EXPLORING THE! ! ! ! ! ! !

UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

The three branches of government as
demonstrated through the holdings of the
National Archives
 Basis of the Three Branches of American Government
In celebration of the 225th anniversary of the signing
of the Constitution, we have compiled a selection of writings
published over the last three decades by the education staff at
the National Archives and Records Administration. Each
chapter connects one or more of the billions of records in
the holdings of the National Archives to the principles found
in the United States Constitution. These records exemplify
the workings of the three branches of the federal government
as laid out in our Constitution.
The Constitution of the United States
The Constitution is the document that established our
three branches of American government: legislative,
executive, and judicial. Chapter 1 of this book features
the four page Constitution that was signed by delegates to the
Constitutional Convention in 1787, as well as the:
Resolution Concerning Ratification
After months of debate and drafts culminated in the final
i
Constitution, delegates submitted this resolution to
Congress explaining what they hoped would happen next.
The Legislative Branch
Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in
a Congress of the United States, made up of the Senate and
House of Representatives. The following documents in
Chapters 2 - 7 demonstrate the legislative branch in action:
1820 Census of Manufactures

It is the job of Congress to determine what specific
information should be gathered in a census, conducted
every 10 years. In 1820, appeals for government aid to
business led Congress to provide for a Census of
Manufactures to learn more about industries throughout
the country.

1791 Senate Compensation Schedule

The Constitution provides that the “Senators and
Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their The Executive Branch
Services.” This 1791 schedule for Senate compensation is
a result of the first Congress’ decision regarding Article II of the Constitution states that “The Executive
members’ pay. Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of
America.” Along with ancillary executive departments and
agencies, the President is responsible for enforcing the law.
Patent Drawings
 The president takes an oath to “faithfully execute the Office
Patent drawings of a sewing machine, see saw, light bulb, of President of the United States, and...to the best of [his]
and a flying machine provide examples of Congress’ role Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the
to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”
 United States."
The following documents, maps and photographs in
Letter Regarding School Lunch Program
 Chapters 8 - 15 demonstrate the executive branch in action:

In a letter to the Senate, a Florida Parent Teacher
Association president urged support for a Federal school
Louisiana’s Electoral Ballot and Letter from Governor
lunch program.

Kellogg Calling Electors into Question

The Constitution provides for the election of a President
26th Amendment
 by state-appointed Electors. Contested electoral votes—
A resolution proposing a 26th amendment to extend the such as those in Louisiana— in the 1876 presidential
vote to 18-year-olds highlights the Congressional job of election challenged the electoral system and led to the
initiating amendments.
 creation of an electoral commission.


Child Labor
 Congressman Abraham Lincoln’s “Spot Resolutions”


Documents related to child labor in the United States,
including photographs by Lewis Hine and a proposed
child labor amendment, highlight the tension between
federal and states’ rights in our history.
In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution designates the
Congress as the branch of the federal government with
the ability to declare war. In 1846, President James K.
Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war against
Mexico. Congressman Abraham Lincoln’s “spot
resolutions” challenged President Polk’s assertion that the

ii
conflict in Mexico was cause for war. 
 integration. 


Executive Order 9066
 President Kennedy’s Address to the Nation on the James
This presidential role also brought Franklin D. Roosevelt Meredith Case

to issue Executive Order 9066 authorizing “military On October 1, 1962, President Kennedy delivered an
areas” that interned Japanese Americans during World address to the nation in which he announced an executive
War II and calling civil liberties into question.
 order. The order stated that his administration would
enforce the federal court decision ordering James
Memorandum to the Special Prosecutor Regarding the Meredith’s enrollment in the University of Mississippi.

Indictment of Richard M. Nixon

Article II of the Constitution states that “The President, Letter Protesting Violence Toward Civil Rights Advocates 

Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, A letter from a college student to President Harry S
shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Truman provides one example of thousands of letters
Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and sent to him expressing outrage at the murder of civil
Misdemeanors.” This memorandum deals with the issue rights advocate Harry T. Moore. President Truman
of whether President Nixon ought to be indicted even responded in part by describing investigative work by the
though he had resigned the presidency, thus avoiding executive branch through the Federal Bureau of
impeachment.
 Investigation (FBI).


