by Ray Raphael
Amendment XIX
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919. Ratified August 18, 1920.
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 sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XX
Passed by Congress March 2, 1932. Ratified January 23, 1933.
Note: Article I, section 4, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of this amendment. In addition, a portion of the 12th amendment was superseded by section 3.
Section 1. The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.
Amendment XXI
Passed by Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933.
Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Amendment XXII
Passed by Congress March 21, 1947. Ratified February 27, 1951.
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
Amendment XXIII
Passed by Congress June 16, 1960. Ratified March 29, 1961.
Section 1. The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXIV
Passed by Congress August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXV
Passed by Congress July 6, 1965. Ratified February 10, 1967.
Note: Article II, section 1, of the Constitution was affected by the 25th amendment.
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Amendment XXVI
Passed by Congress March 23, 1971. Ratified July 1, 1971.
Note: Amendment 14, section 2, of
the Constitution was modified by section 1 of the 26th amendment.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXVII
Originally proposed September 25, 1789. Ratified May 7, 1992.
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Iam grateful to Marie Raphael and R. B. Bernstein for meticulous readings of the manuscript; to Pauline Maier, Woody Holton, Edward Larson, James Read, Jack Rakove, JeDon Emenhiser, Charles Biles, and Rebekah Evenson for their helpful comments; to David Rosen for legal tutoring; and to Marc Favreau for his enthusiastic support for the project.
NOTES
When citing Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention, I state the date only, not a page number. There are so many print editions and Internet sources that the date alone will suffice to locate the passage in question. If the date appears in my text, I provide no further reference.
Similarly, when citing The Federalist, because readers can access that work in so many ways, I provide only the number of the essay.
Short References
Annals of Congress—Annals of Congress, formerly The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, 1789–1824, Library of Congress, American Memory, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwae.html.
Most passages cited from Annals of Congress also appear by date and chamber of Congress in DHFFC (see below).
DHFFC—Linda Grant De Pauw, Charlene Bangs Bickford, Kenneth R. Bowling, Helen E. Veit, eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, March 4, 1789–March 3, 1791 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972–2012).
DHRC—Merrill Jensen et al., eds., Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976–). Jenson also founded and co-edited Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976–1990).
Farrand, Records of Federal Convention: Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911). Farrand includes not only Madison’s notes but also the convention’s official journal and less comprehensive notes taken by Robert Yates, Rufus King, James McHenry, William Pierce, William Paterson, Alexander Hamilton, and George Mason, as well as committee reports, printed drafts, and numerous letters from delegates. Farrand can also be accessed at Library of Congress, American Memory, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwfr.html.
Franklin, Papers—Leonard W. Labaree and William B. Willcox, eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 1959–).
Hamilton, Papers—Harold C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–87).
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist—originally published as The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, As Agreed Upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787 (New York: John and Archibald M’Lean, 1788), in Early American Imprints, Series I, Evans (1639–1800), document 21127. On the Internet: Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/fed.asp.
Journals of Continental Congress—Journals of the Continental Congress, Library of Congress, American Memory, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjclink.html.
Jefferson, Papers—Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–).
Kurland and Lerner, Founders’ Constitution—Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., The Founders’ Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/toc.html.
Madison, Notes of Debates—James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Adrienne Koch (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987). On the Internet: Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/debcont.asp.
Madison, Papers—Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962–; and Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977–). The volumes are arranged in four series: Congressional, Secretary of State, Presidential, and Retirement.
Schwartz, Bill of Rights—Bernard Schwartz, ed., The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History (New York: Chelsea House, 1971).
Statutes at Large—United States Statutes, at Large, on the Web at Library of Congress, American Memory, Lawmaking Home, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsl.html.
Veit, Bill of Rights—Helen E. Veit, Kenneth R. Bowling, and Charlene Bangs Bickford, eds., Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary Record from the First Federal Congress (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
Washington, Papers—W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983–). The volumes are numbered in separate series: Colonial, Revolutionary War, Confederation, Presidential, and Retirement. Although this is the most recent and authoritative collection, it is unfinished and can be augmented by the older Fitzpatrick collection (listed below) and the Washington papers in the Library of Congress.
Washington, Writings—John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1789 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931–44), http://etext.virginia.edu/washington/fitzpatrick/.
Preface: The Historical Constitution
1.Wendy L. Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 227–40. At the high-profile cities of Memphis and Birmingham, officials at the American Heritage Foundation, which organized and administered the project, called off the stops rather than submit to local demands for segregation. At other stops, though, informal compromises allowed segregated viewing, so long as separate lines did not form in segregated waiting rooms and the groups entering the train were in fact given equal time. For the Freedom Train’s documents, the American Heritage Foundation website, “The Story of the 1947–1949 Freedom Train,” Memorabilia, Documents of the Freedom Train, http://www.freedomtrain.org/freedom-train-m-documents-02.htm.
2.Madison, Notes of Debates, 17; DHRC; DHFFC.
3.For Madison’s evolution, see chapter 5, and for Hamilton’s, chapter 6. Jefferson is perhaps the most quoted founder of all, yet rarely are his words placed in context. We hear what he wrote about the role of government, individual rights, slavery, and so on, often with no mention of when he wrote it, what he was responding to, or who his audience was. His pronouncements on public matters spanned more than half a century, which included the years of unrest before the Revolution, declaring independence, the war to defend that independence, the hard times after the war, the framing and ratification of the Constitution, the turbulent politics of the 1790s, a quasi-war with France, a second war with Great Britain, and life in the new republic under six different presidents, including himself. During that time Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, served as governor of Virginia while the state was under British assault, represented the United States in France, served as the nation’s first secretary of state, became the leading critic of the ruling Federalist Party and the leading spokesman for the opposition Republican Party, advocated the right of states to nullify federal law, lost an election for the presidency, served as vice president under the man who beat him, and praised the French Revolution, only to see it result in the Reign of Terror and the rise of Napoleon
Bonaparte. During the two terms he served as president, Jefferson almost doubled the size of the nation (although he worried that this was unconstitutional) and he assumed nearly dictatorial powers to enforce the Embargo Acts of 1807–1808, the most extreme exercise of federal power until the Civil War.
All of these events, and Jefferson’s relationship to them, make a difference. When we interpret some statement he made about “liberty,” it makes a world of difference whether his words were meant to justify the fight against British tyranny, to promote opposition to a law passed by Congress and signed by the president of the United States, or with respect to his suppression of the anti-Embargo resistance.
Jefferson’s public and private life intersected with the institution of slavery on many levels. In 1769 he tried to make it easier for masters to free their slaves. In 1776 he proposed that “no person hereafter coming into this country [Virginia] shall be held in slavery under any pretext.” In 1783 he advocated the gradual emancipation of all slaves in Virginia after 1800. In 1784 he advocated the exclusion of slavery in the West. But he also argued that blacks were inherently inferior to whites (Notes on the State of Virginia, drafted in 1781 and published in 1785), tightened Virginia’s slave codes, offered a slave as a bounty for any white man who joined the army, claimed ownership of over 600 human beings during his lifetime (about 200 at a given moment), bred slaves for profit (“I consider the labor of a breeding woman as no object, and that a child raised every 2 years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man,” he wrote to his plantation manager in 1819), sold more than 100 men, women, and children to finance his architectural schemes at Monticello, and in 1820 vigorously opposed the Missouri Compromise because it invoked federal power to prohibit slavery in the Northwest. To take one statement and assume that it represented the whole of his relationship with slavery, or even the dominant stream of his thinking, is simply not possible.