A Closer Look at the 14th Amendment
If this crown jewel had been implemented after the Civil War, American Democracy would be more functional today
Excerpted from our interview with Dr. Manisha Sinha at the John Brown Farm in North Elba, NY. In this section, Sinha discusses the good and unfortunate aspects of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution: steady civil rights advancements since 1964, and no enforcement prior to that.
Video transcript:
We can see how many of those federal civil rights laws and many of those constitutional amendments are a gift that keeps giving today in our times. So, for instance, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, it was clearly stated in order to implement the 14th and 15th amendments of the United States Constitution.
The 14th Amendment is the crown jewel of the Constitution
Similarly, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I think there were a lot of achievements of Reconstruction, and the 14th Amendment is probably the crown jewel, right? Because the 14th Amendment guaranteed equal protection, regardless of color and previous condition of servitude to all persons, and uses this broad egalitarian language, many of our modern rights come from the 14th Amendment.
For instance, gay marriage, no discrimination on the basis of sex, equal protection of the laws, and due process of the laws are nationalized. So those are very important achievements. Only in modern history have we correctly implemented the 14th Amendment.
Appeasing Confederate traitors put us where we are today
Had Lincoln implemented the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, American democracy today would be extremely secure because the people who wrote the 14th Amendment were well aware of these dangers.
They also said in the congressional debates that we are using broad egalitarian language. We don't even know which groups might use this language to claim rights. They actually said that, right? And they even said, we have to guard against insurrection. Because even at its height, Reconstruction was constantly being challenged by Southern elites. So they put that insurrection clause.
The problem was that the 14th Amendment did bar former Confederates. If you had sworn an oath of office to the United States government and then committed treason against the United States government, which was pretty much all the high-ranking Confederates, because they had been officers of the U.S. federal government. Jefferson Davis was the Secretary of State of the United States government before he became the President of the Confederate government. So that was a constitutional bar: unless you are pardoned by two-thirds of Congress.
One of the tragedies of Reconstruction is that in 1872, Congress passed the Amnesty Act. It's a blanket pardon to all ex-Confederates.
Never have traitors felt the hand of law so lightly.
Reconstruction didn’t fall; it was pushed
And indeed, when Reconstruction is overthrown and these people are not grateful for being treated so magnanimously, they're just like, okay, we've been pardoned. We will continue our campaign against civil government in the South.
And they do, and they successfully retake all these governments through this campaign of racist terror and legal arguments. And so I do think that it was a tragedy that the Confederates were not permanently barred from office because Alexander Stevens, who was the vice president of the Confederacy, is suddenly now a senator from Georgia.
And not only do they get elected back to Congress, but they also control some of the most important committees in Congress. And this is where you get the rise of this unregenerate reactionary bloc. The Dixiecrats, who, right after the New Deal, blocked all progressive legislation against women's suffrage, against regulations of the economy, against child labor laws, against minimum wage laws, everything that you can think of.