Analysis of American Reconstruction and the 14th Amendment

Analysis of American Reconstruction and the 14th Amendment

Legal scholar Gene Healy has made a powerful argument in favor of abolishing the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. When a fair vote was taken on it in 1865, in the aftermath of the War for Southern Independence, it was rejected by the Southern states and all the border states. Failing to secure the necessary three-fourths of the states, the Republican party, which controlled Congress, passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 which placed the entire South under military rule.

The purpose of this, according to one Republican congressman, was to coerce Southern legislators to vote for the amendment пїЅat the point of a bayonet.пїЅ President Andrew Johnson called this tactic пїЅabsolute despotism,пїЅ the likes of which had not been exercised by any British monarch пїЅfor more than 500 years.пїЅ For his outspokenness Johnson was impeached by the Republican Congress.

The South eventually voted to ratify the amendment, after which two Northern statesпїЅOhio and New JerseyпїЅwithdrew support because of their disgust with Republican party tyranny. The Republicans just ignored this and declared the amendment valid despite their failure to secure the constitutionally-required three-fourths majority.

The Cato InstituteпїЅs Roger Pilon, who is a supporter of the Fourteenth Amendment, has defended the way in which the amendment was adopted on the grounds that after the war some Southern states had enacted the пїЅnotorious Black CodesпїЅ (Liberty Magazine, Feb. 2000).

пїЅWhat should Congress have done,пїЅ Pilon asked, пїЅturn a blind eye to what was going on?пїЅ The notion that a racially-enlightened and benevolent Republican Congress unconstitutionally imposed the Fourteenth Amendment on the nation because it was motivated primarily (if not solely) out of concern with racial discrimination in the South is childishly naive and ahistorical. The fact is, Northern states pioneered viciously discriminatory пїЅblack codesпїЅ long before they existed in any Southern state, and these codes were supported by many of the same Northern politicians who voted for the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Revised Code of Indiana stated in 1862 that пїЅNegroes and mulattos are not allowed to come into the stateпїЅ; forbade the consummation of legal contracts with пїЅNegroes and mulattosпїЅ; imposed a $500 fine on anyone who employed a black person; forbade interracial marriage; and forbade blacks from testifying in court against white persons.

IllinoisпїЅthe пїЅland of LincolnпїЅпїЅadded almost identical restrictions in 1848, as did Oregon in 1857. Most Northern states in the 1860s did not permit immigration by blacks or, if they did, required them to post a $1,000 bond that would be confiscated if they behaved пїЅimproperly.пїЅ

Senator Lyman Trimball of Illinois, a close confidant of LincolnпїЅs, stated that пїЅour people want nothing to do with the NegroпїЅ and was a strong supporter of IllinoisпїЅ пїЅblack codes.пїЅ Northern newspapers were often just as racist as the Northern black codes were. The Philadelphia Daily News editorialized on November 22, 1860, that пїЅthe African is naturally the inferior race.пїЅ The Daily Chicago Times wrote on December 7, 1860,