John Bingham (1815 - 1900)
July 9th 1868: 14th Amendment ratified
On this day in 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified by the required number of states and thus officially adopted. The amendment, which was one of the three post-Civil War Reconstruction amendments, was crucial in guaranteeing rights to newly freed slaves. The 13th Amendment had abolished slavery, and in 1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, providing former slaves with the right to vote. The 14th Amendment was a momentous achievement, but the final version (written by Ohio Republican congressman John Bingham) which passed by Congress was one of the most conservative of the over 70 proposed drafts. More radical proposals included black suffrage, and included women in their furnishing of civil rights. However, the amendment was radical in that it gave African-Americans full citizenship, thus overruling Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) which ruled that African-Americans were not US citizens. The amendment also guaranteed people due process of law and “equal protection of the laws”. These clauses have especially lent the amendment to interpretation, and has been frequently used by the Supreme Court to guarantee rights and strike down actions which violate ‘equal protection’, famously ruling against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
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