Letter to Citizens for Eisenhower Regarding School Letter to President Kennedy on Religion and the
Integration
 Presidency

While the Constitution was based on federalism –a The Constitution states that “no religious Test shall ever
division of power between the national and state be required as a Qualification to any Office or public
governments, Article VI of the Constitution states that Trust under the United States.” Senator John F. Kennedy,
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States . . . then a candidate for the presidency, addressed this issue in
shall be the supreme Law of the Land ….” Article VI was a September 1960 speech in Houston, Texas.
put to the test as conflict arose around the issue of racial

iii
The Judicial Branch Petition for a Writ of Certiorari from Clarence Gideon to
the Supreme Court
Article III of the Constitution entrusts a supreme Court,
In his trial for for breaking and entering, Clarence Earl
and inferior Courts that Congress may establish, with the
Gideon was denied a free lawyer. He petitioned the
judicial Power of the United States. The following
Supreme Court and asked them to appoint a lawyer
documents in Chapters 16 - 22 demonstrate the judicial
because he was poor. Gideon’s Court-appointed lawyer
branch in action:
argued that a defendant could not get a fair trial without a
lawyer and that conviction without a fair trial violated due
Letter from Rochester, NY, Newspaper Publisher Frank process of law.
Gannett to the Justice Department
After President Franklin Roosevelt and his Attorney Request for a Copy of the Decision in Weeks v. The United
General suggested changing the number of justices on the States
Supreme Court, letters regarding the plan poured into the
In 1914, the Supreme Court overturned Fremont Weeks’s
White House and Justice Department. Gannett expressed
conviction because the evidence used to convict him had
his opinion that Roosevelt was not after judicial reform
been obtained without a search warrant and was thus a
but rather the continued expansion of executive power.
violation of the Fourth Amendment protecting him
against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Ex parte Milligan Letter from L.P. Milligan to Secretary of
War Edwin M. Stanton
Judgement in Plessy v. Ferguson
Finding himself guilty in a military court of conspiring
This Supreme Court decision upheld a Louisiana state
with the Confederate States of America during the Civil
law that allowed for “equal but separate accommodations
War, Lambdin P. Milligan wrote to an old friend, then
for the white and colored races” on railroad cars.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. He asked Stanton to
advise the President to pardon him because he had been
“condemned to die without evidence.” Letter from Hooper Alexander, U.S. Attorney, to the
Attorney General Regarding a Book Ban
The religious work The Finished Mystery was banned as

iv
antiwar propaganda during World War I. Following the
war, six cases came before the U.S. Supreme Court
challenging the constitutionality of wartime measures
restraining free expression. The Court enunciated the
“clear and present danger” doctrine: “free speech would
not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre.”

The opinion of the Court in Abington School District v.

Schempp
In this case in 1963 the Supreme Court struck down a
Pennsylvania law requiring the daily reading of ten verses
from the Bible followed by a recitation of the Lord's
Prayer in schools.

v
 Chapter 1

THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE UNITED STATES,
1787
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a
more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
~Preamble of the United States Constitution, 1787
The United States Constitution is the longest-
lasting written national constitution in the world. Its four
parchment pages serve as the blueprint for a government
under which more than 300 million Americans live. Its
brevity and eloquence have inspired many other national
constitutions. It is the document that established our three
branches of government (legislative, executive, and
judicial). It created our bicameral legislature (the House
and Senate), and ensures a balance of power in our
government through a careful system of checks and
balances. More than one million people from around the
globe visit the National Archives Building in Washington,
DC, annually to see the original, signed Constitution, along
with other significant documents including the Declaration
of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
The United States Constitution holds great significance
for the American people and for others around the world.
But, when it was first drafted during the summer of 1787 by
55 delegates from 12 of the 13 states,¹ the document’s future, The Constitution of the United States, September 17, 1787. Record
and that of the government it established, was uncertain. Group 11: General Records of the United States Government,
1778-2006.
This treasured document was then part of a six-page report
National Archives Identifier: 1667751
that the delegates to the Philadelphia convention submitted

7
to Congress after 87 days of deliberations. In addition to the
four page Constitution that was signed by 39 of the
delegates, the report also included a resolution of the
convention written on a single parchment page, and a letter
of transmittal from George Washington, the president of the
convention. Washington’s letter essentially explained to
Congress how and why the convention arrived at the final
Constitution, rather than simply at a revision of the Articles
of Confederation, as had been its original charge. The
resolution explained to Congress what the Convention
delegates hoped would happen next. Congress received the
report in New York City on Thursday, September 20, 1787,
three days after the delegates had signed it. It was assigned
for consideration the following Wednesday. Then, the
ratification process began.
For a history of the Constitutional Convention see the
National Archives online exhibit the “Charters of Freedom”:
www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/
constitution_history.html
Resolution from Constitutional Convention Concerning Ratification of
the Proposed Constitution, September 17, 1787. Record Group 360:
Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the
Constitutional Convention.

