Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

About the Author

The Fourteenth Amendment has many authors. It was legislation of the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress following the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. In general, the Republican majority in Congress was responsible for its major features and success. The criticisms of the Democratic minority did little to reshape the amendment.

John A. Bingham, a Republican representative from Ohio, is usually credited with the wording of the crucial first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. He was born in Mercer, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1815. He attended Franklin College in Ohio and later studied law. Bingham was admitted to the bar in 1840 and served as district attorney for Tuscarawas County, Ohio from 1846 to 1849. He was known for his antislavery sentiments and had advocated for the rights of free Blacks. In 1854, following the political turmoil of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bingham was elected to Congress. Although he was defeated in the 1862 congressional election, Lincoln employed Bingham's talents in the Bureau of Military Justice and then as solicitor in the U.S. Court of Claims. In the spring of 1865 he was a judge advocate in the commission that tried the Lincoln assassination conspirators. Bingham was returned to Congress, taking his seat in December 1865. In the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Bingham played an active role, especially in composing draft after draft of what would become the Fourteenth Amendment. Ironically, he was one of the few Republicans who agreed with President Johnson that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was unconstitutional. Bingham, however, felt that the true solution was a constitutional amendment legitimizing the federal government's protection of Black rights. In 1868 Bingham was instrumental in the impeachment of President Johnson. He failed to get renominated in 1872. President Grant appointed the former congressman to be minister to Japan in 1873, where he served for twelve years. Bingham died in Cadiz, Ohio, on March 19, 1900.

Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania, led a vigorous opposition to President Johnson's Reconstruction program. His motion created the Joint Committee on Reconstruction to investigate whether southern congressmen should be seated and to propose guidelines for the states' restoration. Stevens, who served as cochair of the Joint Committee, strove to secure maximum punishment of the former Confederates and maximum rights for the freedmen. Born in Danville, Vermont, on April 4, 1792, Thaddeus Stevens graduated from Dartmouth College in 1814 and moved to Pennsylvania that same year. He was admitted to the bar in 1816 and established a law practice in Gettysburg and later in Lancaster. He defended many fugitive slaves without taking a fee. Stevens served in the Pennsylvania legislature and the convention to revise the state constitution. He refused to sign the constitution because it restricted suffrage to white men. From 1849 to 1853 Stevens served in Congress as a Whig who opposed the extension of slavery. He returned to the House of Representatives in March 1859 as a Republican and represented Pennsylvania there until his death on August 11, 1868.

Stevens was the leader of the Radical Republicans in the House during and after the war. He was a vocal critic of Lincoln's moderation on slavery and Reconstruction. He felt that the former Confederate states were conquered territories and that Congress had primary responsibility to supervise such territories. Stevens pushed as hard as he could to secure Black suffrage and to disfranchise all Confederates whom he classified as traitors. Unlike some radicals, however, Stevens had a pragmatic streak. When leading the debate in favor of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, he responded to his fellow radicals that he was disappointed with the proposed amendment, but as to why he would “accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels” (ctd. in Foner, p. 255). Stevens continued to advocate Black suffrage as a condition of readmission to the Union. Two years later he demanded the impeachment of President Johnson, but he was fatally ill at the time and left the matter in the hands of others, including Bingham.

The members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction conducted the early debates on the Fourteenth Amendment. In January 1866 alone they received more than fifty proposals for constitutional amendments. From the House, in addition to Stevens and Bingham, were Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, Roscoe Conkling of New York, George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, Henry T. Blow of Missouri, Henry Grider of Kentucky, and Andrew J. Rogers of New Jersey. The Senate appointed as William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, James W. Grimes of Iowa, Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, Ira Harris of New York, George H. Williams of Oregon, and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland. Rogers, Grider, and Johnson were the only Democrats on the committee. Although he was often ill, Fessenden acted as a moderate counterbalance to Stevens's designs.