Constitutional Amendments XIII - XV

I have heard the Constitution of the United States disparaged as an hypocrisy for having been written by a bunch of slave-holding plantation owners. This person did not hold it in reverence or judge it in the historical context of 18th century compromise, or admire Americans for having morally improved this Constitution by Amendment. Here are three powerful Amendments from the period immediately following the Civil War (Amendment XIV shown only in part to conserve space). As I recently said of the Bill of Rights, no book can do full justice to what is simply written in so few words. It is how good poetry plays to the mind.

Amendment XIII.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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 3. No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV.

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. And note that it is Congress that “shall have the power to enforce,” assuming that it can rise to the moral and legal level of its Amendments.