13th Amendment, 1865

The 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provides that "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.








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14th Amendment, 1968

On July 9, 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States," which included slaves recently freed.

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Reconstruction Act, 1867

 The act applied to all the ex-Confederate states in the South, except Tennessee who had already ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. 

 

Impeachment Trails, 1868

The Senate came within a single vote of taking the unprecedented step of removing a president from office. Although the impeachment trail of Andrew Johnson was ostensibly about a violation of the tenure of office act, it was about much more than that. Also on trail in 1868 were Johnson's lenient polices towards reconstruction and his vetoes of the freedman's bureau act the civil rights act.