WEBVTT NOTE Reconstruction 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:21.000 Okay, so the topic today is reconstruction, which of course refers to the, in effect, the readmission of the southern states after the conclusion of the war and the attempt to revive the Union as it was. 2 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:28.000 Now, as I indicated last time, Lincoln himself would not have used the term readmission of the states 3 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:35.000 because he was committed to a philosophical proposition according to which the Union was unbreakable. 4 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 So, the Southerners had not in fact seceded. 5 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:45.000 They may have thought they seceded, but all they really had done was to rebel against the legitimate authority of the Union government. 6 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:57.000 But, nevertheless, we'll use the word readmission because it's the easiest term. I think it's probably an accurate term and Lincoln, in fact, didn't insist on any uniformity in terminology. 7 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:04.000 He simply said that, look, the important thing is now that the states are coming back, let's not worry about if they were ever gone in the first place. 8 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:09.000 So he was a practical man on that matter when push came to shove. 9 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:19.000 But we're dealing most of the time today with Andrew Johnson, his vice president, because we all know Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. 10 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:22.000 So most of what we're dealing with is with Johnson. 11 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:35.000 But the issue arises, what branch of government, the executive or the legislative, should oversee the process of the readmission of the southern states following the conclusion of the war? 12 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:39.000 and the Constitution does not afford any insight into this matter 13 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:44.000 because of course nobody at the Constitutional Convention had envisioned anything like this taking place 14 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:47.000 so there was no provision for it in the Constitution. 15 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:52.000 So Lincoln took the initiative on his own as the war was going on. 16 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:55.000 As Union troops would take one place or another, 17 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.000 Lincoln was already thinking in terms of their reintegration into the Union. 18 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:07.000 And so he advanced a plan for reconstruction that was viewed by some people as being relatively lenient. 19 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:17.000 It became known popularly as the 10% plan because Lincoln required that 10% of the eligible voters in 1860 20 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:21.000 had to take an oath of loyalty to the Union. 21 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:34.000 and that once they had done so, they could begin the process of setting up a government in their state that the United States government would recognize. 22 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:45.000 Now, it was also understood that these states coming back would have to acknowledge and abide by federal laws pertaining to slavery 23 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:55.000 and it was understood in addition that high Confederate officials either in government or in the military 24 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:00.000 would have to get a presidential pardon in order to take part in political life once again. 25 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:10.000 But Lincoln was not making any demands for reparations and was not radically reorienting Southern social life in any way 26 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:16.760 other than, obviously, through the radical measure of the abolition of slavery, obviously, 27 00:03:16.760 --> 00:03:23.760 but he was not calling for the redistribution of property from southern slave owners to southern slaves, or any such thing as that. 28 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:35.260 Now, later, after Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson proposed a reconstruction policy that was roughly similar. 29 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:39.760 Now, Johnson himself came from a very humble background, 30 00:03:39.760 --> 00:03:43.760 and he'd always sort of resented the Southern planter class 31 00:03:43.760 --> 00:03:46.760 precisely because of his own humble origins. 32 00:03:46.760 --> 00:03:51.760 And so it's not surprising that Johnson added to the list of people 33 00:03:51.760 --> 00:03:57.760 who would require a presidential pardon anybody whose wealth exceeded $20,000. 34 00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:01.760 This was Johnson's way of humiliating the Southern planter class 35 00:04:01.760 --> 00:04:06.760 whom he held responsible for persuading Southerners to go along with secession. 36 00:04:06.760 --> 00:04:22.760 And in a way it was a kind of a, I'm sure it brought him a kind of gleeful satisfaction that here he was this humble man made good become the president and now these rich southerners have to come begging him for pardon. It must have been very satisfying for him. 37 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:32.760 Now when he was, when he became president in 1865, there was a faction of the Republican Party that was pleased at his accession to the office of president. 38 00:04:32.760 --> 00:04:35.760 That faction is called the Radical Republicans. 39 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:43.760 The Radicals were those who favored a tougher policy toward the defeated southern states. 40 00:04:43.760 --> 00:04:50.760 The Radicals were a wing of Lincoln's party who was very disappointed with Lincoln's plan. 41 00:04:50.760 --> 00:04:54.760 They believed it was not sufficient to punish the South. 42 00:04:54.760 --> 00:04:57.760 And in particular, the Radicals thought along these lines. 43 00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:03.760 They realized that now that slavery is abolished, the Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution no longer applies. 44 00:05:03.760 --> 00:05:10.760 There's basically nobody for it to apply to, because it had said that, well, it had strongly implied anyway, 45 00:05:10.760 --> 00:05:19.760 that for every five southern slaves, they would be counted in the census as having been three free white people. 46 00:05:19.760 --> 00:05:23.760 And there were reasons for why they had inserted them to the Constitution. 47 00:05:23.760 --> 00:05:30.760 But now, since there are no slaves, five southern blacks will now be counted as five voters. 48 00:05:30.760 --> 00:05:38.760 So that if you were to do the census now, the South would now be entitled to even more representation in government than it had before. 