Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader Part 25

1. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

2. "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for partic.i.p.ation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens, twenty-one years of age, in such State."

3. "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or Elector of President and Vice-president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Const.i.tution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

4. "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall a.s.sume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emanc.i.p.ation of any slave, but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void."

5. "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

Article XV.--Right of Suffrage.

1. "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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

2. "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

[1]The Articles of Confederation proved by experience inadequate to the wants of the people of the United States, and they were supplanted by the Const.i.tution.

"The American Const.i.tution, with its manifest defects, still remains one of the most abiding monuments of human wisdom, and it has received a tribute to its general excellence such as no other political system was ever honored with."--FREEMAN.

[2]This clause has been superseded by Amendment XIV., Sect. 2.

[3]This clause has been amended and superseded by the Twelfth Amendment to the Const.i.tution. By the provisions of the original clause the person in the electoral college having the greatest number of votes (provided he had a majority of the whole number of electors appointed) became President, and the person having the next greatest number of votes became Vice-president, thus giving the Presidency to one political party and the Vice-Presidency to another. In the year 1800 the Democratic Republicans determined to elect Thomas Jefferson President and Aaron Burr Vice-president. The result was that each secured an equal number of votes, and neither was elected. The Const.i.tution then, as now, provided that in case the electoral college failed to elect a President, the House of Representatives, voting as States, should elect. The Federalists distrusted and disliked Jefferson; the Democratic Republicans and some of the Federalists distrusted and disliked Burr. The vote in the House on the thirty-sixth ballot gave the Presidency to Jefferson and the Vice-Presidency to Burr. In order to prevent a repet.i.tion of so dangerous a struggle, the Twelfth Amendment, by which the electoral votes are cast separately for the candidates for President and for Vice-President, was proposed by Congress Dec. 12, 1803, and declared in force Sept. 25, 1804.

[4]More than seven hundred amendments to the Const.i.tution have been proposed since it was adopted. Several are usually proposed at each session of Congress.

The first twelve articles of amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution were adopted so soon after the original organization of the Government under it in 1789 as to justify the statement that they were practically contemporaneous with the adoption of the original (JUSTICE MILLER, _U.

S. Supreme Court_).

[5]In the case of Chisholm _vs_. The State of Georgia, the Supreme Court decided that under Article III., Section 2, of the Const.i.tution a private citizen of a State might bring suit against a State other than the one of which he was a citizen. This decision, by which a State might be brought as defendant before the bar of a Federal court, was highly displeasing to the majority of the States in 1794. On the 5th of March of that year the Eleventh Amendment was pa.s.sed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and declared in force January 8, 1798.

Practically, the amendment has been the authority for the repudiation of debts by several States.