Symposium - the Maryland Constitutional Law Schmooze - Foreword: Plus or Minus One: the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments

Mark A. Graber

Conventional wisdom maintains that ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment mooted a heated controversy over the scope of the Thirteenth Amendment. That controversy broke out during the debates over the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill of 1866 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Most Republicans insisted those laws were appropriate means for enforcing the Thirteenth Amendment. President Andrew Johnson, the Democrats in Congress, and a few Republicans insisted that the Congressional power under the Thirteenth Amendment was limited to legislation abolishing slavery and did not authorize the national legislature to pass laws protecting freed persons of color from discrimination short of enslavement. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1866 passed over President Johnson’s veto, Republicans recognized that the substantive rights of freed blacks needed firmer constitutional foundations. Hence, they framed and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.