Reconstruction Amendments

A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled "The 'Rail Splitter' at Work Repairing the Union." The caption reads (Johnson): Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever!! (Lincoln): A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended!

The, or the , are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870.

- Reconstruction Amendments

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Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

U.S. Senator from Michigan Jacob M. Howard, author of the Citizenship Clause

Rep. John Bingham of Ohio was the principal author of the Equal Protection Clause

Thurgood Marshall served as chief counsel in the landmark Fourteenth Amendment decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Senate and House votes on the Fourteenth Amendment

Form of the Letter of Transmittal of the Fourteenth Amendment to the several states for its ratification

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

Abolitionist imagery focused on atrocities against slaves. (Photo of Gordon, 1863.)

Representative James Mitchell Ashley proposed an amendment abolishing slavery in 1863.

Celebration erupts after the Thirteenth Amendment is passed by the House of Representatives.

Amendment XIII in the National Archives, bearing the signature of Abraham Lincoln

John Marshall Harlan became known as "The Great Dissenter" for his minority opinions favoring powerful Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The Fifteenth Amendment in the National Archives

An 1867 drawing depicting African Americans casting ballots

An 1869 Thomas Nast cartoon supporting the Fifteenth Amendment. In the cartoon, Americans of different ancestries and ethnic backgrounds sit together at a dinner table with Columbia to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal as equal members of the American citizenry, while Uncle Sam carves a turkey.

1870 print celebrating the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in February 1870, and the post Civil War political empowerment of African Americans

Voter registration card, Alamance County, North Carolina, 1902, with statement from registrant of birth before January 1, 1867, when the Fifteenth Amendment became law

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Freedman

Formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means.

Former slave with horn historically used to call slaves, Texas, 1939. Photo by Russell Lee.

The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are known as the "civil rights amendments", the "post-Civil War amendments", and the "Reconstruction Amendments".

Reconstruction era

Period in American history following the American Civil War ; it lasted from 1865 to 1877 and marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States.

The ruins of Richmond, Virginia, the former Confederate capital, after the American Civil War; newly-freed African Americans voting for the first time in 1867; office of the Freedmen's Bureau in Memphis, Tennessee; Memphis riots of 1866

The Southern economy had been ruined by the war. Charleston, South Carolina: Broad Street, 1865

The distribution of wealth per capita in 1872, illustrating the disparity between North and South in that period

Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1861–1865)

Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862

Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (1865–1869)

An October 24th, 1874 Harper's Magazine editorial cartoon by Thomas Nast denouncing KKK and White League murders of innocent Blacks

The debate over Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau was nationwide. This 1866 Pennsylvania election poster alleged that the bureau kept the Negro in idleness at the expense of the hardworking white taxpayer. A racist caricature of an African American is depicted.

1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidates Seymour and Blair (right) with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers (left).

"This is a white man's government", Thomas Nast's caricature of the forces arraigned against Grant and Reconstruction in the 1868 election. Atop a black Union veteran reaching for a ballot box: the New York City Irish; Confederate and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest; and big-money Democratic Party chairman August Belmont, a burning freedmen's school in the background. Harper's Weekly, September 5, 1868.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States (1869–1877)

Grant's Attorney General Amos T. Akerman prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, believing that the strong arm of the federal Justice Department could pacify the South.

Eastman Johnson's 1863 painting The Lord is My Shepherd, of a man reading the Bible

Atlanta's rail yard and roundhouse in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War

$20 banknote with portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch

Winslow Homer's 1876 painting A Visit from the Old Mistress

A Republican Form of Government and No Domestic Violence, by Thomas Nast, a political cartoon about the Wheeler Compromise in Louisiana, published in Harper's Weekly, March 6, 1875

White Leaguers attacking the New Orleans integrated police force and state militia, Battle of Liberty Place, 1874

Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States (1877–1881)

A poster for the 1939 epic film Gone with the Wind, which is set during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras

It proclaimed the newly freed slaves (freedmen; black people) citizens with (ostensibly) the same civil rights as those of whites; these rights were nominally guaranteed by three new constitutional amendments: the 13th, 14th, and 15th, collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

Alabama police in 1965 attack voting rights marchers on "Bloody Sunday", the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches

United States President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965

United States President George W. Bush signs amendments to the Act in July 2006

The first page of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

States and counties encompassed by the Act's coverage formula in January 2008 (excluding bailed-out jurisdictions). Several counties subsequently bailed out, but the majority of the map accurately depicts covered jurisdictions before the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which declared the coverage formula unconstitutional.

Final page of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the Senate Hubert Humphrey, and Speaker of the House John McCormack

After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments were ratified and limited this discretion.

Constitution of the United States

Supreme law of the United States of America.

Page one of the officially engrossed copy of the Constitution signed by delegates. A print run of 500 copies of the final version preceded this copy.

