ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION - Birthright Citizenship | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Yet these very governments had been denied representation in Congress, and, as we shall see, would be abolished and the South divided into military districts after their refusal to ratify. Against this dubious background, some states began to ratify the Amendment. Twenty-eight states were needed to ratify, and rejection by ten states would prevent ratification. The first wave of states to ratify included Connecticut, New Hampshire, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Oregon. The ratifications of Tennessee and Oregon, however, are troublesome. In Tennessee, opponents of the Amendment absented themselves from the House in order to prevent a quorum. This did not stop the supporters of the Amendment, who forcibly seized two absent members and held them in a committee room. The House ignored a court order to release the two and overruled the Speaker, who ruled there was no quorum present. Thus, the Tennessee House voted for ratification amid significant controversy.

    Ratification in Oregon was also irregular. The Amendment supporters had a three vote majority in the House, but two of their seats were disputed. The Amendment was quickly put to a vote and ratified by three votes. The disputed seats were later awarded to Democrats on the grounds that the Republican supporters of the Amendment were illegally elected. Therefore, Oregon would later rescind, by one vote, its ratification of the 14th Amendment.

    Regardless of these controversies, by February 1, 1867, only seventeen states had ratified the 14th Amendment and eleven had rejected it, one more than the ten required to prevent ratification. The 14th Amendment appeared defeated. Congress would have to formulate a new strategy to get the Amendment ratified. This new strategy would see Congress exercise power well beyond that contemplated by Article V, and the ratification of the 14th Amendment began a course of action that cannot be squared with the text of the Constitution.

    Enter - The Reconstruction Acts.

    Senator Doolittle of Wisconsin, in a statement before Congress, demonstrated quite clearly the new strategy Congress would pursue to ensure the ratification of the 14th Amendment: "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 bayonet, and establish military power over them until they do adopt it."

    This statement exemplified how many moderate Republicans were exasperated by the South's refusal to accept the 14th Amendment. This refusal, coupled with rising violence against blacks in the South and President Johnson's botched plan to promote Southern re-admission, resulted in a resounding victory for Republicans in the 1866 Congressional election. The Republicans viewed this one-sided victory as a mandate in favor of the 14th Amendment, and would not allow the initial rejection by the South to curb their efforts to seek its ratification."

    Indeed, on March 2, 1867, Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act over President Johnson's veto. The Act stated that "no legal State governments . . . exist in the rebel States," and divided the South, with the exception of Tennessee, into military districts. The Act served to enfranchise black males and to disenfranchise large numbers of white voters. Moreover, the Act required these voters in each state to form new constitutions, to be approved by Congress, and to ratify the 14th Amendment. Even then, however, before the "State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress," the 14th Amendment must have "become a part of the Constitution of the United States." The Act further proclaimed that "until the people of said rebel States shall be by law admitted to representation in the Congress of the United States, any civil governments which may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only, and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States at any time to abolish, modify, control, or supersede the same."

    Yale University scholar, Bruce Ackerman, noted that, "Up until now, it was possible to drape a legal fig leaf over each Congressional action. But at this point, we are in the presence of naked violations of Article Five."' University of Alabama history professor, Forrest McDonald, has stated that, "the act flew in the face of the Constitution in a large variety of ways." Thus, as these commentators note, there is simply no way to fit the Reconstruction Acts within the bounds of the Constitution, yet the 14th Amendment owes its existence in the Constitution to this troublesome legislation.


    Additionally, the Reconstruction Act seemed to run afoul of a recent decision (1866) of the Supreme Court. In Ex parte Milligan," the Court held that military trials of civilians in times of peace and outside of war zones were un-constitutional, and stated that "martial rule can never exist where the courts are open." Since the Civil War had been over for almost two years prior to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and because Southern governments and courts had been operating for some time, the Reconstruction Act seemed to run counter to the Court's ruling in Milligan. Further, the Court spoke of martial law in strong terms:

    "If the country is subdivided into military departments for mere convenience . . . republican government is a failure, and there is an end of liberty regulated by law, martial law, established on such a basis, destroys every guarantee of the Constitution, and effectually renders the 'military independent of and superior to the civil power."

    The Republicans in Congress denounced the decision as a "piece of judicial impertinence which we are not bound to respect." Others said that the War was not over until Congress said so, and in the meantime the South was a war zone in which martial law could be imposed. At any rate, Congress, as we shall further see, had no intention of letting the Supreme Court get in its way. The Reconstruction Act also deprived most white voters in the South of their political rights, without due process of law, on a whole-sale basis. President Johnson noted this in his lengthy veto message:

    "Here is a bill of attainder against 9,000,000 people at once. It is based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible and found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the 9,000,000 was heard in his own defense. The representatives of the doomed parties were excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction is to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on large masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands and degrades them all, even those who are admitted to be guiltless, from the rank of freemen to the condition of slaves."

    Congress quickly brushed aside President Johnson's stinging veto message.