49 00:05:38.760 --> 00:05:44.760 From the radical point of view, it was unthinkable that a war should be waged for four years against the southern states 50 00:05:44.760 --> 00:05:48.760 and they should emerge from that war with more political influence than they had had in the past. 51 00:05:48.760 --> 00:05:50.760 That was intolerable. 52 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:56.760 So there was some suggestion that the Radical Republicans were secretly pleased when, 53 00:05:56.760 --> 00:06:00.760 I don't want to say they were pleased at Lincoln's hideous death, 54 00:06:00.760 --> 00:06:06.760 but that they might get somebody more sympathetic to their cause, there's no doubt about that. 55 00:06:06.760 --> 00:06:10.760 Privately they said to themselves that Johnson's a good man, he's going to do what we want, 56 00:06:10.760 --> 00:06:18.760 because Johnson had spent the war years condemning the traitors of the South in no uncertain terms. 57 00:06:18.760 --> 00:06:21.760 It seemed that he was the man they were waiting for. 58 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:25.760 It should be acknowledged and noted, because it's important for later, 59 00:06:25.760 --> 00:06:27.760 that Johnson did not belong to the Republican Party. 60 00:06:27.760 --> 00:06:29.760 Johnson was a Democrat. 61 00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:33.760 And so we'll see in a moment what difference that makes. 62 00:06:33.760 --> 00:06:38.760 In 1864, he and Lincoln had run together on a kind of a unity platform, 63 00:06:38.760 --> 00:06:42.760 the idea being that we're going to have a Republican and a Democrat on the same ticket 64 00:06:42.760 --> 00:06:46.760 to show how unified the North is. 65 00:06:46.760 --> 00:06:49.400 So Johnson's the Democrat, he's President. 66 00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:56.960 Now the Radical Republicans went to, in effect, an extreme in their views of what the condition 67 00:06:56.960 --> 00:07:01.200 of the Southern states happened to be at the end of the war. 68 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:05.800 Lincoln's view was that what we need to do is to reestablish the Southern states' proper 69 00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:07.560 position in the Union. 70 00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:09.580 He would use this type of language. 71 00:07:09.580 --> 00:07:14.840 The Radicals would use words like readmission, because from the Radical point of view, the 72 00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:19.320 The southern states were not any longer any part of the Union. 73 00:07:19.320 --> 00:07:25.320 Two famous radical Republicans, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, 74 00:07:25.320 --> 00:07:28.880 both used very vivid language to refer to the southern states. 75 00:07:28.880 --> 00:07:34.280 Charles Sumner said that the former Confederate states had committed suicide and Thaddeus 76 00:07:34.280 --> 00:07:37.880 Stevens described them as conquered provinces. 77 00:07:37.880 --> 00:07:39.560 So they are not part of the Union. 78 00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:43.040 We will make them part of the Union when they have jumped through the hoops that we want 79 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:44.520 them to jump through. 80 00:07:44.520 --> 00:08:01.520 So the radicals were disappointed when they found that Andrew Johnson, when he takes office, was more bark than bite, that his reconstruction plan was still not nearly as harsh or as demanding as the radicals would have preferred. 81 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:06.520 So they immediately grew disillusioned with Johnson. 82 00:08:06.520 --> 00:08:22.520 Now, we have to understand, therefore, that the radical Republicans are going to insist on a more radical reconstruction policy, and that one of the planks of that policy will be that the freed slaves must be granted the right to vote. 83 00:08:22.520 --> 00:08:31.520 Now, Lincoln had said that he was not necessarily opposed to that, and Johnson had said that he was not necessarily opposed to that, but that it should be introduced gradually. 84 00:08:31.520 --> 00:08:41.520 The radicals wanted it to take place right away, and for some radicals this was no doubt an expression of political idealism and morality. 85 00:08:41.520 --> 00:08:47.520 They believed that this was the moral thing to do, that these long disenfranchised people should be granted the right to vote. 86 00:08:47.520 --> 00:08:52.520 Others were more skeptical of radical motivations, which of course varied. 87 00:08:52.520 --> 00:09:00.520 For example, Connecticut Senator James Dixon said that the purpose of the radicals was the saving of the Republican party 88 00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:12.520 General Sherman commented that the whole idea of giving votes to the Negroes was to create just that many votes to be used by others for political uses. 89 00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:24.520 General Sherman commented that the whole idea of giving votes to the Negroes was to create just that many votes to be used by others for political uses. 90 00:09:24.520 --> 00:09:35.520 He expressed his displeasure with a plan whereby in his words politicians may manufacture just so much more pliable electioneering material. 91 00:09:35.520 --> 00:09:39.520 So there was a certain cynicism about radical Republican motivations, 92 00:09:39.520 --> 00:09:44.520 a cynicism that was not reduced by Thaddeus Stevens' famous comment 93 00:09:44.520 --> 00:09:48.520 that the votes of the freed slaves were necessary in order, in his words, 94 00:09:48.520 --> 00:09:52.520 to bring about perpetual ascendancy to the party of the Union, 95 00:09:52.520 --> 00:09:58.520 which means the Republican party should be, in effect, forever the dominant party. 96 00:09:58.520 --> 00:10:02.520 So we have this factor in the background, 97 00:10:02.520 --> 00:10:08.160 and the desire to insert as a part of the reconstruction policy 98 00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:11.160 the granting of the vote to the freed slaves. 99 00:10:11.160 --> 00:10:16.960 The radical concern was that if the vote is not given to the freed slaves, 100 00:10:16.960 --> 00:10:20.600 and this is a pure minus for the North, 101 00:10:20.600 --> 00:10:25.800 because the view would be as follows, that now that there's no more three-fifths clause 102 00:10:25.800 --> 00:10:29.080 and that therefore the southern population in effect, 103 00:10:29.080 --> 00:10:32.360 the southern voting population now is increased, 104 00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:37.800 The concern would be that the southerners wouldn't give the vote to these freed slaves, 105 00:10:37.800 --> 00:10:41.720 but yet they still would be counted to determine how many congressmen they would get. 106 00:10:41.720 --> 00:10:45.240 So the radical point of view was if you're going to count them in order to 107 00:10:45.240 --> 00:10:49.240 decide how many congressmen you get, then you have to give them the vote as well. 108 00:10:49.240 --> 00:10:55.800 And of course, as I say, the vote, it was assumed, would solidify the domination of the Republican Party. 109 00:10:55.800 --> 00:11:09.800 By 1866 the radicals were beginning to really make their voices heard and by 1867 they were really in control of the reconstruction process. 