Signing of the Constitution, September 17, 1787 (1940 by Howard Chandler Christy)

Dates the 13 states ratified the Constitution

Closing endorsement section of the United States Constitution

United States Bill of Rights
Currently housed in the National Archives.

Salmon P. Chase {{refn|group= lower-alpha|The Chase Court, 1864–1873, in 1865 were Salmon P. Chase (chief Justice); Hon. Nathan Clifford, Maine; Stephen J. Field, Justice Supreme Court, U.S.; Hon. Samuel F. Miller, U.S. Supreme Court; Hon. Noah H. Swayne, Justice Supreme Court, U.S.; Judge Morrison R. Waite}}

William Howard Taft {{refn|group= lower-alpha|The Taft Court, 1921–1930, in 1925 were James Clark McReynolds, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William Howard Taft (chief justice), Willis Van Devanter, Louis Brandeis. Edward Sanford, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler, Harlan Fiske Stone}}

Earl Warren {{refn|group= lower-alpha|The Warren Court, 1953–1969, in 1963 were Felix Frankfurter; Hugo Black; Earl Warren (chief justice); Stanley Reed; William O. Douglas. Tom Clark; Robert H. Jackson; Harold Burton; Sherman Minton}}

William Rehnquist {{refn|group= lower-alpha|The Rehnquist Court, 1986–2005.}}

Among these, Amendments 1–10 are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, and Amendments 13–15 are known as the Reconstruction Amendments.

American Civil War

Civil war in the United States between the Union (states that remained loyal to the federal union, or "the North") and the Confederacy (states that voted to secede, or "the South").

Clockwise from top: Battle of Gettysburg

Union Captain John Tidball's artillery

Confederate prisoners

ironclad USS Atlanta (1861)

Ruins of Richmond, Virginia

Battle of Franklin

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, aroused public opinion about the evils of slavery. According to legend, when Lincoln was introduced to her at the White House, his first words were, "So this is the little lady who started this Great War."

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was a leading abolitionist

Marais des Cygnes massacre of anti-slavery Kansans, May 19, 1858

Mathew Brady, Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1860

The first published imprint of secession, a broadside issued by the Charleston Mercury, December 20, 1860

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865)

Bombardment of the Fort by the Confederates

Rioters attacking a building during the New York anti-draft riots of 1863

Clashes on the rivers were melees of ironclads, cottonclads, gunboats and rams, complicated by naval mines and fire rafts.

Battle between the USS Monitor and USS Merrimack (1855)

General Scott's "Anaconda Plan" 1861. Tightening naval blockade, forcing rebels out of Missouri along the Mississippi River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled cotton industry illustrated in Georgia.

Gunline of nine Union ironclads. South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston. Continuous blockade of all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war production.

A December 1861 cartoon in Punch magazine in London ridicules American aggressiveness in the Trent Affair. John Bull, at right, warns Uncle Sam, "You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water."

County map of Civil War battles by theater and year

"Stonewall" Jackson got his nickname at Bull Run.

The Battle of Antietam, the Civil War's deadliest one-day fight.

Confederate dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863

By 1863, the Union controlled large portions of the Western Theater, especially areas surrounding the Mississippi River

The Battle of Chickamauga, the highest two-day losses

Nathaniel Lyon secured St. Louis docks and arsenal, led Union forces to expel Missouri Confederate forces and government.

These dead soldiers—from Ewell's May 1864 attack at Spotsylvania—delayed Grant's advance on Richmond in the Overland Campaign.

Map of Confederate territory losses year by year

Burying Union dead on the Antietam battlefield, 1862

Through the supervision of the Freedmen's Bureau, northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Beginning in 1961 the U.S. Post Office released commemorative stamps for five famous battles, each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.

The Battle of Fort Sumter, as depicted by Currier and Ives.

It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the outstanding issues of the war's aftermath, the most important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution: the 13th outlawing slavery (1865), the 14th guaranteeing citizenship to slaves (1868) and the 15th ensuring voting rights to slaves (1870).

History of the United States Constitution

The United States Constitution has served as the supreme law of the United States since taking effect in 1789.

Page one of the original copy of the United States Constitution

Dates of ratification of the Constitution by the 13 states

The U.S. constitutional amendment process.

James Madison, VA "Father of the Constitution"

James Wilson, PA "unsung hero of Convention"

Edmund Randolph, VA consolidated government

William Paterson, NJ states and congress equal

Luther Martin, MD if not state equality create regional nations

John Dickinson, DE for one-person president

Rufus King, MA district courts = flexibility

Since 1789, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; particularly important amendments include the ten amendments of the United States Bill of Rights and the three Reconstruction Amendments.

Dred Scott

Dred Scott (c.

Dred and Harriet Scott's restored quarters at Fort Snelling

Posthumous painting of Scott, presented to the Missouri Historical Society

Plaque on Dred Scott case outside the Old Courthouse, St. Louis, MO

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments—nullified the decision.