    More importantly, in holding that no legitimate republican state governments existed in the South, with the exception of Tennessee, Congress had trapped itself in an interesting inconsistency. These same governments had been called upon to ratify the 13th Amendment. Five Southern states had ratified the 13th Amendment and their votes had been counted towards the required two-thirds majority. How could these governments have been legitimate enough to ratify the 13th Amendment, but not legitimate when they rejected the 14th? Once again, then, we are faced with the "13th -14th Amendment paradox,"' which plagues the 14th Amendment from proposal to ratification. For, if Congress was right, and no legitimate state governments actually existed in the South, then Secretary of State Seward7s proclamation that the 13th Amendment was ratified is also illegitimate. Therefore the 13th Amendment has not really been ratified, and slavery has not constitutionally been abolished. But if Congress was wrong, and the Southern governments were legitimate, then the 14th Amendment is dead at this point. Therefore the Reconstruction Act is unconstitutional because the South's legitimate governments had been denied representation in Congress during the Amendment's proposal and had rejected the proposed amendment once submitted to them.


    Placing aside this "13th-14th Amendment Paradox" for the moment, if possible, there are further problems and inconsistencies on the face of the Reconstruction Act. The coercive nature of the Act itself is well beyond anything contemplated by Article V. Article V gives Congress the power to propose amendments and allows them to determine whether ratification will be by state legislatures or state conventions. Through the Reconstruction Act, however, Congress is attempting to exert a power to override a veto by the states of a proposed amendment. The Southern governments must have been viewed as legitimate because they were allowed to ratify the 13th Amendment and were initially sent the 14th Amendment. But now, through the Reconstruction Act, Congress is saying that their refusal to accept the Amendment has deprived them of all political power in the councils of the nation. Further, Congress is also telling the South that if they ever want that power back, the 14th Amendment must become part of the Constitution, and until it does, the South will be governed by the Union army. This is entirely inconsistent with the limited power granted to Congress in Article V. Surely, the founding fathers never contemplated that an amendment to the Constitution could be lawfully compelled "at the point of the bayonet," or that a state could be placed under the duress of continued and compelling military force to achieve the ratification of a desired amendment.

    Even placing aside the coercive nature of the Reconstruction Act, there is a further unavoidable problem with the Act's inconsistent internal logic. The Act stated that no legal republican state governments existed in the South. According to the Act, in order for Congress to legally recognize Southern governments, the 14th Amendment must have been ratified by the Southern states, and must have become part of the Constitution. The key inconsistency is that the Amendment must have been ratified by the provisional government of a Southern state before that government was legally recognized. Yet, what good is ratification by a government that is not legally recognized or entitled to representation in Congress? And if ratification by a congressionally unrecognized state government is allowed, why can't an unrecognized state government reject an amendment?

    With this problem duly noted, we may now further question the ratification of the 14th Amendment by Tennessee. Tennessee had initially ratified the 14th Amendment when other Southern governments had rejected it. Upon ratification of the 14th Amendment by Tennessee, Congress, on July 24, 1866, declared Tennessee restored to the Union. But Tennessee's government had been set up under the direction of the Chief Executive, as had all the other Southern governments. Tennessee's government was no different from the other Southern governments, with the exception that it had enough votes to ratify the 14th Amendment. So, if Tennessee's government was legitimate enough to accept the 14th Amendment, why were the other Southern governments illegitimate when they refused? But as Congress's proclamation points out, Tennessee was declared restored to the Union because it had ratified the 14th Amendment. Again, this raises the question, what good is a ratification from a state whose government is not legally recognized?

    This, however, brings us back to a now familiar problem. If the Southern governments were legitimate enough to ratify the 13th Amendment, and Tennessee's government was legitimate enough to ratify the 14th, then the Reconstruction Acts cannot be constitutional. For Congress had no more power in 1867 to abolish a valid state government, than it would today to put New England under military rule for refusing to ratify a proposed anti-abortion amendment.

    Both North and South realized the Reconstruction Acts stood on unstable constitutional grounds, and that the Supreme Court would likely have the final say. In fact, after the Milligan decision, Congress had introduced a flurry of bills and constitutional amendments seeking to limit the power of the Supreme Court. The House passed a bill which would have required a two-thirds Court majority to overturn legislation deemed unconstitutional, but the bill did not make it out of the Senate. Some congressional Republicans even sought to have the Supreme Court abolished. These Republican attacks on the Supreme Court may have convinced some justices "that discretion was the better part of valor,"' because the Court would dismiss two suits by state officials in the South to enjoin the enforcement of the Reconstruction Acts.

    In Mississippi v. Johnson (1866), the Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction against enforcement of the Reconstruction Acts by the President. The Court noted that if it did grant the injunction against the President on the grounds of unconstitutionality, the President might very well be impeached by the House for complying with the Court order and refusing to enforce the Act. The Court cited this "collision . . . between the executive and legislative departments" in refusing to grant the injunction, and therefore dodged the question of the Reconstruction Acts' constitutionality.