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14th Amendment to the Constitution
Amendment 14
(July 28, 1868)
Section 1. 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.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, 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.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, 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.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Abolishment of Slavery
The word "slavery" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution, but the document gave indirect sanction to the institution. The delegates to the Continental Congress provided that three-fifths of "all other Persons" would be counted in determining the number of congressmen each state could elect to the House of Representatives. The Constitution then required the return to their owners of fugitive slaves ("persons held to Service or Labour") crossing state lines. And it set the date for ending the slave trade ("the Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit") at 1808, 20 years after ratification.
Each of these provisions was hotly debated at the Convention, and each was finally accepted in a spirit of compromise. Even members of Northern antislavery societies, such as Alexander Hamilton, opposed pursuing the issue, arguing that such an effort would irrevocably divide the states and endanger the more urgent goal of a strong national government. Compromise was urged also by such prominent Southerners as George Washington and James Madison, who detested slavery but believed it would disappear once the Union was confirmed.
The moral issue, however, was raised passionately at the Convention on several occasions. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania denounced slavery as a "nefarious institution, the curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed." He contrasted the prosperity and human dignity of free regions with "the misery and poverty" of slave states. Ironically, the most eloquent attack on slavery at the Convention was voiced by Virginian George Mason, whom Jefferson called "the wisest man of his generation." Slavery, Mason said, "produces the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.... Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when they see it performed by slaves.... I hold it essential ... that the general government should have the power to prevent the increase of slavery." In the coming years, the abolitionist movement would use the same arguments and bring to bear the same sense of moral outrage; but for the moment the issue of slavery was evaded, both as a word and as a moral challenge. It would ultimately take the tragic conflagration of the Civil War (1861-1865) to end human bondage in the United States and start the country along the difficult path to full racial equality.
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The U. S. Constitution
