Section 1. 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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
With the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment (ratified 1865), the Confederate states sought readmission to the Union and to Congress. Under Article I, section 2 of the Constitution, a slave had been counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation. Because of the abolition of slavery, Southern states expected a substantial increase in their representation in the House of Representatives. The Union, having won the war, feared it might lose the peace.
Reconstruction
In 1865–1866, southern states and localities enacted black Codes to regulate the status and conduct of the newly freed slaves. The codes deprived blacks of many basic rights accorded to whites, including full rights to own property, to testify in court in cases in which whites were parties, to make contracts, to travel, to preach, to assemble, to speak, and to bear arms. To Republicans, the Black Codes were only the latest southern attack on individual rights. Before the war, southern states had suppressed fundamental rights, including free speech and press, in order to protect the institution of slavery. Although the Supreme Court had ruled in 1833 that guarantees of the Bill of Rights did not limit the states (Barron v. Baltimore), many Republicans thought state officials were obligated to respect those guarantees. The Court in Scott v. Sandford (1857) had held that blacks, including free blacks, were not citizens under the Constitution and therefore were entitled to none of the rights and privileges it secured. Republicans also rejected Scott and thought the newly freed slaves should be citizens entitled to all the rights of citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress in 1866 and ratified by the states in 1868. It reflected Republican determination that southern states should not be readmitted to the Union and Congress without additional guarantees. Section 1 made all persons born within the nation citizens both of the United States and of the states where they resided (thereby reversing Scott) and prohibited states from abridging privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States and from depriving persons of due process of law or equal protection of the laws. Section 2 reduced the representation of any state that deprived a part of its male population of the right to vote, an indirect attempt to protect the voting rights of blacks. Other sections protected the federal war debt, prohibited payment of the Confederate debt, and disabled from holding office those who had sworn to uphold the Constitution but who had engaged in rebellion. Section 5 empowered Congress “to enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the preceding sections.