110 00:11:09.800 --> 00:11:17.800 They really seized it from the hands of the executive. 1866 was sort of a watershed year because that was an off-year election 111 00:11:17.800 --> 00:11:23.800 in which the Radical Republicans enjoyed major gains in Congress 112 00:11:23.800 --> 00:11:29.800 such that they could in fact override presidential vetoes of their Reconstruction Plan. 113 00:11:32.800 --> 00:11:36.800 Now the Radical Reconstruction Plan, which we get to in just a minute, 114 00:11:36.800 --> 00:11:40.800 which was much harsher than Lincoln's or Johnson's, 115 00:11:40.800 --> 00:11:43.800 was predicated on the idea, at least in part, 116 00:11:43.800 --> 00:11:47.800 that the southern states could not be trusted in effect to govern themselves 117 00:11:47.800 --> 00:11:51.800 because they would carry on the oppression of blacks, southern blacks 118 00:11:51.800 --> 00:11:55.800 and it was believed that discriminatory legislation against them 119 00:11:55.800 --> 00:11:59.800 would be passed, and in fact was passed, and that therefore 120 00:11:59.800 --> 00:12:03.800 the only way out of this was some kind of 121 00:12:03.800 --> 00:12:07.800 a federal oversight over the states to ensure that such discrimination 122 00:12:07.800 --> 00:12:11.800 did not occur. Well, the southern states 123 00:12:11.800 --> 00:12:28.800 The southern states did in fact introduce what became known as black codes, which in various ways curtailed the liberty of blacks in terms of the freedom to enter into contracts and to move across the state freely and in other ways as well. 124 00:12:28.800 --> 00:12:36.800 And immediately the radicals complained that the southern states were simply perpetuating slavery in another form. 125 00:12:36.800 --> 00:12:40.520 Now I've noted, and I've generated some controversy over this, 126 00:12:40.520 --> 00:12:43.760 I don't think there's anything controversial about it, 127 00:12:43.760 --> 00:12:48.960 that these southern black codes were in fact modeled on northern vagrancy laws. 128 00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:51.880 There's plenty of contemporary evidence to this effect. 129 00:12:51.880 --> 00:12:56.480 That in fact, and I quote a historian from earlier in the 20th century, 130 00:12:56.480 --> 00:13:01.200 who writes that there was hardly a feature of the apprenticeship and vagrancy acts of Mississippi 131 00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:02.960 and of the other southern states, 132 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:06.640 which was not substantially duplicated in some of these northern laws, 133 00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:11.640 While many of the northern provisions were more harsh in their terms than anything proposed in the South, 134 00:13:11.640 --> 00:13:16.640 and then I gave examples of states in which if you were without employment, 135 00:13:16.640 --> 00:13:21.640 northern states, and wandering around or begging or not giving a good account of yourself, 136 00:13:21.640 --> 00:13:27.640 you could in fact be imprisoned for vagrancy for as long as three years. 137 00:13:27.640 --> 00:13:32.640 And then we might also note that there were other faults the northern states had 138 00:13:32.640 --> 00:13:37.640 and the bad that they often did not notice in their crusade against the South. 139 00:13:37.640 --> 00:13:46.640 But still, it is true that particularly in Mississippi, which was the harshest in terms of its black codes that it enacted, 140 00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:54.640 that an impartial observer may well say that the southern states did in fact introduce some legislation that was, to say the least, 141 00:13:54.640 --> 00:14:08.640 ... that was prejudicial to the well-being of blacks, but even there, even in the harshest states, there was always a substantial voice in favor of liberalizing these laws. 142 00:14:08.640 --> 00:14:21.640 And so I quote a number of newspapers to that effect that argued that it's not going to do our state any good in the long run to do these things to the blacks. 143 00:14:21.640 --> 00:14:34.640 There was already a movement in favor of liberalizing these black codes, but nevertheless, by early 1866, the black codes had at least accomplished some things for the blacks, 144 00:14:34.640 --> 00:14:42.640 because they weren't simply a list of restrictions, they also were a list of various protections of rights, 145 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:48.640 and more or less they protected black rights to own property and to be able to sue in the courts, 146 00:14:48.640 --> 00:14:53.640 and even to testify in cases involving at least one party being black. 147 00:14:53.640 --> 00:14:57.640 So this was at least the beginning of some kind of extension of rights. 148 00:14:57.640 --> 00:15:03.640 It's worth noting, and quite interesting to note, that Generals Grant and Sherman, 149 00:15:03.640 --> 00:15:08.640 who were not exactly the biggest fans of the southern states, nevertheless, 150 00:15:08.640 --> 00:15:14.640 declared the southern states to be loyal and to deserve to be readmitted to the Union promptly. 151 00:15:14.640 --> 00:15:21.400 promptly. They did not call for radical reconstruction. These were men who obviously had reasonable 152 00:15:21.400 --> 00:15:26.860 first-hand experience with the southern states, and they did not favor that. I happen to like 153 00:15:26.860 --> 00:15:33.880 these quotations, so I'm going to read them. Thaddeus Stevens was told by a friend that 154 00:15:33.880 --> 00:15:38.560 the southern states were not hanging portraits of Lincoln in their homes, you know, and they 155 00:15:38.560 --> 00:15:42.560 weren't hanging portraits of radical Republicans. Instead, they would have portraits of Jefferson 156 00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:44.560 Stephen Davis hanging up in their homes. 157 00:15:44.560 --> 00:15:46.560 What could be the matter with these people? 158 00:15:46.560 --> 00:15:48.560 Why would they do this? 159 00:15:48.560 --> 00:15:52.560 So Stephen's friend was quite surprised and horrified to learn that, 160 00:15:52.560 --> 00:15:54.560 referring to Southerners, 161 00:15:54.560 --> 00:15:57.560 while they acknowledge themselves whipped and profess future loyalty, 162 00:15:57.560 --> 00:15:59.560 Confederate generals are their heroes, 163 00:15:59.560 --> 00:16:02.560 Confederate bravery and endurance under difficulties, 164 00:16:02.560 --> 00:16:04.560 their pride and boast, 165 00:16:04.560 --> 00:16:06.560 Confederate dead their martyrs. 166 00:16:06.560 --> 00:16:10.560 In all the stores of Richmond I did not see the picture of a single Union general or politician, 167 00:16:10.560 --> 00:16:27.560 Now, President Johnson, who was never a secession supporter, was a very strong supporter of Union, nevertheless could understand why people would honor the Confederate heroes, and he wrote, or he said, 168 00:16:27.560 --> 00:16:43.560 People should be allowed to grumble who have suffered so much, and they would be unworthy of the name of men if they did not respect the brave officers who have suffered with them, and honor the memory of their gallant dead who sleep on a hundred battlefields around their homes. 