slavery. If they were really going to be able to legislate and protect civil rights,

2:07they needed more power. This is where John Bingham steps in. Ohio Representative John Bingham believed that this had to be done through a new amendment that established the rights of American citizenship and the due process and equal rights of all persons. John Bingham ultimately drafted Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which gives us rights that the courts continue to enforce to this day and which prevent any Black codes from ever being passed again.