The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution - Fourteenth Amendment - anchor babies and birthright citizenship - interpretations and misinterpretations - US Constitution The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads in part: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside." Babies born to illegal alien mothers within U.S. borders are called anchor babies because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency. The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Post-Civil War reforms focused on injustices to African Americans. In 1866, Senator Jacob Howard clearly spelled out the intent of the 14th Amendment by stating: "Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This understanding was reaffirmed by Senator Edward Cowan, who stated: For more information, see:
Reconstruction - American Civil War At the outset of the Civil War, to the dismay of the more radical abolitionists in the North, President Abraham Lincoln did not make abolition of slavery a goal of the Union war effort. To do so, he feared, would drive the border slave states still loyal to the Union into the Confederacy and anger more conservative northerners. By the summer of 1862, however, the slaves themselves had pushed the issue, heading by the thousands to the Union lines as Lincoln’s troops marched through the South. Their actions debunked one of the strongest myths underlying Southern devotion to the “peculiar institution”–that many slaves were truly content in bondage–and convinced Lincoln that emancipation had become a political and military necessity. Emancipation changed the stakes of the Civil War, ensuring that a Union victory would mean large-scale social revolution in the South.
14th Amendment | Constitution | US Law Amendment XIV Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. Section 3. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. Section 5.
Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) The Civil War (1861-65) was perhaps the most momentous event in American history. The survival of the United States as one nation was at risk, and on the outcome of the war depended the nation's ability to bring to reality the ideals of liberty, equality, human dignity, and justice. Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860 brought to a climax the long festering debate about the relative powers of the federal and the state governments. As important as the war itself was the tangled problem of how to reconstruct the defeated South.
Carpetbaggers & Scalawags - American Civil War In general, the term “carpetbagger” refers to a traveler who arrives in a new region with only a satchel (or carpetbag) of possessions, and who attempts to profit from or gain control over his new surroundings, often against the will or consent of the original inhabitants. After 1865, a number of northerners moved to the South to purchase land, lease plantations or partner with down-and-out planters in the hopes of making money from cotton. At first they were welcomed, as southerners saw the need for northern capital and investment to get the devastated region back on its feet. They later became an object of much scorn, as many southerners saw them as low-class and opportunistic newcomers seeking to get rich on their misfortune.
Sharecropping | Slavery By Another Name Bento After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. Sharecropping is a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could, and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities. In the South, after the Civil War, many black families rented land from white owners and raised cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice. In many cases, the landlords or nearby merchants would lease equipment to the renters, and offer seed, fertilizer, food, and other items on credit until the harvest season. High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next.
The Carpetbagger - Civil War - Brief History of Carpetbags and Carpetbaggers With the rapid expansion of railroads in the 1840’s and 1850’s . Ordinary people were traveling in large numbers, and there was an need for cheap luggage ,so thousands of carpetbags were manufactured. They were made by saddle makers in many town and cities and were many sizes and shape. They were called Carpetbags because the makers would buy old carpets and construct the bags from the pieces of carpet that were not completely worn out. By the 1860’s carpetbags were carried by all most everyone, Men, Women, well to do , middle class and not so well to do. During the civil war Reconstruction Period (1865-1870) many people for the Northern States went South because it was so poor that there many opportunities for a person with money even a little money.
Sharecropping and tenant farming Sharecropping was common throughout the South well into the twentieth century, and required the work of entire families. In this famous photograph, a six year-old girl picks cotton in Oklahoma. (Photograph by Lewis W. After the Civil War, thousands of former slaves and white farmers forced off their land by the bad economy lacked the money to purchase the farmland, seeds, livestock, and equipment they needed to begin farming. Tenant farmers usually paid the landowner rent for farmland and a house. Sharecroppers seldom owned anything. Over the years, low crop yields and unstable crop prices forced more farmers into tenancy. Next: Life on the land: Voices
TENANT FARMING AND SHARECROPPING When the Civil War ended, the big question concerned the state of the freed slaves of the South. Recovery of the southern economy depended on getting the freedmen back into the cotton fields. During the period of Reconstruction the Radical Republicans in Congress tried to convert the freedmen into small free-holding farmers, but the former slaves were simply not ready to manage their own farms. Instead of working in gangs as they had on antebellum plantations, the freedmen became tenants. In the decades after Reconstruction tenancy and sharecropping became the way of life in the Cotton Belt. As farm tenancy grew, a tenancy ladder evolved. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of farmers fell down the tenancy ladder rather than moving up it. Sharecropping and tenancy remained accepted as a normal part of southern life until the Great Depression. Although there are similarities, the story of tenancy in Oklahoma does not fit the pattern of southern farm tenancy. BIBLIOGRAPHY: David E.
Definition of Sharecropping - 19th Century History Sharecropping was a system of agriculture instituted in the American South in the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. It essentially replaced the plantation system which had existed, with slave labor, in the years before the war. In sharecropping, a poor farmer who did not own land would work a plot belonging to a landowner. The farmer would receive a share of the harvest as payment. Generally speaking, sharecropping doomed freed slaves to a life of poverty. Beginning of the Sharecropping System Following the elimination of slavery, the plantation system in the South could no longer exist. The millions of freed slaves also had to face a new way of life. Many freed slaves were illiterate, and all they knew was farm work. Indeed, with freedom, many former slaves aspired to become independent farmers owning land. In reality, former slaves were seldom able to establish themselves as independent farmers. How Sharecropping Worked Economic Effects of Sharecropping
Ku Klux Klan - Facts & Summary In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon’s 1905 book “The Clansman” and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.” This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan’s membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944.