169 00:16:43.560 --> 00:16:54.560 Okay, well the Radical Reconstruction Plan in effect consisted of the following, in 1867 the Radicals passed over the veto of Johnson several Reconstruction Acts. 170 00:16:54.560 --> 00:17:04.560 And the provisions of those Acts in effect went like this, that with the exception of Tennessee, and we'll revisit in a moment why Tennessee is an exception, 171 00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:09.560 the other ten former Confederate states would be required to abide by the following terms. 172 00:17:09.560 --> 00:17:17.120 terms. They would be divided into five military districts and occupied by the U.S. military 173 00:17:17.120 --> 00:17:26.040 until the following requirements were met, until new state constitutions were drawn up 174 00:17:26.040 --> 00:17:32.420 and those state constitutions inserted provisions for black suffrage, that is the right of blacks 175 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:37.880 to vote, and in addition the Fourteenth Amendment would have to be ratified. So we have to get 176 00:17:37.880 --> 00:17:39.880 to what the 14th Amendment was. 177 00:17:39.880 --> 00:17:44.880 But it was never made absolutely clear to Southerners in an ironclad way 178 00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:48.880 that if they complied with these demands, they would in fact be promptly readmitted to the Union. 179 00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:50.880 This was not made clear. 180 00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:53.880 Yes, you do all these things and maybe you'll be readmitted to the Union, 181 00:17:53.880 --> 00:17:56.880 but maybe you'll still be under military domination. 182 00:17:56.880 --> 00:17:59.880 President Johnson very much resisted this legislation because it seemed to him 183 00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:02.880 there was no constitutional warrant for it, 184 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:09.680 and that at a time when these southern states were not being allowed to have representation in Congress, 185 00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:12.280 the Congress was refusing to seat their representatives, 186 00:18:12.280 --> 00:18:19.280 it seemed to Johnson not to be an auspicious moment to make radical, to institute radical policies like this, 187 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:24.680 as I say that he believed did not have legal standing, and so he vetoed them. 188 00:18:24.680 --> 00:18:31.380 Now, the very fact that Johnson vetoed them seriously galled the radical Republicans. 189 00:18:31.380 --> 00:18:35.900 In strict theory, of course, the president has the power to veto legislation, 190 00:18:35.900 --> 00:18:41.380 and at the same time, it's also true that Congress had not only the power, 191 00:18:41.380 --> 00:18:45.220 but they actually had the numbers to override those vetoes. 192 00:18:45.220 --> 00:18:52.540 But the radicals were upset in large part because it had been extremely rare for the president to use the veto. 193 00:18:52.540 --> 00:18:58.380 I mean, it was an extreme rarity, and for a president repeatedly to use it 194 00:18:58.380 --> 00:19:01.380 almost struck them as an abuse of power. 195 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:06.380 As I've noted in another one of my lectures back in another course, 196 00:19:06.380 --> 00:19:11.380 back in the 1840s there were candidates from the Whig Party who in fact, 197 00:19:11.380 --> 00:19:18.380 as one of their platform positions, argued that if you vote for me I will never veto anything. 198 00:19:18.380 --> 00:19:23.380 The refusal to use the veto was held up as a virtue, 199 00:19:23.380 --> 00:19:28.380 because it showed that we are deferring to the most popular branch of government, namely the Congress. 200 00:19:28.380 --> 00:19:33.380 And so the fact that Andrew Johnson had that gall to keep using the veto was just shocking. 201 00:19:33.380 --> 00:19:39.380 It was a shocking example of the use of presidential power. 202 00:19:39.380 --> 00:19:42.380 Okay, so we have to look then at what is this Fourteenth Amendment 203 00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:47.380 that the southern states are being required to ratify as a price for readmission. 204 00:19:47.380 --> 00:19:52.380 Well, there were three amendments that are known as the Reconstruction Amendments for obvious reasons 205 00:19:52.380 --> 00:19:57.380 That became part of the Constitution after the war years 13, 14 and 15. 206 00:19:57.380 --> 00:20:00.380 Of course we all know the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery. 207 00:20:00.380 --> 00:20:08.380 The 15th Amendment involves granting the right to vote to people regardless of race. 208 00:20:08.380 --> 00:20:12.380 The 14th Amendment is a little trickier. 209 00:20:12.380 --> 00:20:15.380 And what we want to look on the 14th Amendment is simply Article 1 210 00:20:15.380 --> 00:20:45.380 The 14th Amendment Article 1 reads as follows, and I can't point out strongly enough to you that these two sentences I'm about to read have been the source of an absolutely astonishing amount of ink being spilled to explain what they really meant, what was the original intent of these two sentences, and there has been 211 00:20:45.380 --> 00:20:50.380 In effect, nothing but dispute and controversy over this amendment ever since. 212 00:20:50.380 --> 00:20:51.380 Well, it reads simply, 213 00:20:51.380 --> 00:20:56.380 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, 214 00:20:56.380 --> 00:21:00.380 are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. 215 00:21:00.380 --> 00:21:02.380 Now, that's the first sentence. We'll just pause. 216 00:21:02.380 --> 00:21:08.380 The reason this sentence is introduced is that this reverses the major plank of the Dred Scott decision, 217 00:21:08.380 --> 00:21:12.380 which had argued that American blacks were not citizens of the United States. 218 00:21:12.380 --> 00:21:18.380 This argument is that if you're born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, that makes you a citizen. 219 00:21:18.380 --> 00:21:27.380 I would note parenthetically, by the way, that the often overlooked phrase in this sentence is, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, 220 00:21:27.380 --> 00:21:36.380 because in our own day we have the practice of people showing up in the United States and sticking around for 10 seconds, giving birth and then leaving, 221 00:21:36.380 --> 00:21:39.380 and then automatically that child can enjoy American citizenship forever. 222 00:21:39.380 --> 00:21:47.380 and Citizenship Forever, and one of the arguments against that is that such a person is not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. 223 00:21:47.380 --> 00:21:54.380 Such a person has moved back to Korea or something, so that you would have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. 224 00:21:54.380 --> 00:21:58.380 You can't just come in for three seconds and get citizenship and then leave. 225 00:21:58.380 --> 00:22:02.380 Second sentence, though, is the one that really has provoked the controversy. 226 00:22:02.380 --> 00:22:09.380 No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. 227 00:22:09.380 --> 00:22:14.380 Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, 228 00:22:14.380 --> 00:22:18.380 nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 229 00:22:18.380 --> 00:22:27.380 Well, next semester we'll be revisiting this because the Fourteenth Amendment comes up repeatedly in the future in American history. 