The Thirteenth Amendment: The abolition of Slavery - Essay Example

? The Thirteenth Amendment: The abolition of Slavery Introduction Union Success in the Civil War and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal in United States. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were enacted to complete this process by officially extending citizenship and voting rights to all African Americans regardless of previous conditions of servitude. Even so, these new laws did not resolve all of the issues and conflicts between race and citizenship in the United States (Berlin 79). Indeed, many of the cases that received judicial review between 1870 and 1900 either questioned the validity of new version of the Constitution or challenged the courts to define the nature and inclusiveness of these new rights. Body Between 1865 and 1875, the United States Congress, led by the Republican Party, attempted to make the four million black slaves in America into free and equal citizens of the United States (Berlin 85). Through amendments to the United States Constitution and the enactment of laws, Congressional Republicans sought to place the legal status of blacks on a firm, permanent foundation. The creation of the Thirteenth Amendment on February 1, 1865 constituted their first major step to achieve this goal. The Amendment stipulated that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United states…" (Amendment XIII Sec. 1). It also included a section granting Congress the authority to enforce the Amendment through appropriate legislation. Although African Americans had been officially freed from bondage by the Amendment, their status remained uncertain. Congress attempted to rectify this situation when it enacted in April 1866 the first civil rights bill in American history. The civil Rights Act of 1866 declared that "all persons born in the United States… are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States…" (Civil Right Act of 1866 14 Stat. 27). In addition to granting citizenship to the ex-slaves, the act stipulated that: citizens of every race and color… shall have the same right … to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens (Civil Rights Act of 1875, 18 Stat. 335). The Thirteenth Amendment, they believed, provided the constitutional basis for this act. But numerous people doubted that an amendment merely outlawing slavery could support such a law (Zuczek 21). Determined not to be thwarted in their efforts to secure these rights for African Americans, Congress, during that same year, then passed a proposed amendment that they thought would clarify the situation. Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment, like the Civil Rights Act, granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States. It also included a somewhat vague and controversial section stipulating that: 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 (Amendment XIV of U.S Constitution). In 1870, America witnessed the ratification of the last of the Reconstruction-era amendments to the Constitution. The Republican-dominated Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to provide African American males with the right of suffrage. Although the amendment did not stipulate this explicitly, it did declare that the right to vote "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This amendment, like its predecessors, contained a section authorizing Congress to pass proper enforcement legislation. In 1870 and 1871, Congress exercised this authority (Zuczek 36). The Republican Congress reaffirmed the 1864 civil Rights Act by including it, almost word for word, in another civil rights act, passed on May 31, 1870. The 1870 civil Rights Act also included enforcement provisions to back up the Fifteenth Amendment. The act made it a federal crime for anyone to prevent or attempt to prevent a qualified citizen from exercising his right to vote. In addition, section six of the act contained a general provision prohibiting two or more people from conspiring together to prevent any citizen from exercising any right or privilege guaranteed by the Constitution or laws of the United States. In 1871 Congress passed a law mirroring section six so as to eradicate the infamous Ku Klux Klan, which was wreaking havoc in the South in an attempt to restore white supremacy to the region. The Enforcement Act of 1871 (or the Ku Klux Act, as it was also called) contained numerous provisions aimed at preventing any group of people from hindering the state's ability to protect and mete out justice to it residents. In particular, it intended to protect blacks from hostile state officials and groups such as the Klan that wished to prevent African Americans from exercising their newly won rights. Although the act's provisions are too numerous to recount here, it should be mentioned that it declared it a "high crime" for two or more people to conspire together "to deprive any person … of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges or immunities … or of preventing" a state from providing "all persons… the equal protection of the laws" (Civil Rights Act of 1871 17 Stat. 13). It is also important to recognize that the Ku Klux Act authorized the federal government to intervene when a state failed or proved unable to protect blacks from mob violence. This made it so that Congress could not only punish state officials when they were negligent, but that it could also reach individuals, and punish them when the state failed to do so. In what Harold Hyman and William Wiecek call "one of Reconstruction's last hurrahs", the lame-duck Republican Congress, with few votes to spare, enacted the civil Rights Act of 1875 (Hyman & Wiecek 492). This, the last federal civil rights