Editing Equal Protection Clause (section)

==Background==
[[File:BinghamFacingForward.jpg|right|thumb|Congressman [[John Bingham]] of [[Ohio]] was the principal framer of the Equal Protection Clause.]]
Though equality under the law is an American legal tradition arguably dating to the Declaration of Independence,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Antieau|first=Chester James|date=1952|title=Equal Protection outside the Clause|journal=California Law Review|volume=40|issue=3|pages=362–377|doi=10.2307/3477928|jstor=3477928|url=https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview/vol40/iss3/2|access-date=2019-07-08|archive-date=2019-10-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191013071041/https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview/vol40/iss3/2/|url-status=dead|url-access=subscription}}</ref> formal equality for many groups remained elusive. Before passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, which included the Equal Protection Clause, American law did not extend constitutional rights to black Americans.<ref name=":52">{{Cite news|url=https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/60/393/#tab-opinion-1964281|title=Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)|work=Justia Law|access-date=2018-11-10|language=en}}</ref> Black people were considered inferior to white Americans, and subject to chattel slavery in the [[Slave states and free states|slave states]] until the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] and the ratification of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]]. 

Even black Americans that were [[Free Negro|not enslaved]] lacked many crucial legal protections.<ref name=":52" /> In the 1857 ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' decision, the Supreme Court rejected [[abolitionism]] and determined black men, whether free or in bondage, had no legal rights under the U.S. Constitution at the time.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=2007|title=Dred Scott, 150 Years Ago|journal=The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education|issue=55|page=19|jstor=25073625}}</ref> Currently, a plurality of historians believe that this judicial decision set the United States on the path to the Civil War, which led to the ratifications of the Reconstruction Amendments.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Swisher|first=Carl Brent|date=1957|title=Dred Scott One Hundred Years After|journal=The Journal of Politics|volume=19|issue=2|pages=167–183|doi=10.2307/2127194|jstor=2127194|s2cid=154345582}}</ref> &nbsp;

Before and during the Civil War, the Southern states prohibited speech of pro-Union citizens, anti-slavery advocates, and northerners in general, since the [[Incorporation of the Bill of Rights|Bill of Rights did not apply to the states]] during such times. During the Civil War, many of the Southern states stripped the state citizenship of many whites and banished them from their state, effectively seizing their property.
Shortly after the Union victory in the [[American Civil War]], the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]] was proposed by Congress and [[Article Five of the United States Constitution#Ratification|ratified]] by the states in 1865, [[Abolitionism|abolishing]] [[slavery]]. Subsequently, many ex-[[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] states then adopted [[Black Codes (United States)|Black Codes]] following the war, with these laws severely restricting the rights of blacks to hold [[property]], including [[real property]] (such as [[real estate]]), and many forms of [[personal property]], and to form legally enforceable [[contracts]]. Such codes also established harsher [[Punishment|criminal consequences]] for blacks than for whites.<ref>For details on the rationale for, and ratification of, the Fourteenth Amendment, see generally {{cite book |title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863—1877 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060158514 |url-access=registration |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner |year=1988 |publisher=Harper & Row |location=New York |isbn=978-0-06-091453-0 }}, as well as {{cite book |title=Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking |last=Brest |first=Paul |year=2000 |publisher=Aspen Law & Business |location=Gaithersburg |isbn=978-0-7355-1250-4 |pages=241–242 |display-authors=etal}}</ref>

Because of the inequality imposed by Black Codes, a Republican-controlled Congress enacted the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866]]. The Act provided that all persons born in the United States were citizens (contrary to the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]''), and required that "citizens of every [[Race (classification of human beings)|race]] and color ... [have] full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens."<ref>See Brest ''et al.'' (2000), pp. 242–46.</ref>

President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 amid concerns (among other things) that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to enact such a bill. Such doubts were one factor that led Congress to begin to draft and debate what would become the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.<ref>Rosen, Jeffrey. ''The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America'', p. 79 (MacMillan 2007).</ref><ref>Newman, Roger. ''The Constitution and its Amendments'', Vol. 4, p. 8 (Macmillan 1999).</ref> Additionally, Congress wanted to protect [[Scalawag|white Unionists]] who were under personal and legal attack in the former Confederacy.<ref>Hardy, David. "Original Popular Understanding of the 14th Amendment As Reflected in the Print Media of 1866-68", Whittier Law Review, Vol. 30, p. 695 (2008-2009).</ref> The effort was led by the [[Radical Republicans]] of both houses of Congress, including [[John Bingham]], [[Charles Sumner]], and [[Thaddeus Stevens]]. It was the most influential of these men, John Bingham, who was the principal author and drafter of the Equal Protection Clause.

The [[Southern United States|Southern]] states were opposed to the Civil Rights Act, but in 1865 Congress, exercising its power under Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of the Constitution, to "be the Judge of the ... Qualifications of its own Members", had excluded Southerners from Congress, declaring that their states, having rebelled against the Union, could therefore not elect members to Congress. It was this fact—the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted by a "[[Rump legislature|rump]]" Congress—that permitted the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by Congress and subsequently proposed to the states. The ratification of the amendment by the former Confederate states was imposed as a condition of their acceptance back into the Union.<ref>See Foner (1988), passim. See also {{cite book |title=We the People, Volume 2: Transformations |last=Ackerman |first=Bruce A. |year=2000 |publisher=Belknap Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-674-00397-2 |pages=99–252 }}</ref>