230 00:22:27.380 --> 00:22:30.380 It's raised a number of times during the Civil Rights Movement, for example, 231 00:22:30.380 --> 00:22:33.380 And there's a lot of debate about what that sentence meant. 232 00:22:33.380 --> 00:22:46.380 Now there are some people who argue that this amendment, in a major way, in fact, and was intended to dramatically overturn the federal government state relationship. 233 00:22:46.380 --> 00:22:51.380 That in fact it was a sweeping revision of the original Constitution. 234 00:22:51.380 --> 00:22:55.380 Because it granted the federal government in effect oversight over the states. 235 00:22:55.380 --> 00:22:59.940 and that if the states were interfering with the rights of individuals in various ways, 236 00:22:59.940 --> 00:23:04.340 the federal government could intervene and protect individuals from the state governments. 237 00:23:04.340 --> 00:23:08.660 Now remember when you remember the principles of 98, the usual thinking was the reverse, 238 00:23:08.660 --> 00:23:13.380 that the state governments need to interpose to protect citizens from the federal government. 239 00:23:13.380 --> 00:23:20.980 Well now the roles are being reversed and the protector and protected are being switched. 240 00:23:20.980 --> 00:23:25.140 Now others have argued that the 14th Amendment was actually quite modest in scope, 241 00:23:25.140 --> 00:23:30.900 that these very open-ended phrases that we hear in there, in fact, had specific meanings at the time 242 00:23:30.900 --> 00:23:36.100 and that, in fact, this was only a very small revision to the Constitution. 243 00:23:36.100 --> 00:23:38.740 This was the position that, among other people, 244 00:23:38.740 --> 00:23:41.300 Emmy Bradford of the University of Dallas took. 245 00:23:41.300 --> 00:23:46.900 He wrote an essay on the 14th Amendment probably 20 years ago, I think, 246 00:23:46.900 --> 00:23:50.500 and the title of the essay was, Changed Only a Little, 247 00:23:50.500 --> 00:23:53.940 and the subtitle was something about the 14th Amendment. 248 00:23:53.940 --> 00:24:03.940 Now, I'm inclined to the second position, and I've been persuaded of this because I've read the work of Raoul Berger, who was a professor, just died a few years ago, was a law professor in Harvard, 249 00:24:03.940 --> 00:24:19.940 and Berger went through and looked at all the original records and everything and found that it seemed pretty overwhelming, that what was intended by the 14th Amendment was to give constitutional standing to the Civil Rights Act of 1866. 250 00:24:19.940 --> 00:24:25.440 There was concern that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 might be subject to constitutional challenge. 251 00:24:25.440 --> 00:24:31.440 So if we amend the Constitution so as to include these provisions in it, then it will be immune from constitutional challenge. 252 00:24:31.440 --> 00:24:37.440 So therefore we have to look for the meaning of the 14th Amendment somewhere in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. 253 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:45.440 And by modern standards, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is extremely modest in the things that it calls for. 254 00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:54.440 So the various phrases that we see in this 14th Amendment in fact had specific meanings that were tied to the Civil Rights Act of 1866. 255 00:24:54.440 --> 00:25:04.440 So the main rights that are being protected in the 14th Amendment are in fact the individual's right to enter into contracts freely, 256 00:25:04.440 --> 00:25:13.440 to sue in the courts, to testify in the courts and have recourse to the courts in general, and to own and dispose of property. 257 00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:23.440 So this is in effect what the 14th Amendment was protecting. Now the radical Republicans wanted something much more sweeping and dramatic than that, but what they got was the 14th Amendment. 258 00:25:23.440 --> 00:25:32.440 And this was the bare minimum the South had to ratify the 14th Amendment if they were going to be allowed back into the Union. That was certainly one of the things they had to do. 259 00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:40.440 Now there were some people though who even looking at this very modest and limited nature of the 14th Amendment, there were some people who feared it. 260 00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:46.120 who feared it because they feared that there was a slippery slope to this, that once you 261 00:25:46.120 --> 00:25:50.600 give the federal government oversight over these issues, even if your intentions are 262 00:25:50.600 --> 00:25:55.760 good and even if you believe the federal government will simply limit itself to protecting people 263 00:25:55.760 --> 00:26:00.200 against enormities committed by the states, there's no way to limit it to that and that 264 00:26:00.200 --> 00:26:04.160 before you know it you'll have a federal government that will be completely unchallengeable and 265 00:26:04.160 --> 00:26:09.880 the healthy checks on federal power that the states have provided will basically be destroyed. 266 00:26:09.880 --> 00:26:14.880 It's worth noting that even northerners pointed this out. The state of New Jersey tried for 267 00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:21.200 example to withdraw its ratification of the 14th Amendment at one point and noted that 268 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:25.960 we believe that this amendment has been deliberately written with ambiguity for purposes of in 269 00:26:25.960 --> 00:26:31.640 effect taking away people's rights. We have Andrew Johnson, Secretary of the Interior, 270 00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:36.800 Orville Browning who was an Illinois man, not a southerner, and he warned, one of the 271 00:26:36.800 --> 00:26:41.900 The greatest perils which threatens us now is the tendency to centralization, the absorption 272 00:26:41.900 --> 00:26:46.180 of the rights of the states and the concentration of all power in the general government. When 273 00:26:46.180 --> 00:26:50.400 that shall be accomplished, if ever, the days of the republic are numbered. 274 00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:56.160 We have the statement by Henry Ward Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who obviously 275 00:26:56.160 --> 00:27:01.520 cannot be accused of being a big partisan of slavery and oppression, said, 276 00:27:01.520 --> 00:27:05.380 The Federal Government is unfit to exercise minor police and local government and will 277 00:27:05.380 --> 00:27:07.820 will inevitably blunder when it attempts it. 278 00:27:07.820 --> 00:27:11.500 To oblige the central authority to govern half the territory of the Union by Federal 279 00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:16.460 Civil Officers and by the Army is a policy not only uncongenial to our ideals and to 280 00:27:16.460 --> 00:27:21.540 our ideas and principles, but preeminently dangerous to the spirit of our government. 281 00:27:21.540 --> 00:27:26.300 However humane the end sought and the motive, it is in fact a course of instruction preparing 282 00:27:26.300 --> 00:27:30.580 our government to be despotic and familiarizing the people to a stretch of authority which 283 00:27:30.580 --> 00:27:33.680 can never be other than dangerous to liberty. 