Following the war, Republicans, who controlled the United States Congress, took up the cause of the newly freed African Americans. Between 1865 and 1875, three amendments to the Constitution and a string of civil rights and Reconstruction legislation was passed by Congress. Amendment Thirteen to the United States Constitution, ratified December 18, 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude . Amendment Fourteen to the United States Constitution, ratified July 28, 1868, guaranteed citizenship and provided equal protection under the laws. Ratified March 30, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was designed to protect the right of all citizens to vote. In 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875 Congress passed civil rights legislation outlining and protecting basic rights, including the right to purchase and sell property and access to public accommodations. The Reconstruction acts , passed between 1867 and 1869, called for new state constitutional conventions in those states which had seceded from the Union prior to the Civil War.

Reconstruction eventually produced a wave of anti-African sentiment. White organizations, like the Ku Klux Klan, aimed at intimidating blacks and preventing them from taking their place in society, sprang up throughout the North and the South. In 1871 Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act as an effort to end intimidation and violence directed at blacks. However the act failed to exterminate the Klan and other terrorist organizations.

The civil rights and Reconstruction legislation were difficult for many whites to accept and did little to change their attitudes. The last of the civil rights acts, passed by Congress in 1875, prohibited discrimination in public accommodations. However, by the 1880s the debate as to the constitutionality of such legislation had reached the United States Supreme Court. Ruling in a group of five cases in 1883, which became known as the Civil Rights Cases , the United States Supreme Court concluded that the 1875 Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional on the grounds that the Fourteenth Amendment authorized Congress to legislate only against discriminatory state action, and not discrimination by private individuals. The Court's ruling brought about an end to federal efforts to protect the civil rights of African Americans until the mid-twentieth century.

Ratified December 18, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment formally abolishes slavery within the United States.

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.

This amendment, ratified July 23, 1868, provided a definition of both national and state citizenship. When the Supreme Court heard the case Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, it ruled that Africans imported into this county as slaves, and their descendants, where not and could never become citizens of the United States. The passage of the Fourteenth Amendment resolved the question of African-American citizenship.

The amendment also reversed what had been the traditional federal-state relationship in the area of citizen's rights. The Fourteenth Amendment provides for the protection of the privileges of national citizenship, and basic civil rights, and guarantees for all citizens equal protection under the law. It also provides the federal government with authority to intervene in cases where state governments have been accused of violating the constitutional rights of individuals.

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. (I have deleted this section)
Section 3. (I have deleted this section)
Section 4. (I have deleted this section)
Section 5. (I have deleted this section)

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Amendment Fifteen to the United States Constitution

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified March 30, 1870, was intended to protect the right of all citizens to vote. However, the amendment was not successful in bringing about a complete end to techniques designed to prevent blacks from voting; many state and local governments continued to employ such tactics as the use of  grandfather clauses , literacy tests, "white primaries," and poll taxes as prerequisites to, or deterrents to voting.
 

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 conditions of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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