Fourteenth Amendment

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a product of the post–Civil War Reconstruction (1865–1877) effort to protect the rights of the former slaves. It is best known for its definition of citizen, which it defined as a person born in the United States or "naturalized" (granted citizenship). It also bestowed on U.S. citizens equal rights under the law. The result was to limit drastically the power of states to define citizenship or to treat their citizens in a discriminatory fashion. Thus, the states were prohibited from denying a person equal protection under the law. The meaning of this development in the long-term debate over federalism versus states' rights was that henceforth the federal government would assume the ultimate responsibility for protecting the civil rights of citizens. As part of this ruling, the Fourteenth Amendment also declared that states must respect every person's right to due process of law.

The Fourteenth Amendment touched on several other matters that had great relevance at the time of the amendment's enactment, although they are less well-known at the close of the twentieth century. One was the provision that reduced the number of representatives and presidential electors apportioned to a state if that state refused to allow any of its male citizens over the age of 21 the right to vote. This language was intended to prevent the former states of the Confederacy from gaining political power as a result of the freeing of the slaves if those states prevented their former slaves from voting. (Under the "three-fifths compromise" in the Constitution, each slave had been counted as three-fifths of a citizen for the purpose of determining the number of congressmen and presidential electors that the states could claim. Now that the slaves were declared free under the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, they each counted as a full citizen. This had the unintended effect (from the standpoint of most of the northern members of Congress) of increasing the political power of the former Confederate states. The Fourteenth Amendment attempted to redress the balance by ruling that if a state were guilty of denying the voting rights of any of its citizens, its entire population of former slaves would now not be counted for the purposes of figuring out the number of presidential electors or representatives that the state could have.

The Fourteenth Amendment also denied former Confederates the right to hold office in federal or state governments. In addition, this amendment established the validity of the country's public debt. It also stated that the United States would not assume responsibility for the debts of the former Confederate government or of the states that had participated on the South's side in the American Civil War (1861–1865). The amendment also stated that the federal government would not compensate former slave owners who had been deprived of their slaves as a result of the war or in accordance with the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment had several unfore-seen consequences. Whereas the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had tried to protect the individual from the power of the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment sought to protect the individual from the power of the state. Yet it was purposely vague on some crucial matters. One was the question of African Americans in the North. There were enough congressmen who thought that something should be done to protect the ex-slaves in the South, but who feared to offend white supremacy in the North. They spoke in generalities about reducing the total apportionment of representatives and presidential electors if the state violated the voting right of male citizens. The result was that several northern states still denied the right to vote to their African American residents because there were so few African Americans in the North that the penalty was negligible. The language was, however, gender-specific and implicitly denied the vote to women, a fact that attracted the attention of feminist activists.

The most ironic consequence of the Fourteenth Amendment was that throughout the later years of the nineteenth century it was invoked more often in defense of corporate America than in defense of black America. The railroad companies' trial lawyers, for instance, convinced the courts that the Fourteenth Amendment's clause that no state "shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. . ." could be invoked to protect the corporations, which, they argued, were legally "persons," against the regulation of the industry on the state level.

Just as the language banning "restraint of trade" in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was most frequently used against picket lines and strikes rather than against monopolies, the Fourteenth Amendment's language was often used by corporate lawyers to protect the emerging post–Civil War concentrations of economic power.

Topic overview

All persons born or naturalized in the United States are subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and 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.

fourteenth amendment, u.s. constitution

See also: Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Thirteenth Amendment

FURTHER READING

Berger, Raoul. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Graham, H. J. Everyman's Constitution: Historical Essays on the Fourteenth Amendment, The Conspiracy Theory, and American Constitutionalism. Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1968.

James, Joseph B. The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1956.

Nelson, William E. The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Ten Broek, Josephus. The Anti-Slavery Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1951.