284 00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:38.240 So section one of the amendment that we just looked at is the key. 285 00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:43.120 The other sections, for example, number two, had to do with black suffrage, but that was 286 00:27:43.120 --> 00:27:46.200 superseded by the 15th Amendment. 287 00:27:46.200 --> 00:27:50.440 In the 14th Amendment, there was a section two that said that to the extent that you're 288 00:27:50.440 --> 00:27:55.040 depriving blacks of representation, to that extent will you get the number of your congressmen 289 00:27:55.040 --> 00:27:56.040 reduced. 290 00:27:56.040 --> 00:28:01.840 But that was superseded by the 15th Amendment, which said you can't restrict black voting 291 00:28:01.840 --> 00:28:02.840 rights. 292 00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:25.840 Section 3 said that anybody who had held an office in the Confederacy would be excluded from American politics and that plank alone also practically guaranteed that the southern states were not going to accept it because it would be viewed as a slap in the face to people they respected. 293 00:28:25.840 --> 00:28:44.840 It would be one thing for Lincoln or Johnson to say you have to get a pardon first before you can participate in politics again, but it would be quite another for the Constitution, the permanent charter of American government, to have in effect the memory of these men defamed in effect. 294 00:28:44.840 --> 00:28:51.840 So that was a contentious aspect as well. But again, not really relevant to us today because all those people are deceased now. 295 00:28:51.840 --> 00:28:57.840 Section 4 repudiates the Confederate debt, so that Confederate war bonds cannot be cashed in. 296 00:28:57.840 --> 00:29:04.840 You can't show up in Washington D.C. and say, I want to transfer my war bond to the obligation of the U.S. government. 297 00:29:04.840 --> 00:29:11.840 It's not going to happen. But that's also not really relevant today because I don't think anybody is walking around with a Confederate war bond hoping that it will be honored. 298 00:29:11.840 --> 00:29:14.840 So it's really the first section that we look at. 299 00:29:14.840 --> 00:29:21.840 Okay, so radical reconstruction then centers around this 14th Amendment and those other requirements that I mentioned. 300 00:29:21.840 --> 00:29:29.840 Now, Andrew Johnson condemned all this as being in its whole character, scope and object without precedent and without authority, 301 00:29:29.840 --> 00:29:36.840 in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution and utterly destructive to those great principles of liberty and humanity 302 00:29:36.840 --> 00:29:42.840 for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure. 303 00:29:42.840 --> 00:30:03.840 This was at a time when Wisconsin Senator James Doolittle was going around complaining that the Southern states initially had refused to ratify this 14th Amendment and declared that the people of the South have rejected the Constitutional Amendment and therefore we will march upon them and force them to adopt it at the point of the bayonet until they do adopt it. 304 00:30:03.840 --> 00:30:15.840 Well, this was the type of behavior that quite appalled Andrew Johnson because it did not seem to be in accord with traditional understandings of the rule of law in the Western tradition. 305 00:30:15.840 --> 00:30:20.840 And so, Andrew Johnson complained as follows publicly, 306 00:30:20.840 --> 00:30:26.840 Those who advocated the right of secession alleged in their own justification that we had no regard for law 307 00:30:26.840 --> 00:30:31.840 and that the rights of property, life and liberty would not be safe under the Constitution as administered by us. 308 00:30:31.840 --> 00:30:36.840 If we now verify their assertion, we prove that they were in truth fighting for their liberty 309 00:30:36.840 --> 00:30:40.840 and instead of branding their leaders as traitors against a righteous and legal government, 310 00:30:40.840 --> 00:30:44.840 we elevate them in history to the rank of self-sacrificing patriots, 311 00:30:44.840 --> 00:30:50.840 Consecrate them to the admiration of the world and place them by the side of Washington, Hampton and Sydney. 312 00:30:50.840 --> 00:30:56.840 Candor compels me to declare that at this time there is no union as our fathers understood the term, 313 00:30:56.840 --> 00:30:58.840 and as they meant it to be understood by us. 314 00:30:58.840 --> 00:31:04.840 The union which they established can exist only where all the states are represented in both houses of Congress, 315 00:31:04.840 --> 00:31:09.840 where one state is as free as another to regulate its internal concerns according to its own will, 316 00:31:09.840 --> 00:31:19.840 and where the laws of the central government, strictly confined to matters of national jurisdiction, apply with equal force to the people of every section. 317 00:31:19.840 --> 00:31:27.840 When the Fourteenth Amendment was initially sent out to the states for ratification, of the former Confederate states only Tennessee initially ratified it. 318 00:31:27.840 --> 00:31:32.840 The others all rejected it because of some of the concerns that I've just mentioned. 319 00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:38.840 Tennessee, because it accepted the Fourteenth Amendment, was spared these radical forms of reconstruction. 320 00:31:38.840 --> 00:31:41.840 So they were not militarily occupied, for example. 321 00:31:41.840 --> 00:31:45.840 But the other southern states, the other ten, were in fact militarily occupied. 322 00:31:45.840 --> 00:31:50.840 They did not enjoy the right of self-government and they certainly did not enjoy representation in the U.S. government. 323 00:31:50.840 --> 00:31:55.840 This was what struck Johnson as being so out of sync with the American tradition. 324 00:31:55.840 --> 00:32:00.840 Well, the 14th Amendment, though, was given a second go-round. 325 00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:05.840 When, by 1866, it was clear the southern states, by and large, were not going to ratify it, 326 00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:13.840 It was given a second try as part of radical reconstruction in 1867 and then was declared ratified in 1868. 327 00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:18.840 Well, that second time in which the southern states were basically told, 328 00:32:18.840 --> 00:32:24.840 well, we'll give you another chance to ratify this because this is the only chance you're going to get to be readmitted into the Union, 329 00:32:24.840 --> 00:32:30.840 we have some problems, some logical and legal problems involved with the ratification of that amendment. 330 00:32:30.840 --> 00:32:33.840 And this is not some crazy theory that I developed. 331 00:32:33.840 --> 00:32:42.840 This argument was in fact made by contemporaries, but it was also noted in the U.S. News and World Report about a half century ago. 332 00:32:42.840 --> 00:32:48.840 U.S. News and World Report had this big editorial saying the 14th Amendment was never legitimately ratified. 333 00:32:48.840 --> 00:32:58.840 And then, more recently, Forrest MacDonald, who is, I think, emeritus now from University of Alabama, but an extremely respected historian, 334 00:32:58.840 --> 00:33:01.680 And again, not an extremist or a weirdo or anything. 