How The State Controls Us

Every so often, something drops into my email inbox which informs and impresses me. This one did those things. It's an intellectual argument which brought me information I did not have (or, possibly, had but was forgotten). That information was concerning how the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.

The 14th is one of those amendments which had good intentions but unintended consequences. Ratified in 1868, I am sure it was popular among the states which had fought against the rebellion (the Civil War was a rebellion) and not popular in those states which had been in rebellion. In order to end Federal military occupation, a state that had been in rebellion must rejoin the Union. And, in order to rejoin the Union, the states must ratify the 14th Amendment. It was coercion by force of arms, plain and simple. It granted power to the federal government that it did not previously have. One of the things it did was enforce the concept of the superior power of the federal government. And it weakened the concept of individual sovereign states voluntarily belonging to a central government. It did this under the guise (noble as it is and was) of extending basic rights of citizenship to all (at the time, male) citizens.

AMENDMENT XIV


Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.
Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

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 the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.