14th Amendment History

A legitimate professional historian writes:

It's not even clear Scalia has the legislative history of the 14th Amendment right. Rep. Benjamin Butler was present at the creation, and he believed the 14th Am. had the potential to guarantee equal protection for female citizens. Same with Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who affirmed a woman's equal right to practice law in his 1873 dissent in Bradwell v. Illinois. Chase was not only closer than his fellow justices to the men who wrote the Amendment, he was much more deeply involved in the debates of the Reconstruction period.

I'd go stronger. Scalia is clearly mistaken about the legislative history. He said "Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that." Clearly at least some people thought that.

But this is obviously the problem with trying to ascertain meaning with reference to the subjective beliefs of multiple collective entities. For an amendment to be ratified a ton of people have to vote for it and they have different things in their heads.