335 00:33:01.840 --> 00:33:06.560 Forrest MacDonald wrote an important article in the Georgia Journal of Southern Legal History 336 00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:10.400 in 1991, going through the arguments and concluding 337 00:33:10.560 --> 00:33:13.760 that the 14th Amendment was never constitutionally ratified. 338 00:33:13.920 --> 00:33:18.840 Now, he argued that because it stuck around so long, we still more or less have to live with it. 339 00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:22.440 But in the future, he said, let's try to make sure that we legally ratify amendments. 340 00:33:22.600 --> 00:33:24.640 So that's probably good advice, I think. 341 00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:30.640 But let's see, what are these arguments that are raised against the ratification of the 14th Amendment? 342 00:33:30.640 --> 00:33:38.640 Well, for one thing, the southern states had in fact ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865. 343 00:33:38.640 --> 00:33:44.640 Nothing about those states had changed by the time of 1866 and 1867, 344 00:33:44.640 --> 00:33:48.640 at the time when they refused to ratify the 14th Amendment. 345 00:33:48.640 --> 00:33:53.640 But it was at that time that radical Republicans in their radical reconstruction programs 346 00:33:53.640 --> 00:34:00.640 and other programs insisted that other than in Tennessee there were no legal governments in any of the states of the former Confederacy 347 00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:05.640 and that therefore they have to be militarily occupied and then readmitted under other conditions. 348 00:34:05.640 --> 00:34:12.640 Well, a legitimate argument would be, then how come you accepted their ratification of the 13th Amendment two years earlier? 349 00:34:12.640 --> 00:34:15.640 Why was that okay? Because you liked the outcome? 350 00:34:15.640 --> 00:34:19.640 It seems that you've got to have it both ways. 351 00:34:19.640 --> 00:34:30.640 If you say the southern states are illegal when they refuse to ratify the 14th then they'd also have to be illegal when they did ratify the 13th and so we don't have the 13th in them either. 352 00:34:30.640 --> 00:34:34.640 There are all kinds of inconsistencies here that were simply brushed aside. 353 00:34:34.640 --> 00:34:36.640 But a more fundamental problem is this. 354 00:34:36.640 --> 00:34:47.640 On the one hand, Congress says 10 of the former 11 Confederate states are illegal governments not to be recognized by the U.S. government, not entitled to representation in the U.S. government, 355 00:34:47.640 --> 00:34:54.640 And so they're illegal and they have not been set up to the satisfaction of the U.S. government. 356 00:34:54.640 --> 00:35:01.640 But at the same time, these very states are being told they have to vote to ratify an amendment as the price for being readmitted. 357 00:35:01.640 --> 00:35:08.640 Well, if they are not legal states, they're not legal governments, then how can they vote to ratify an amendment? 358 00:35:08.640 --> 00:35:12.640 You can't make them legal governments for some purposes and not for others. 359 00:35:12.640 --> 00:35:14.640 Either they are or they aren't. 360 00:35:14.640 --> 00:35:19.940 And if they have the power to vote to ratify an amendment, they should also be having representation in Congress. 361 00:35:19.940 --> 00:35:22.840 Again, there's an inconsistency there. 362 00:35:22.840 --> 00:35:28.340 But there's also the fact that in individual states, there were all kinds of irregularities. 363 00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:35.240 Even in Tennessee, the southern state that ratified the 14th Amendment right away, there were irregularities. 364 00:35:35.240 --> 00:35:40.440 And the example I give involves the fact that opponents of the 14th Amendment had been staying home, 365 00:35:40.440 --> 00:35:43.960 with people who had served in the State House in Tennessee and staying home 366 00:35:43.960 --> 00:35:45.320 so as to prevent 367 00:35:45.320 --> 00:35:46.760 there being a quorum 368 00:35:46.760 --> 00:35:49.000 in Tennessee so that they couldn't actually 369 00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:52.520 transact any business and ratify the amendment. 370 00:35:52.520 --> 00:35:55.880 Well in fact what wound up happening was that supporters of the amendment kidnapped 371 00:35:55.880 --> 00:35:57.900 two of these state legislators 372 00:35:57.900 --> 00:36:01.680 and brought them to the State House and in effect ordered them just to stand there 373 00:36:01.680 --> 00:36:04.000 so that the vote could take place. 374 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:08.560 Now when the Speaker of the House 375 00:36:08.560 --> 00:36:13.000 was calling the roll, these two refused to answer because their view was that 376 00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:16.560 it's not really legal to kidnap us like this, so we don't consider ourselves to 377 00:36:16.560 --> 00:36:18.160 be present 378 00:36:18.160 --> 00:36:22.240 but nevertheless the vote went ahead to ratify the amendment. 379 00:36:22.240 --> 00:36:27.320 Alright, well you might say that, you know, kidnapping is basically wrong. 380 00:36:27.320 --> 00:36:30.160 There's also the fact that in Oregon, 381 00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:33.840 so it's not even a southern state, in Oregon 382 00:36:33.840 --> 00:36:37.220 the ratification of the amendment had apparently occurred 383 00:36:37.220 --> 00:36:42.420 But it had occurred at a time when two of the seats in the Oregon legislature were disputed. 384 00:36:42.420 --> 00:36:46.820 There were two Republicans who had been elected under suspicious circumstances. 385 00:36:46.820 --> 00:36:53.420 Well then, when an investigation was done and it was concluded that the Democrats should have held those seats rather than Republicans, 386 00:36:53.420 --> 00:36:57.220 it was decided that the vote on the 14th should be taken a second time. 387 00:36:57.220 --> 00:37:03.620 So they did, with the people who were legal sitting in the government, and this time the amendment failed. 388 00:37:03.620 --> 00:37:06.620 But the U.S. government declared that, well, we take your first answer. 389 00:37:06.620 --> 00:37:11.620 So Oregon was declared as having accepted the amendment. 390 00:37:11.620 --> 00:37:17.620 And it goes on. New Jersey attempted to change its mind unsuccessfully. 391 00:37:17.620 --> 00:37:22.620 There was at least one other state that attempted to, before the amendment had taken effect, 392 00:37:22.620 --> 00:37:26.620 that attempted to rescind their ratifications. That was not permitted. 393 00:37:26.620 --> 00:37:30.620 But what we can certainly say is that something extremely odd happened here. 394 00:37:30.620 --> 00:37:43.620 Something very, very unusual happened, and I think it is safe to say that constitutionally, the amendment was not ratified using normal, legal, constitutional procedures. 395 00:37:43.620 --> 00:37:53.620 Now, one of the, this is back when I used to follow this, when my book came out and I actually cared what people were saying on Amazon, you know, because I was following it, I wanted to know what's going on. 396 00:37:53.620 --> 00:38:01.620 One person said, this guy's an idiot, he says the 14th Amendment wasn't ratified, but just look at the Constitution, there it is. 397 00:38:01.620 --> 00:38:07.620 Well, no, that's not the point. Yes, I understand that it was declared to be ratified, I know it's in the Constitution, 398 00:38:07.620 --> 00:38:12.620 because later in the book I refer to the 14th Amendment being used, so obviously I know it's in there. 