Civil War Amendments

Examples of Civil War Amendments in the following topics:

• The Civil War Amendments

  • The Civil War Amendments protected equality for emancipated slaves by banning slavery, defining citizenship, and ensuring voting rights.
  • Known collectively as the Civil War Amendments, they were designed to ensure the equality for recently emancipated slaves.
  • This contrasted with the pre-Civil War compromise that counted enslaved people as three-fifth in representation enumeration.
  • Even after the 14th Amendment, native people not paying taxes were not counted for representation.
  • These methods were employed around the country to undermine the Civil War Amendments and set the stage for Jim Crow conditions and for the Civil Rights movement.

• The 15th Amendment

  • The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits states from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race.
  • There was an impressive surge in political participation after the Civil War, due largely to the Reconstruction acts.
  • In the first post-Civil War legislature in South Carolina was 87 blacks to 40 whites.
  • "The Fifteenth Amendment", an 1870 print celebrating the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in February 1870, and the advancements that African-Americans had made as a result of the Civil War.
  • State the group of citizens extended protection by the 15th Amendment

• The Second American Revolution

  • By attempting to secede from the perceived tyranny of the United States during the American Civil War, Confederates believed that they were invoking the Founding Fathers and the spirit of the American Revolution.
  • Ironically, the revolution that took place during the Civil War had little to do with the revolutionary goals of the Confederacy.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted on December 6, 1865, officially outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude.
  • Historians would later characterize the Civil War as the fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence's promise that "all men are created equal. "
  • The economy was also revolutionized during the Civil War.

• The Reconstruction Amendments

  • During and immediately after the Civil War, the US congress passed three constitutional amendments that provided political and social equality for black Americans.
  • The 14th Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteeing United States citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granting them federal civil rights.
  • In Delaware, where a large number of slaves had escaped during the war, nine hundred people became legally free.
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had previously granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States.
  • In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of black former slaves.

• The First Amendment

  • The First Amendment to the US Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights, and protects core American civil liberties.
  • The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and protects American civil liberties.
  • Anti-war protests during World War I gave rise to several important free speech cases related to sedition and inciting violence.
  • United States the Supreme Court held that an anti-war activist did not have a First Amendment right to speak out against the draft.
  • Compare and contrast civil rights with civil liberties with respect to the First Amendment

• The Aftermath of the War

  • Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation enabled blacks to join the Union Army, giving the Union an advantage, and helped end the Civil War.
  • The American Civil War was followed by a boom in railroad construction, which contributed to the Panic of 1873.
  • Slaves in the border states and those located in some former Confederate territory occupied prior to the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 18, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.
  • The war accounted for roughly as many American deaths as all American deaths in other U.S. wars combined.
  • Andersonville National Cemetery is one of many cemeteries holding Civil War dead.

• The Third Amendment

  • The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits, in peacetime or wartime, the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent.
  • No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
  • The Third Amendment protects citizens against the quartering of soldiers in private homes.

• Legally Free, Socially Bound

  • Though the Reconstruction Amendments guaranteed them equal rights, African-Americans experienced widespread discrimination after the War.
  • In 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • This Proclamation freed slaves in the southern states at war with the North.
  • Together these amendments were known as the Reconstruction Amendments.
  • While legally the Reconstruction Amendments had granted African Americans certain legal rights, in social practice they remained second-class citizens and were subject to discrimination and violence.

• The Russian Civil War

• The Chinese Civil War