Doc of the Day: July 9
July 9th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
On July 9, 1868, the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Ratification was declared in a certificate by the secretary of state on July 28.) The Fourteenth Amendment extended citizenship and rights to the freed slaves and excluded many prominent former Confederates from government. It revised the formula for congressional reapportionment and settled the status of wartime debts. Although today three of its five sections are nonfunctional, the first section of the amendment has been used, especially since the mid-1900s, to expand significantly the rights of African Americans and other groups in society.
