1. The Thirteenth Amendment effectively brought an end to slavery in the United States. Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation over 3 years earlier. Why, then, was the Thirteenth Amendment issued? Was it necessary? How come?

2. The Fourteenth Amendment settled the question of who is a citizen of the United States. (anyone naturalized or born here). Why are Indians excluded?

3. Persons who are citizens may not be denied the right to vote according to the Fifteenth Amendment. The Civil Rights crises of the 1960s, and the work of Martin Luther King (and many others) sought, among other things, to assure that the right to vote was available to all. Why? The Fifteenth Amendment had been passed almost a hundred years earlier. How could persons be denied the ballot?

4. How could Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, veto the Civil Rights Bill in 1866 when the 13th Amendment had already been passed in 1865? What issues did he cite to justify his veto? (Hint: look at the Johnson primary source)

5. The 14th Amendment. How does Foner explain the relationship between the Federal and the State as a result of the 14th Amendment?

https://util.wwnorton.com/jwplayer?type=video&msrc=/wwnorton.college.public/history/give/reconstruction-johnson.mp4&csrc=/wwnorton.college.public/history/give/reconstruction-johnson.vtt&cp=1

https://util.wwnorton.com/jwplayer?type=video&msrc=/wwnorton.college.public/history/give/14th-amendment.mp4&csrc=/wwnorton.college.public/history/give/14th-amendment.vtt&cp=1

https://util.wwnorton.com/jwplayer?type=video&msrc=/wwnorton.college.public/history/give/reconstruction-amendments-2.mp4&csrc=/wwnorton.college.public/history/give/reconstruction-amendments-2.vtt&cp=1

Johnson’sVeto Message (1866)

In 1866, the Republican controlled Congress passed the Civil Rights Bill. The legislation defined
all persons born in the United States as citizens and mandated certain rights regardless of race.
President Andrew Johnson surprised everyone by vetoing the legislation. Congress overturned
his veto in April, marking the first time a major piece of legislation had been enacted over a
presidential veto. As you examine this document, consider what principles of American
government Johnson believed he was upholding by exercising his veto power. Does Johnson’s
view have roots in any of the major political traditions — republican or liberal — upon which the
nation was first founded? What new values does the law seek to impose on what until the crisis
of the Civil War was by and large a white man’s country?

To the Senate of the United States:
…
By the first section of the bill, all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any
foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States. This
provision comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people
called Gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, people of color, negroes,
mulattoes, and persons of African blood.
…
The right of Federal citizenship thus to be conferred on the several excepted races before
mentioned is now, for the first time, proposed to be given by law. … If…such persons are not
citizens…the grave question presents itself, whether, when eleven of the thirty-six States are
unrepresented in Congress, at this time it is sound policy to make our entire colored population
and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States? Four millions of them have just
emerged from slavery into freedom. Can it be reasonably supposed that they possess the requisite
qualifications to entitle them to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States?
Have the people of the several States expressed such a conviction? It may also be asked whether
it is necessary that they should be declared citizens in order that they may be secured in the
enjoyment of civil rights? … Besides, the policy of the Government, from its origin to the present
time, seems to have been that persons who are strangers to and unfamiliar with our institutions
and our laws should pass through a certain probation, at the end of which, before attaining the
coveted prize, they must five evidence of their fitness to receive and to exercise the rights of
citizens as contemplated by the Constitution of the United States.
This bill, in effect, proposes discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and
patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues
to freedom and intelligence have now been suddenly opened. He must, of necessity, from his
previous unfortunate condition of servitude, be less informed as to the nature and character of
our institutions than he who, coming from abroad, has to some extent at least, familiarized
himself with the principles of a Government to which he voluntarily intrusts “life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.” Yet it is now proposed by a single legislative enactment to confer upon all
persons of African descent, born within the extended limits of the United States, while persons of
foreign birth, who make our land their home, must undergo a probation of five years, and can
only then become citizens upon proof that they are of “good moral character, attached to the

principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and
happiness of the same.”
…
In the exercise of State policy over matters exclusively affecting the people of each State, it has
frequently been though expedient to discriminate between the two races. By the statues of some
of the States, northern as well as southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall
intermarry with a negro or mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of the blacks, that “marriages
between them and the whites are forbidden in some of the States where slavery does not exist,
and they are prohibited in all the slaveholding States, and when not absolutely contrary to law,
they are revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.”
I do not say this bill repeals State laws on the subject of marriage between the two races, for as
the whites are forbidden to intermarry with the blacks, the blacks can only make such contracts
as the whites themselves are allowed to make, and therefore cannot, under this bill, enter into the
marriage contract with the whites. I cite this discrimination, however, as an instance of the State
policy as to discrimination, and to inquire whether, if Congress can abrogate all State laws of
discrimination between the two races in the matter of real estate, of suits, and of contracts
generally, Congress may not also repeal the State laws as to the contract of marriage between the
two races?
…
If it be granted that Congress can repeal all State laws discriminating between whites and blacks
in the subjects covered by this bill, why, it may be asked, may not Congress repeal in the same
way all State laws discriminating between the two races on the subjects of suffrage and office? If
Congress can declare by law who shall hold lands, who shall testify, who shall have capacity to
make a contract in a State, the Congress can by law declare who, without regard to color or race,
shall have the right to sit as a juror or as a judge, to hold any office, and, finally, to vote “in every
State and Territory of the United States.”
…
I do not propose to consider the policy of this bill. To me the details of the bill seem fraught with
evil. The white race and the black race of the South have hitherto lived together under the
relation of master and slave – capital owning labor. Now, suddenly, that relation is changed, and
as to the ownership, capital and labor are divorced. They stand now each master of itself. …
Capital, it is true, has more intelligence; but labor is never so ignorant as not to understand its
own interests, not to know its own value, and not to see that capital must pay that value. This bill
frustrates this adjustment. …