# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is the 14th Amendment Due Process Clause?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside." The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the "equal protection of the laws."

In the decades after its adoption, the equal protection clause was cited by a number of African American activists who argued that racial segregation denied them the equal protection of law. However, in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that states could constitutionally provide segregated facilities for African Americans, so long as they were equal to those afforded white persons. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which announced federal toleration of the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine, was eventually used to justify segregating all public facilities, including railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals, and schools. However, "colored" facilities were never equal to their white counterparts, and African Americans suffered through decades of debilitating discrimination in the South and elsewhere. In 1954, Plessy v. Ferguson was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
14th Amendment adopted - Jul 28, 1868 - HISTORY.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution. Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Dred Scott decision was the culmination of the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, one of the most controversial events preceding the Civil War. In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in that case, which had been brought before the court by Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri. Scott argued that time spent in a free state entitled him to emancipation. But the court decided that no black, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship, and therefore blacks were unable to petition the court for their freedom. The Dred Scott decision outraged abolitionists and heightened North-South tensions.

This convoluted case (1857), both a cause and an effect of sectional conflict, contributed to antebellum political and constitutional controversy. It also made Chief Justice Roger B. Taney seem a satanic figure to contemporary antislavery activists and many later historians.

Did you know? Dred Scott, along with several members of his family, was formally emancipated by his owner just three months after the Supreme Court denied them their freedom in the Dred Scott decision.

Who Was Dred Scott?

Dred Scott, a black slave, and his wife had once belonged to army surgeon John Emerson, who had bought him from the Peter Blow family of St. Louis. After Emerson died, the Blows apparently helped Scott sue Emerson's widow for his freedom, but lost the case in state court.

Because Mrs. Emerson left him with her brother John Sanford (misspelled Sandford in court papers), a New York citizen, Scott sued again in federal court, claiming Missouri citizenship. Scott's lawyers eventually appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Originally, Justice Samuel Nelson was to write a narrow opinion, arguing that the case belonged in the state, not a federal court. But northern antislavery justices John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts planned to dissent, arguing that Scott should be freed under the Missouri Compromise because he had traveled north of the 36°30′ line, whereas the Court's southerners wanted to rule the compromise unconstitutional.

Roger B. Taney

Among several opinions, Taney's was both the most important and the most tortuous. He ruled that blacks, slave or free, could not be citizens (Curtis showed this to be counter to precedent). Nor could Scott have become free by traveling north of the Missouri Compromise line; slavery, Taney said, could not be banned in the territories.

Six justices agreed that Scott was not a citizen, but disagreed over whether a freed slave could become a citizen. Nelson concurred in the ruling but not in its reasoning, and McLean and Curtis dissented.

Republicans assailed the decision, which they saw as an attempt to destroy their nascent party. Democrats divided over the Dred Scott case. Stephen A. Douglas ended up opposing it as counter to his doctrine of popular sovereignty.

Impact of the Dred Scott Decision

President James Buchanan's supporters considered it a final answer to the sectional controversy, although they were unaware at the time that Buchanan had influenced Justice Robert Grier of Pennsylvania to join the southern majority so that it would look less like a sectional decision.

The Dred Scott case remained the subject of noisy constitutional and historical debate and contributed to the divisions that helped lead to Abraham Lincoln's election and the Civil War.

The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
The groundbreaking series reimagined. ROOTS premieres Memorial Day at 9/8c on HISTORY.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Dred Scott decision was the culmination of the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, one of the most controversial events preceding the Civil War. In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in that case, which had been brought before the court by Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri.

# data[].attributes.body
The fourteenth amendment had many affects on different things during the Civil War. During the Civil War there was a  case called the Dred Scott Decision. This case was about a slave who searched for freedom through the government. The government denied his plea because no black person was granted citizenship. Dred Scott could not get what he wanted because he was known as property and property couldn't make their own decisions. Without the !4th amendment granting  equality to all people Scott would have been a slave forever.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv

# data[].attributes.body
The Civil War was fought all because some people agreed to allow slavery and others did not agree with it at all. The racism caused many political problems because different races did not get the same voting rights or equality that they wanted. The slaves were treated as property not citizens which made most blacks very upset. This conflict was tearing the country apart. Because of this the !4th amendment became very necessary and extremely important during this time.

# data[].attributes.body
The fourteenth amendment  was adopted on  July 9, 1868. It was about  citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws. This amendment was one of three very important amendments during the Civil War era. The amendment was split up into five different sections. Each of them stated in some way something about the equality of all citizens in different parts of government and state envolvement in the United States.