Historical Events Leading To The Act
The act was created to enforce Fourteenth Amendment which was passed after events that took place at the end of the Civil War. Southern States initially were reluctant to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and many refused. As a result, congress sent military to the south and initiated radical reconstruction in the South. Lynchings stated to become very popular along with the destruction of many properties.
Also, Abraham Lincoln created the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. This document issued that all slaves should be freed in the states that had seceded from the union. This was a presidential order, and there was concern that it might be ignored. As a result, United States Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery completely. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was unsuccessful in ending slavery, and many states created “Black Codes” which were laws that put strict regulations on the newly freed slaves.
Read more about this topic: Enforcement Acts
Famous quotes containing the words historical, events, leading and/or act:
“Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature; they can offer no reason or “guess,” but they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces the reason and the understanding at the same time. Of such sort is always the only pertinent question and the only satisfactory reply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)
“of artists dying in childbirth, wise-women charred at the stake,
centuries of books unwritten piled behind these shelves;
and we still have to stare into the absence
of men who would not, women who could not, speak
to our life—this still unexcavated hole
called civilization, this act of translation, this half-world.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)