Construction and Reconstruction
possible repudiation by a subsequent Congress of a different political faith, the next step taken was the incorporation of it in an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This fourteenth amendment was proposed to the states by the Republican Congress on June 16, 1866 and its ratification was proclaimed on July 28, 1868. It was promptly ratified by the votes of twenty-three northern and Republican states; three Democratic border states and ten Democratic southern states at first rejected it but the southern states aferward ratified it. This amendment provided that all persons born or naturalized in the United States should be citizens of the United States and of the states in which they lived; and that no state should abridge the privileges or immunities of any citizen, nor 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. In this there was no reference whatever to “race, color or previous conditions of servitude” or to the right of suffrage; the latter being left for subsequent action.
In the same amendment, the most elaborate ever adopted, there were included several other important provisions for the permanent and immutable readjustment of national issues affected by the result of the war. One had to do with representation in Congress. According to the Constitution Representatives in Congress were apportioned among the states according to their population and not according to the number of their actual citizens or of the votes case; but the population was to be reckoned as consisting of all the free persons and three-fifths of the slaves. That arrangement was always repugnant to Republicans because it
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