act until 1957, differed from its predecessor in that it protected the social rather than political rights of blacks. In particular, it granted African Americans access to public accommodations. Section one of the act declared: That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations… of inns, public conveyances… theatres, and other places of public amusement (Civil Rights Act of 1875, 18 Stat. 335) Although the Republicans found it politically expedient to drop the portion of the bill mandating integrated public schools, the act, when passed, still contained provisions granting blacks the right to serve on juries. Section four outlawed the disqualification of any citizen for jury duty on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. By 1875 the Republican-led Congress had succeeded in transforming American law so that it granted the ex-slaves the same legal rights and privileges as the former slave owners. It soon became obvious, though, that the enactment of these laws and amendments did not necessarily translate into actual freedom and equality for African Americans. The task of interpreting these laws fell upon the federal courts, particularly the United States Supreme Court. By 1875, the Court had clearly demonstrated that its interpretation of the laws and amendments did not correspond with that of the Republican Party (especially its abolitionist wing), even though the Court was dominated by Republicans appointed by Presidents Lincoln and Grant. The "first great judicial setback suffered by blacks in their quest for effective constitutional protection of their liberties" came in 1873 when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Slaughter-House Cases (Hyman and Wiecek 478). Although unrelated to the issue of black civil rights, this case provided the Court with its first opportunity to interpret the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. At issue in the case was a Louisiana law providing a privately owned company with a monopoly of the slaughtering business in New Orleans? Ostensibly, the Louisiana legislature had created this monopoly to prevent further contamination of the city's drinking water by butchers who slaughtered their animals on the riverfront just north of the city's water intake valves. The law passed by the legislature mandated that all butchering be done in one location, south of the city. New Orleans butchers, unhappy with the law that forced them to relocate and pay fees to the monopoly company, sued the state in an attempt to have the law declared unconstitutional (Nieman 260). The lawyer for the disaffected butchers, John A. Campbell, contended that the Louisiana law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments (Suanders 1811). The law, he asserted, placed the butchers in a position of involuntary servitude, as the term was used in the Thirteenth Amendment. In addition, the law transgressed the Fourteenth Amendment by: abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens; denying the plaintiffs of equal protection of the laws; and, depriving them of their property without due process of the law (Slaughter-House Cases 83 U.S. 45-47). The Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, rejected these arguments. Justice Samuel Miller, speaking for the majority, actually provided a rather expansive view of the Thirteenth Amendment when he claimed that its "obvious purpose was to forbid all shades and conditions of African slavery." Although Justice Miller's statement represents the Court's first interpretation of the Amendment, it did not set a precedent. The Court later embraced a narrow interpretation which stipulated that the amendment merely outlawed the institution of slavery and blatant forms of involuntary servitude. As for the case at hand, Justice Miller said that to "withdraw the mind" from the true intent of the amendment, and to believe that people are forced into involuntary servitude by a law limiting where they can engage in certain business practices, "requires an effort, to say the least of it" (Slaughter-House Cases 83 U.S. 69). Justice Miller then rejected Campbell's view of the privileges and immunities clause by ingeniously separating state and federal citizenship, and specifying, to a certain extent, the characteristics of both. With the Fourteenth Amendment, Americans became both citizens of their respective states and of the United States. But most of the rights of citizenship, the Court said, still stem from a person's state citizenship. With national citizenship Americans won relatively meaningless rights, such as the right to receive protection abroad, to have access to the District of Columbia, and to engage in interstate and foreign commerce. Those were the "privileges and immunities" of national citizenship according to the Court. Consequently, the privilege of earning a living or running a legitimate business, the Court concluded, rested with one's state citizenship. All those seeking such security needed to look for it from their state government. In summarizing the Slaughter-House decision, one Republican commented that it "allowed the nation to protect American citizens anywhere in the world except in the states" (Lurie 341). Justice Miller concluded the decision by dismissing, with very little comment, Campbell's arguments regarding the "due process" and "equal protection" clauses. He then addressed those "who believe in the necessity of a strong National government." He told them that "the existence of the states with powers for domestic and local government, including the regulation of civil rights--the rights of person and property--was essential to the perfect working of our complex form of government." The Court, he said, did not see in