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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Amendment XIII Ratified December 6, 1865
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Slavery abolished throughout the United States.
Amendment XV
Ratified February 3, 1870 Section 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. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Right of black men to vote.
Amendment XVIII Ratified January 16, 1919 Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Prohibition
Amendment XIX 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.
Votes for women.
Amendment XXI Ratified December 5, 1933
Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Prohibition Repealed
Amendment XXII 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
Enacted after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to four consecutive terms, breaking the precedent set by George Washington, who stepped down from office after two terms, and followed by every President up to FDR.
Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the 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.
Amendment XXV
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
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.
Amendment XXVI
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.
This never appeared in Lincoln's public speeches, but it is possible that he composed it while writing his First Inaugural Address. It draws upon the King James translation of Proverbs 25:11—"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver"—to describe the relationship between the principles of the Declaration and the purpose of the Constitution.
All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could
not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of "Liberty to all"—the principle that clears the path for all—gives hope to all—and, by consequence, enterprise, and industry to all.
The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was mos...
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No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.
The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us.
The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to co...
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adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the a...
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The readings in this section illustrate four basic principles of the American Revolution.
I. Every human being is equally a creature of God endowed with a natural right to life, liberty, and property.
Human beings are unequal in many respects, but they are equal in
their possession of natural rights.
Similarly, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, Gad Hitchcock, and Alexander Hamilton argue in this section that while every man is subject to God, the only true monarch in the universe, no man is natu...
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II. The purpose of government is limited to securin...
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Natural rights exist prior to any government. Thus government is not the source of rights. Rather, governments are ...
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Justice is the true end or purpose of government.
III. The authority of government derives from the consent of the governed.
Following from the principle of equality, every man is (or ought to be) subject to and obligated only to God, and not obligated to obey or be subject to the authority of any government except that to which he has cons...
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Through consent, men create government to secure the rights they cannot secure by themselves, delegating certain powers to government.
IV. Whenever any government routinely and continually goes beyond the consent of the governed, free men must resist its tyrannical usurpations, even at the risk of their lives and fortunes, as required by sacred honor.
Its arguments contain the seed of the American Revolution—an appeal to natural rights applied against particular abuses of political power.
Revolution. But John Adams remarked that he had never known a man "whose service for any ten years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of
his country as those of Mr. Otis from ...
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I affirm that government is founded on the necessity of our natures; and that an original supreme Sovereign, absolute, and uncontrollable, earthly power must exist in and preside over every society; from whose final decisions there can be no appeal but directly to Heaven.
It is therefore originally and ultimately in the people.
Tyranny of all kinds is to be abhorred, whether it be in the hands of one, or of the few,
or of the many.—And
Yet "slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hard to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it"....
But let the origin of government be placed where it may, the end of it is manifestly the good of the whole.
Every British Subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great-Britain.
1st. That the supreme and subordinate powers of legislation should be free and sacred in the hands where the community have once rightfully placed them.
2ndly. The supreme national legislative cannot be altered justly till the commonwealth is dissolved, nor a subordinate legislative taken away without forfeiture or other good cause.
3rdly. No legislative, supreme or subordinate, has a right to make itself arbitrary.
4thly. The supreme legislative cannot justly assume a power of ruling by extempore arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice by known settled rules, and by duly authorized independent judges.
