Reconstruction and Rights

The purpose of the 14th amendment was to protect the freed slaves from discriminatory state laws and grant them a citizenship status.

Reconstruction and Rights
In the latter half of the 1860s, Congress passed a series of acts designed to address the question of rights, as well as how the Southern states would be governed. These acts included the act creating the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and several Reconstruction Acts. The Reconstruction Acts established military rule over Southern states until new governments
could be formed. They also limited some former Confederate officials' and military officers' rights to vote and to run for public office. (However, the latter provisions were only temporary and soon rescinded for almost all of those affected by them.) Meanwhile, the Reconstruction acts gave former male slaves the right to vote and hold public office.

Congress also passed two amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment made black Americans citizens and protected citizens from discriminatory state laws. Former Confederate states did not get congressional representation until they adopted this amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed black American men the right to vote.