14th Amendment Dbq

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After the Civil War many amendments were created to ensure and guarantee success to those native and free to this country. The Fourteenth Amendment, is one of three amendments to the Constitution, that was created after the civil war to grant citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. The main purpose of this amendment was to guarantee black rights. Many people were gracious when the amendment came in play but the rest were not satisfied and were against the ratification of the amendment. This amendment opened the doors to many who deserved it and many more who came in search for a better life. The 14th amendment was passed by Congress in June 1866 and it took two years for the States to ratify it. This amendment was designed to grant full citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did by granting citizenship to anyone born in the United States and prohibiting states from denying the privileges of citizens of the U.S., Depriving any human being of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The main focus was around Black Americans whose rights were being denied as freed …show more content…

Southern states refused to ratify the Amendment. Due to the major disagreement between the North and the Southern states, the Republicans passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which set the conditions forcefully that the Southern states had to accept the 14th amendment before they could be readmitted into the union. The Reconstruction Act also required state to grant voting rights to black men and that each state drafted a new state constitution. Officially by July 9, 1868 all the states ratified the 14th amendment. Therefor, all the southern rebel states were readmitted into the