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This document set includes the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution, also known as the Reconstruction Amendments, which abolished slavery and established the rights of former slaves. Additionally, it features original text from Black Codes, laws passed in the South after the Civil War to restrict the rights of free African-American men and women, and a statement from a former slave, Henry Adams, detailing his experiences during the early days of his freedom. The documents highlight the struggle for civil rights and equality during the Reconstruction era.
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of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
15 th^ Amendment (1870)
Fortieth Congress of the United States of America;
At the third Session, Begun and held at the city of Washington, on Monday, the seventh day of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight.
A Resolution Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both Houses concurring) that the following article be proposed to the legislature of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States which, when ratified by three- fourths of said legislatures shall be valid as part of the Constitution, namely:
Article XV.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude—
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The following example of “Black Codes” come from laws passed in Opelousas, Louisiana immediately after the Civil War.
"No negro or freedmen shall be allowed to come within the limits of the town of Opelousas without special permission from his employers.... Whoever shall violate this provision shall suffer imprisonment and two days work on the public streets, or pay a fine of five dollars. No negro or freedman shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within the limits of the town under any circumstances.... No negro or freedman shall reside within the limits of the town... who is not in the regular service of some white person or former owner... No public meetings or congregations of negroes or freedmen shall be allowed within the limits of the town.... No negro or freedman shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of colored people without a special permission from the mayor or president of the board of police.. .. No freedman ... shall be allowed to carry firearms, or any kind of weapons.... No freedman shall sell, barter, or exchange any article of merchandise within the limits of Opelousas without permission in writing from his employer.”
Source: In the years following the Civil War - throughout the South -state, city, and town governments passed laws to restrict the rights of free African-American men and women. These laws were often called “Black Codes.”
In 1865 the United States government created the Freedmen’s Bureau to help former slaves in Southern states. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped people by providing medical supplies, health care and establishing schools.
The creation of schools for former slaves was an important part of Reconstruction. Before the Civil War, Southern states outlawed the teaching of reading and writing to slaves.
Many of the negroes in some localities, common plantation negroes, and day laborers in the towns and villages, were supporting little schools themselves. Everywhere, I found among them a disposition to get their children into schools, if possible. I had occasion very frequently to notice that porters in stores and laboring men about cotton warehouses, and cart-drivers on the streets, had spelling-books with them, and were studying them during the time they were not occupied with their work. Go into the outskirts of any large town, and walk among the negro habitations, and you will see the children, and in many instances grown negroes, sitting in the sun alongside their cabins studying.
Source: Sydney Andrews quoted in the Joint Report on Reconstruction, 1866. The document above is an excerpt from a report by a Northern white man to the United States government in 1866.
