The Emancipation Proclamation’s Effects on the Inclusion of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

    The southerners were now grasping for a way to keep blacks underneath themselves, and were in no condition to accept them as equals. Individual states after the war used their state rights to discriminate against blacks with devices such as Black Codes, Sharecropping, and Jim Crow Laws. The Black codes enacted in southern states took away some civil liberties and rights that a normal person in the area would have. These consisted of rules such as forfeiting all pay to a landowner if you left your job before a crop season had been completed. Young males and females were able to be “apprenticed” until 21 for males and 18 for women. This was basically an excuse for enslaving youth until they came of age.

Sharecropping was a form of glorified and legal slavery. Tenants, mainly being former slaves, would farm land using tools, seed, supplies, and food/housing owned by the landowner. After each season, the tenant would pay fees for all used supplies, as well as supply an agreed upon percentage of the crop grown that year. This disabled freedmen from moving up the social ladder by allowing little gain in capital, and sometimes even forcing them into debt. Jim Crow laws also inhibited newly freed slaves from gaining equality. States got away with setting discriminating laws such as: Black males could not shake hands with a white man, Blacks and whites could not eat together, and Blacks could not show affection with others in public because it was considered offensive.

    The next of the Civil War Amendments, number 14, was caused due to the Emancipation Proclamation having no say on the issue of freedmen and their citizenship to the union. Individual state constitutions had found another way in discriminating against freedmen, by not considering them citizens. States believed their state constitutions did not necessarily need to compare closely to the Bill of Rights.  Lack of citizenship meant that freedmen would lack basic rights that citizens could possess. This caused complications such as freedmen being unable to file lawsuits or testify at all in courts. This unintentional lack of specification on Lincoln’s part in the Emancipation Proclamation led to ratification of the 14th amendment on July 9th, 1868. The amendment specified that states must ensure equal protection of law to everyone, and promised citizenship to all in the union.

    After the 14th amendment, a new issue arose in states attempting to keep freedmen considered as lower than white men. Blacks were gaining power with their newly acquired citizenship, and southern states were intent on not letting them go any further. No specification existed in either the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th and 14th amendments that could stop individual states from restricting freedmen from voting. The fifteenth amendment was ratified on February 3rd, 1870. It specifically stated each state government would be prohibited from preventing any citizen from voting based on color, race, or previous obligations of servitude. This amendment could have contributed to the motivation of people like Frederick Douglas, an active American abolitionist who ran for Vice President in 1872. By this point in time, it becomes noticeable that despite repeated attempts by the northern states to put an end to what the Civil War was supposed to finish, Southern states were continuing to relentlessly pursue their racist beliefs in placing colored men below themselves. It is also noticeable that Lincoln unintentionally caused the need for amendments 13-15 by enacting the Emancipation Proclamation for military purposes and not fully considering the solidity and longevity such a document wouldn’t provide to a section of the nation dead set on their racist and hateful beliefs of equal men.