One purpose of the 14A was to upend the twisted logic of the Dred Scott decision, which in part claimed Black folks could be enslaved because they weren't citizens. The 14th reverses that, to say that because people are citizens, they cannot be slaves. It is, thus, very much *not* "about slavery."
Reposted from
Larry Glickman
Opening with Trump’s claim that the 14th Amendment was “about slavery,” is, while true, also somewhat misleading. It was about, as Eric Foner writes, “the profound, difficult questions arising from…the destruction of slavery,” about, in other words, what a just society would look like post-slavery.
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