Image of the first page of the U.S. Constitution - image from the State of Delaware site.

Civil War Amendments

The Civil War Amendments are changes to the United States Constitution that were made in the five years immediately following the Civil War.  The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were designed to restructure the United States into a country where all people were free and equal regardless of their race, including former slaves and their descendants. The Thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal. The Fourteenth Amendment included the Due Process Clause, which defined the principal that the government must respect all the rights that are owed to a person under the law, and the Equal Protection Clause, requiring the government to enforce the law in the same way for all citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment established the right of African American men to vote in elections.  Although these changes were made immediately following the end of the war, the rights that they guaranteed were not fully enforced for over 100 years, as African Americans continued to suffer unequal treatment and deprivation of their rights.