the Reconstruction-era amendments "any purpose to destroy the main features of" America's federal system. In what was meant to be a statement of reassurance to the American people, he pledged that the Court would continue to uphold "the balance between state and Federal power" (Slaughter-House Cases 83 U.S 82). It is generally believed that the Court's decision in Slaughter-House constituted the opening salvo of the judicial counter revolution in the area of black civil rights. The framers of Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation, it is asserted, had revolutionized federalism and constitutional law. The Court chose to ignore the intentions of these lawmakers, and, in the process, minimized the changes they had instituted. For instance, legal scholar Donald Lively insists that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended "to transfer at least the guarantees of the civil Rights Act of 1866 to the privileges and immunities clause" (Lively 68). They intended for the federal government to protect the rights of citizens, especially blacks, even if it was limited to times when states failed to do this themselves. But with Slaughter-House, the Court took a giant step towards establishing the legal doctrine that the state alone was responsible for protecting citizens, and that the federal government had no authority to intervene under any circumstances. In evaluating the impact of Slaughter-House, Lively concluded that it "so eviscerated the meaning of the privileges and immunities clause that it remains an insignificant factor in Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence" (Lively 68). The line of logic followed in the Slaughter-House decision led the Court, in 1883, to rule that the Reconstruction-era amendments did not empower the federal government to prosecute members of lynch mobs--even when the state failed to act. The case, U.S. v. Harris, stemmed from an incident in which an armed mob of Tennessee whites took several African Americans from the custody of a sheriff, killing one and severely beating the others (U.S. v Harris, 106 U.S 629). Federal authorities in Tennessee indicted some of the mob members under section two of the 1871 Ku Klux Act, which outlawed two or more people conspiring together to deprive someone of their constitutional rights. The Court declared this important part of the act unconstitutional. Section two authorized the federal government to intervene in instances of private injustice even in the absence of any evidence that the state had failed to take appropriate action. In addition, the Court asserted that none of the recent Amendments had granted Congress the power to prosecute individuals for committing "regular" crimes such as murder or assault. During that same year the Court dealt a blow to another piece of civil rights legislation, again using Slaughter ­House as its starting point. This time the Court gutted the 1875 civil Rights Act in a decision known as the civil Rights Cases. (Civil Right Cases, 109 U.S. 3). Justice Joseph P. Bradley, speaking for the 8 to 1 majority, argued that the act did not fall within the limits of the Fourteenth Amendment because it prohibited individuals, such as the owners of inns and theaters, from discriminating against other individuals. The amendment, Justice Bradley said, only authorized Congress to regulate the states, not individuals. Although handing down a decision that led to Plessy and over a half-century of legalized racial segregation, the Court once again sanctioned a broad interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment. Justice Bradley asserted that the amendment established and decreed "universal civil and political freedom throughout the United states" and that it provided "Congress with power to pass all laws necessary and proper for abolishing all badges and incidents of slavery in the United States." In addition, such legislation "may be direct and primary, operating upon the acts of individuals whether sanctioned by state legislation or not" (Civil Right Cases, 109 U.S. 20,23). But according to the Court, denying blacks the right to use public accommodations did not constitute a badge or incident of slavery. So although the Court implied that Congress could prosecute individuals as a result of its obligation to abolish badges of slavery, it stipulated that the Thirteenth Amendment could not be used to support legislation outlawing racial segregation. While the Court proceeded to strike down Reconstruction-era legislation, it also appeared determined to thwart the efforts of federal officials to punish whites who violated the civil rights of African Americans. For instance, in its first decision regarding the 1870 civil Rights Act, the Court dismissed the charges against two white election officials in Lexington, Kentucky (Hiram Reese and Matthew Foushee) who refused to count the vote of a black citizen named William Garner. In the decision known as U.S. v. Reese (1876), the Court declared unconstitutional sections three and four of the 1870 act (U.S v Reese, 92 U.S. 214). The Court's reasoning was that the Fifteenth Amendment only authorizes Congress to intervene when a state denies someone of the right to vote on account of race. The section of the act in question, the Court said, made it illegal to deny a qualified person of the suffrage, but did not specifically stipulate that such denial must be based on race. In other words, the Court claimed that the sections were too broad. They included, allegedly, all instances of denial, not just those in which race was the deciding factor. Justice Ward Hunt dissented, arguing that his colleagues ignored the clear fact that the entire act was geared toward denials based on