The Civil War and Its Aftermath: Civil Rights Laws and Constitutional Amendments–Retributive justice pursues and overtakes the guilty to the ends of the Earth. The World, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood and malice have clear conscience, he or she cannot fail to be sustained under his trials, and somehow or other to come right at last; in which case, say they who have hunted him down, –though we certainly do not expect it—nobody will be better pleased then we. Whereas, the World would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hears have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their won deserts only aggravating their suffering, and rendering the, them the less endurable.

In 1857, the case of Dred Scott v Standford, the Court bluntly ruled unconstitutional the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery north of the geographical boundary, at 36 degrees latitude, on a map of the United States of America. Furthermore, the Court found that slaves were not U.S. citizens. Therefore, they could not bring suits in federal court, as the court concluded that the enslaved Africans might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. Ironically, after the case was decided, Dred Scott’s owner freed him. The Civil War had many causes, including the political conflict between the North and South over nullification, a doctrine allowing states to declare federal laws null and void, and secession, which involved the right of states to leave the Union; the northern states’ increasing political strength in Congress, especially in the House of Representatives; southern agriculture versus northern industry; and the clash of conservative southern culture with more progressive northern ideas. Slavery, though, was clearly the key issue.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), abolitionists continued their antislavery pressure. They were rewarded when President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which provided that all slaves in the states still in active rebellion against the United States would be freed automatically on 1 January 1863. Designed as a measure to gain favor for the war in the North, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves—it freed only those who lived in the Confederacy. Complete abolition of slavery did not occur until congressional passage and ultimate ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1865. The Civil War Amendment—the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was the first of three Civil War Amendments. It banned all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude. Although southern states were required to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment as a condition of their readmission to the Union after the war, most of the former Confederate states quickly passed laws that were designed to restrict opportunities for newly freed slaves. These Black Codes prohibited African Americans from voting, sitting on juries, or even appearing in public places.

Although Black Codes prohibited African Americans laws denied most legal rights to newly freed slaves, they differed from state to state, all empowered local law-enforcement officials were allowed to arrest unemployed Blacks, fine them for vagrancy, and hire them out to employers to satisfy their fines. Some states codes went so far as to require African Americans to work on plantations or to be domestics. The Black Codes laid the groundwork for Jim Crow laws, which would later institute segregation in all walks of life. The outraged Reconstruction Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to invalidate state Black Codes. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the legislation, but—for the first time in history—Congress overrode a presidential veto. The Civil Rights Act formally made African Americans citizens of the United States of American and gave Congress and the federal courts the power to intervene when states attempted to restrict male African American citizenship rights in matters such as voting. Congress reasoned that African Americans were unlikely to fare well if they had to file discrimination complaints in state courts, where judges were elected. Passage of a federal law allowed African Americans to challenge discriminatory state practices in the federal courts, where judges were appointed by the President.

Because controversy remained over the constitutionality of the act (since the Constitution gives states the right to determine qualification of voters), the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed simultaneously with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to guarantee, among other things, citizenship to all freed slaves. Other key provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment barred states from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizenship or depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. However, it took federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans. Once federal troops were no longer available, Jim Crow laws started to pop un in the states, which prevented all interracial marriages, and basically made it illegal for Black to interact with Whites, in schools and public places. Southern resistance to African American equality led Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1875, designed to grant equal access to public accommodations such as theaters, restaurants, and transportation. The act also prohibited the exclusion of African Americans from jury service.

As you can see Constitutional Rights and the Federal government are extremely important to everyone is free to live and have protection under the laws. If the States are not monitored, by the all-powerful Federal Government, the states have a tendency to become corrupt.  There is no such thing as moral responsibility for past acts, no such thing as real justice in punishing them, for the reason that human beings are not stationary existences, but changing, growing, incessantly progressive organisms, which in no two moments are the same. Therefore, justice, whose only possible mode of proceeding is to punish in present time for what is done in past time, must always punish a person more or less similar to, but never identical with, the one whom committed the offense, and therein must be no justice. Proof must be built up stone by stone. Then end crowns the work. It is not enough that Justice should be morally certain; she must be immorally certain—legally, that is. Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so, some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Which means be kind to each other because the person next to you may be an angel and angels report to God.