14th Amendment

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Thu May 20 11:41:27 PDT 1999


Charles and Mary Beard quote Roscoe Conkling as saying that the amendment was designed to protect individuals and joint stock companies who were:

"appealing for congressional and administrative protection against invidious and discriminating state and local taxes... That complaints of oppression in respect of property and other rights made by citizens of Northern States who took up residence in the South were rife in and out of Congress, none of us can forget... Those who devised the Fourteenth Amendment wrought in grave sincerity. They planted in the constitution a monumental truth to stand four square to whatever wind might blow. That truth is but the golden rule, so entrenched as to curb the many who would do to the few as they would not have the few do to them." (_The Rise of American Civilization_, Vol 2, pp. 112-13)

James Allen - who I mentioned in a previous post on this topic - refers to the _The Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction_ (39th Congress, 1865-1867) in which a Benjamin Kendrick states that the amendment's framers intended it to protect corporate property from state restrictions... Michael Hoover



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