race. Sections one and two, he pointed out, state this explicitly. The sections in question contain the words "as aforesaid," which obviously refer to the sections containing the reference to race. The Court easily could have read racial motivation into the two sections in question, but refused to do so. So, although the decision did not alter the federal government's ability to prevent states from discriminating on the basis of race in qualifying people to vote, it allowed two racist election officials to escape punishment and sent a message to those concerned with black civil rights that the Court seemed determined to find ways to avoid sanctioning the spirit of the Reconstruction amendments and laws (Goldman 363-366). The notion that the Court was hostile to the rights of blacks appeared to be confirmed when, on the same day that it handed down its Reese decision, it also freed the white men who had been indicted in Louisiana for killing at least 105 blacks and three whites on Easter Sunday, 1873. This incident, known as the Colfax Riot or the Grant Parish Massacre, occurred when black Republicans (along with a few whites) occupied the Grant Parish Courthouse in an effort to claim the offices they felt they had won in a disputed election. White Democrats in the community, seeking to claim the offices for their candidates, besieged the courthouse, setting it on fire, and shooting the occupants as they fled the burning building. Although federal officials secured ninety-six indictments, they succeeded in arresting only nine of the accused participants. The Court, through its decision in U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), reversed the conviction of William Cruikshank and the eight other white Louisianians who had been indicted for the massacre. The Court, once again, appeared desperate to justify freeing the defendants. This time the Court faulted the indictments for not claiming that the actions of the defendants were motivated by race. Had the indictments stated this explicitly, the Court said, then the convictions may have been upheld under the 1870 civil Rights Act. As for the assertion that Cruikshank and his cohorts had denied the victims of their federal right to assemble peacefully, the Court utilized its slaughter-House ruling to its advantage. They ruled that the Louisiana Republicans had gathered in response to local and state affairs--not national. As such, their gathering fell under state jurisdiction, not federal. Had they assembled, for instance, to petition Congress, then they would have been exercising a right associated with national citizenship, and Cruikshank and the others could have been convicted on those grounds (Fairman 363-366). In light of this record, it is no wonder that the editor of The Voice of the Negro concluded in 1904 that "The United states Supreme Court has always either decided openly against the Negro in this country or avoided the contentions of the colored people by the most artful dodges behind hair- splitting technicalities" (217). Conclusion Slavery continued to influence African American citizenship long after emancipation. While the thirteenth and following amendments removed the tangible, visible chains of enslavement, not even the updated constitution proved to be strong enough to completely eradicate the affect the peculiar institution had on citizenship and educational access. Even in the absence of chains, the social system instituted under slavery continued to affect the laws and restrict the citizenship rights exercised by African Americans. Work Cited Amendment XIII of U.S Constitution. Section 1. (n.d.). Web. March 11, 2012. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiii Amendment XIV of U.S Constitution. (n.d.). Web. March 11, 2012 from http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv Berlin, Ira, et al. Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Civil Right Act of 1866. (n.d.). Web. March 11, 2012 from http://www.arch.ksu.edu/jwkplan/law/civil%20rights%20acts%20of%201866,%201870,%201871,%201875.htm Civil Rights Act of 1871 17 Stat. 13. (n.d.). Web. March 11, 2012 from http://www.arch.ksu.edu/jwkplan/law/civil%20rights%20acts%20of%201866,%201870,%201871,%201875.htm Civil Rights Act of 1875 (n.d.). Web. March 11, 2012 from http://www.arch.ksu.edu/jwkplan/law/civil%20rights%20acts%20of%201866,%201870,%201871,%201875.htm Fairman, Charles Reconstruction and Reunion, 1864-88, Part Two, New York: MacMillan, 1987. Print. Goldman, Robert M. "No 'Right' to Vote: The Reconstruction Election Cases" in John W. Johnson, ed., Historic U.S. Court Cases, 1690-1990: An Encyclopedia, New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. Print. Hyman, Harold M. and Wiecek, William W. Equal Justice Under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835-1875. New York: Harper and Row, 1982. Print. Lively, Donald E. The Constitution and Race. New York: Praeger, 1992. Lurie, Jonathan "Civil Rights or Last Rites," in Johnson, Historic U.S. Court Cases, 368. Original quote found in Congressional Record, 43 Cong., 1st sess. 1973. Nieman, Donald G. "The Fourteenth Amendment Receives its First Judicial Construction," in John W. Johnson, ed., Historic U.S. Court Cases, 1690-1990: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992 Saunders, R., John Archibald Campbell, Souther Moderate, 1811-1889 The Voice of the Negro, The Supreme Court and the Negro, 1 (June 1904), 217. Zuczek, Richard. State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. Cases Slaughter-House Cases 83 U.S (1873) Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883). U.S. v Reese, 92 U.S. 214 (1876). U.S. v Harris, 106 U.S 629 (1883). U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), Read More