In school, as well as throughout our daily lives, we learn in America to live by the idea of freedom and equality for all. We do not allow race, class, or creed to determine a person’s stature in the community. It may seem as if this is the standard of society, but these ideas of equality have been fought over since the beginning of written history, and even in America today, prejudice still exists. To address these and similar problems, the founding fathers of this nation created a Constitution which included laws that dealt with individual freedoms. However great the founding fathers envisioned the United States Constitution, it did not form a perfect union and justice for all. America would have to amend, or add to, the Constitution in order to serve its constituents better. The most powerful constitutional act towards equality would come with the fourteenth amendment. This amendment permanently changed constitutional law by empowering the Federal government’s jurisdiction to include local and state governments which would be required to abide by new standards of civil rights and privileges.
The passage of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was a significant event in the history of our country because it made anyone born here citizens, established how representatives each state gets and paid off the war debts for the North. On June 8th and 13th, 1866 the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was passed by both houses of congress. The stated purpose of the fourteenth amendment was to grant citizenship and to protect and define the civil rights of freed slaves. In reality, the purpose of the fourteenth amendment was to ensure the northern states have political and economic advantage over the southern states. Furthermore, section two of the fourteenth amendment allowed the north to legally deny the right to vote to almost every white man in the south. This was done by using