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In this volume, ten expert historians and legal scholars examine
the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first federal civil rights
statute in American history. The act declared that all persons born
in the United States were citizens without regard to race, color,
or previous condition of slavery. Designed to give the Thirteenth
Amendment practical effect as former slave states enacted laws
limiting the rights of African Americans, this measure for the
first time defined U.S. citizenship and the rights associated with
it. Essays examine the history and legal ramifications of the act
and highlight competing impulses within it, including the
often-neglected Section 9, which allows the president to use the
nation's military in its enforcement; an investigation of how the
Thirteenth Amendment operated to overturn the Dred Scott case; and,
New England's role in the passage of the act. The act is analyzed
as it operated in several states such as Kentucky, Missouri, and
South Carolina during Reconstruction. There is also a consideration
of the act and its interpretation by the Supreme Court in its first
decades. Other essays include a discussion of the act in terms of
contract rights and in the context of the post-World War II Civil
Rights Era as well as an analysis of the act's backward-looking and
forward-looking nature. Not only is the Civil Rights Act of 1866
historically significant as the moment in Reconstruction when the
federal government first sought to define national citizenship and
protect civil rights, it continues to frame citizenship and rights
debates and it is still used in federal lawsuits today.
Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers, politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Michael Vorenberg tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional amendment and argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation happened after, not before the Emancipation Proclamation; that the debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in party politics underestimated by previous historians, and that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the Constitution. Michael Vorenberg is an assistant professor of history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a research assistant to David Herbert Donald for his prize-winning biography, Lincoln, and he is a contributor to the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Reader's Companion to the American Presidency. This is his first book.
Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers,
politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border
states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the
inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Michael Vorenberg
tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional
amendment and argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation
happened after, not before the Emancipation Proclamation; that the
debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in
party politics underestimated by previous historians, and that the
abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a
novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the
Constitution. Michael Vorenberg is an assistant professor of
history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a
research assistant to David Herbert Donald for his prize-winning
biography, Lincoln, and he is a contributor to the Journal of the
Abraham Lincoln Association and the Reader's Companion to the
American Presidency. This is his first book.
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