According to Robert Divine, one of the historical hits in American history exhibited Abraham Lincoln’s and Black African Americans dream coming to reality. The bloody war shone light on and gave the suppressed and destitute African Americans to exercise life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as the white Americans do. The ratification of Amendment XIII, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction.” achieved the most important of goal on social, cultural, political and economical where America would go ahead. This was the core driving urge of all people in the Northern States. To those Radicals, this was the beginning of the road to equality among the human race. While the war was going on between the confederates and the Unions, President Lincoln and the congress were at odds with policy matters towards tormented south. President Lincoln followed a very lenient policy while the Congress was demanding more aggressive measures of emancipation, civil rights and provision of franchisement through the Freedman’s Bureau.
According to section 1 of Amendment XIV, Radical Republicans demanded the time sensitive need of Citizenship for all Black African Americans born and naturalized. It states, “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.” This law gave the right of Citizenship for all Black African Americans who were born or naturalized in the United States. This Amendment was considered as a referendum for Southern States whether they would join the Union or not. As the war went on taking more lives, and executive branch changed from an assassinated Lincoln to Andrew Johnson, the newly freed Black African Americans faced new challenges in the hands of their former Owners, White Supremacists, who were elected and held offices in those Southern States. Even if President Johnson implemented the emancipation act while he was a military governor in Tennessee, he was an enthusiastic white supremacist. In desperate need of ending the war and reconstruction, he proposed to repudiate the confederates’ debt, ratify the XIII amendment abolish slavery and for formal establishment of Southern Governments. He also gave the authority what to do with the civil rights and political moves of the newly freed slaves. However, these newly elected White officials introduced new laws called, “Black Codes” which imposed new restrictions and rules on the black African American. In the Contrary, the Congress saw this move as an imminent attack on the freed black people and ratified another pivotal Amendment awarded African Americans Citizenship of the United States of American; in which they would be able to Vote and sustain their freedom for long.
Section 2 of the XIV Amendment showed sets of criteria which determine age limits for holding offices and casting votes. As stated in the law, “…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.”, age, former alienation or crime were the major factors in cast votes and holding public offices. Besides, there would be difference between the vote count of Black and whites.
Section 3 stated, “No person shall be…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.” The only way to held office and became the citizen of the United States would depend on the the 2/3rd vote of congress. The law was in place to oversee the former confederate States during the reconstruction period.
Sites Cited Read more:
Amendments to the Constitution of the United States — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0749825.html#ixzz1mDf9w15n, mEM7AT2B, mEgF9zgM, mEj9LTAQ, Ek6COIM, mEme9lC1.
Divine, Robert A. "Appendix" America Past and Present. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
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