399 00:38:12.620 --> 00:38:17.620 The point is simply that it does not seem that the proper legal forms were observed. 400 00:38:17.620 --> 00:38:24.620 Well, finally, I would just simply note, because we won't get into the impeachment of President Johnson, you can read all about that. 401 00:38:24.620 --> 00:38:30.620 It was a partisan fiasco where they maneuvered him into committing an impeachable offense. 402 00:38:30.620 --> 00:38:35.620 The radicals were extremely impatient with him, not only because he vetoed all their legislation, 403 00:38:35.620 --> 00:38:40.620 but because he belongs to the executive branch, that's the branch that enforces legislation. 404 00:38:40.620 --> 00:38:46.620 And their feeling was, this guy's heart is obviously not in it. He doesn't support our legislation, so his heart's not in it. 405 00:38:46.620 --> 00:38:51.500 It's not going to enforce the reconstruction legislation reliably, it's going to be lax 406 00:38:51.500 --> 00:38:56.520 in enforcing it, so we've got to get rid of them, and it was just a horror show. 407 00:38:56.520 --> 00:39:02.260 But what I do want to end with though is just a few examples of what wound up happening 408 00:39:02.260 --> 00:39:04.140 with the Fourteenth Amendment. 409 00:39:04.140 --> 00:39:08.820 In order to show that people weren't just being stupid and backward and unreasonable, 410 00:39:08.820 --> 00:39:14.540 that in fact the Fourteenth Amendment did amount in large part to depriving some of 411 00:39:14.540 --> 00:39:16.540 The States of the Rights of Self-Government 412 00:39:16.540 --> 00:39:18.540 So I give in the book the example of 413 00:39:18.540 --> 00:39:22.540 I guess we're all old enough to remember Proposition 187 414 00:39:22.540 --> 00:39:24.540 from 1994 in California 415 00:39:24.540 --> 00:39:28.540 because they've got this big illegal immigration problem in California 416 00:39:28.540 --> 00:39:30.540 and it was obviously bankrupting the state 417 00:39:30.540 --> 00:39:33.540 and you can't just, everybody can't just come and get free stuff 418 00:39:33.540 --> 00:39:35.540 eventually, you know, you run out of money 419 00:39:35.540 --> 00:39:38.540 So Proposition 187 was going to say that 420 00:39:38.540 --> 00:39:40.540 if you're illegally in the country 421 00:39:40.540 --> 00:39:42.540 you can't get free stuff 422 00:39:42.540 --> 00:39:50.540 You can't get free education, you can't get this or that, you can still get emergency medical care, which is expensive enough, you can still get that, but that was about it. 423 00:39:50.540 --> 00:39:56.540 And all the fashionable people were against it, all the Democrats were against it, and all the Republican leaders were all against it. 424 00:39:56.540 --> 00:39:59.540 And there was all this money poured into it being against it. 425 00:39:59.540 --> 00:40:06.540 But it passed by two to one. The voters said, well, we don't care what these fashionable people say, we're very unfashionable, so we want a favorite. 426 00:40:06.540 --> 00:40:13.540 Well, almost immediately it was declared null and void by a Federal Court on 14th Amendment grounds. 427 00:40:13.540 --> 00:40:20.540 Now, what does that have to do with the 14th Amendment, which is supposed to protect the rights of contract and suing in the courts? 428 00:40:20.540 --> 00:40:25.540 What does that have to do with this? Nothing I can see, but there it is. 429 00:40:25.540 --> 00:40:33.540 Or you have the example that a couple years later, again, the state budget is going crazy because they have very generous welfare benefits. 430 00:40:33.540 --> 00:40:37.860 So you have this practice that some people are moving to California for the express purpose 431 00:40:37.860 --> 00:40:41.680 of going on welfare. This is not just some crazy right-wing interpretation. Everybody 432 00:40:41.680 --> 00:40:47.200 knew this was happening. And so what California tried to do in 1996 was to say, all right, 433 00:40:47.200 --> 00:40:52.180 if you come to California and go on welfare, the rule is the first year you're here, your 434 00:40:52.180 --> 00:40:55.960 welfare benefits have to be limited to whatever amount you would have gotten in your home 435 00:40:55.960 --> 00:40:59.920 state that you're coming from. And then after that you can get the full California benefits. 436 00:40:59.920 --> 00:41:09.420 I was also struck down on 14th Amendment grounds. Why? Because that violates the, quote, right to travel, which the 14th Amendment protects. 437 00:41:09.420 --> 00:41:18.920 Now, I must be too simple to be able to follow the deep and profound reasoning in cases like this, but I don't see the relation of that to the 14th Amendment. 438 00:41:18.920 --> 00:41:24.920 And there are other examples as well. But what happened with the 14th Amendment is what happened with the Constitution at large. 439 00:41:24.920 --> 00:41:37.920 The Constitution started off with a very specific understanding of what various clauses meant, as I showed weeks ago, and then it just became this kind of giant loophole you could drive a truck through. 440 00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:43.920 Same thing with the 14th Amendment. Initially it's very modest. It's only to just make sure these few things are being done. 441 00:41:43.920 --> 00:41:47.920 And then it just becomes a giant loophole to drive a truck through. 442 00:41:47.920 --> 00:41:52.920 Some of you may remember the case of the Citadel in South Carolina. It's South Carolina, right? The military academy. 443 00:41:52.920 --> 00:41:55.920 In the 1990s they were told that you have to admit women. 444 00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:58.920 And on what grounds were they told they had to admit women? 445 00:41:58.920 --> 00:42:02.920 Because you're violating the 14th Amendment by not having women in the citadel. 446 00:42:02.920 --> 00:42:09.920 Now, I'm pretty sure there were single-sex military academies at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified. 447 00:42:09.920 --> 00:42:12.920 And nobody thought that contradicted the amendment. 448 00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:18.920 But all of a sudden we discovered that we've been violating the law for over a hundred years and that we need to integrate that. 449 00:42:18.920 --> 00:42:32.920 So the 14th Amendment basically became one of the federal government's crowbars to work its way into local institutions and to in effect make sure that all sort of distinctive institutions were all flattened out and made the same. 450 00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:38.920 So that in the name of diversity, every single institution will look exactly the same. 451 00:42:38.920 --> 00:42:45.920 So you won't have all male military academies anymore. Every institution will look exactly the same. Men and women, this and that, they'll all be the same. 452 00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:49.920 So diversity will give us sameness, is what the 14th Amendment has done. 453 00:42:49.920 --> 00:42:54.920 So people who were concerned about it were not just stupid and racist and evil and wicked, 454 00:42:54.920 --> 00:42:59.920 but they did have legitimate concerns that have, unfortunately, proved all too well-founded.