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1 Ga. J. S. Legal Hist. 1 (1991)
Was the Fourteenth Amendment Constitutionally Adopted

handle is hein.journals/jslh1 and id is 11 raw text is: Was the Fourteenth Amendment Constitutionally Adopted? BY FORREST MCDONALD* D uring and after the Civil War, Southerners repeatedly de- clared that the cause for which they fought was the sub- lime moral principle of states' rights. Given such protesta- tions, and given the history of southern resistance to federal authority throughout the antebellum period, it is easy enough to associate states' rights exclusively with the South-but it is also mistaken. Connecticut and Massachusetts endorsed inter- position in 1808; the Hartford Convention of 1814 did the same. In 1840 Vermont made it a crime to aid in the capture of a runaway slave, despite the federal fugitive slave act. In 1846 the Massachusetts House of Representatives declared the Mexican War unconstitutional; a decade later Wisconsin as- serted the supremacy of its supreme court over the United States Supreme Court. Yet it was the seceding states that had carried the doc- trine of states' rights to the extreme, and northern Radical Republicans, in their zeal to punish, plunder, and reconstruct the South, were willing to undermine the doctrine as part of their undertaking. Whatever else the Radicals had in mind in pushing through the Reconstruction Amendments-their mo- tives were diverse and conflicting-it is clear that some of them, at least, intended that the Fourteenth should greatly increase the powers of Congress at the expense of the states. It is also clear that the process of adopting the Fourteenth Amendment was marred by repeated irregularities. President Andrew Johnson questioned the legitimacy of an amendment proposed by a Congress that represented only twenty-five of the thirty-six states. Three northern states that ratified the proposal later rescinded their votes. All the southern states * Professor of History, University of Alabama GEORGIA JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN LEGAL HISTORY VOL. 1, No. 1, SPRING/SUMMER 1991

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