8
Transcription of the Resolution:
Present The States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Mr. Hamilton from New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Resolved, That the preceeding [sic] Constitution be laid
before the United States in Congress assembled, and that it is
the Opinion of this Convention, that it should afterwards be
submitted to a Convention of Delegates, chosen in each State
by the People thereof, under the Recommendation of its
Legislature, for their Assent and Ratification; and that each
Convention assenting to, and ratifying hte Same, should give
Notice thereof to the United States in Congress assembled.
Resolved, That it is the Opinion of this Convention,
that as soon as the Conventions of nine States shall have
ratified this Constitution, the United States in Congress
assembled should fix a Day on which the Electors should be
appointed by the States which shall have ratified the same,
and a Day on which the Electors should assemble to vote for
the President, and the Time and Place for commencing
Proceedings under this Constitution. That after such
Publication the Electors should be appointed, and the
Senators and Representatives elected: That the Electors
should meet on the Day fixed for the Election of the
President, and should transmit their Votes certified, signed ,
sealed and directed, as the Constitution requires, to the
Secretary of the United States in Congress assembled, that
the Senators and Representatives should convene at the Time
9
and Place assigned; that the Senators should appoint a
President of the Senate, for the sole Purpose of receiving,
opening and counting the Votes for President; and, that after
he shall be chosen, the Congress, together with the President,
should, without Delay, proceed to execute this Constitution.
By the Unanimous Order of the Convention
Go. Washington Presidt.
W.Jackson Secretary.
Transcription of Washington’s Letter:²
Sir. We have now the honor to submit to the consideration of
the United States in Congress Assembled, that Constitution
which has appeared to us the most adviseable [sic].
The friends of our Country have long seen and desired, that
the power of making war, peace and treaties, that of levying
money and regulating commerce, and the correspondent
executive and judicial authorities should be fully and
effectually vested in the general government of the Union:
but the impropriety of delegating such extensive trust to one
body of men is evident. Hence results the necessity of a
different organization.
It is obviously impracticable in the foederal [sic] government
of these States, to secure all rights of independent
sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and
safety of all. Individuals entering into society, must give up a dear to us all, and secure her freedom and happiness, is our
share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the most ardent wish
sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, With great respect

as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to We have the honor to be
draw with precision the line between those rights which must
be surrendered, and those which may be reserved; and on the Sir

present occasion this difficulty was encreased [sic] by a Your Excellency's

difference among the several States as to their situation, Most Obedient and humble servts.

extent, habits, and particular interests. George Washington, President.
In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our By Unanimous Order of the Convention.
view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every His Excellency

true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is The President of Congress.
involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national
existence. This important consideration, seriously and deeply
impressed on our minds, led each State in the Convention to
be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude, than might have Notes
been otherwise expected; and thus the Constitution, which 1. Rhode Island did not send delegates to the convention.
we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that
2. The location of Washington’s original letter is unknown. Its text was
mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of
reprinted in volume 33 of the Journal of the Continental Congress, page 501.
our political situation rendered indispensable.
That it will meet the full and entire approbation of every
State is not perhaps to be expected, but each will doubtless
Article Adapted From:
consider, that had her interests been alone consulted, the
consequences might have been particularly disagreeable or Potter, Lee Ann. “Resolution and Letter to Congress from
injurious to others; that it is as liable to as few exceptions as the Constitutional Convention.” Social Education
could reasonably have been expected, we hope and believe;
(September 2005): 232-235.
that it may promote the lasting welfare of that country so

10
 LEGISLATIVE
BRANCH
All legislative Power herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a
Senate and House of Representatives.
~Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution

Photograph of the Capitol Building Under

Construction in Washington DC.
Photographs of Federal and Other
Buildings in the United States. Record
Group 121: Records of the Public
Buildings Service, 1801-2000.
 Chapter 2

THE 1820 CENSUS OF

MANUFACTURES

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned

among the several States which may be included within
this Union, according to their respective Numbers...The
actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years
after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United
States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years,
in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.
~Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution
 Between 1820 and whose primary domestic occupations were spinning and
weaving.
Their [sic]are very many young 1860, thousands of
New England merchants were also suffering
Ladies at work in the factories that
young women like
economically from the federal government's attempts to deal
Malenda Edwards left
have given up milinary [sic]
with the European conflict. They were unable to import
their homes on farms in
d[r]essmaking & s[c]hool keeping for
many of the products their customers demanded, including
northern New England
work in the mill. But I would not cotton cloth. These circumstances led to the establishment of
to work in the mills of
advise anyone to do it for I was so textile mills employing the daughters of many New England
expanding factory towns
sick of it at first I wished the factory farmers and producing domestic textiles that were not
across the Northeast.
had never been thought of. But the affected by the embargo.
Towns such as Saco and
longer I stay the better I like. One such mill was the Dover Cotton Factory,
Biddeford, Maine;
-Malenda M. Edwards, Nashua, Lowell, Holyoke, and incorporated in 1812 on the Cocheco River in Dover, New
Lawrence, Hampshire. According to the document featured in this
New Hampshire, April 4, 1839
Massachusetts; and article, by 1820 the factory employed t05 women and girls,
Nashua, Manchester, and and paid them four to six dollars per week with board. These
Dover, New Hampshire wages were relatively high; most textile mills at this time paid
offered women new employment opportunities outside of the "mill girls" between three and four dollars for a six-day,
home. 72hour work week, and sheltered them in company boarding
The opportunities grew out of regional economic houses. Although the document does not offer additional
conditions that stemmed from reduced European farm information about the women and girls employed at the
production during the Napoleonic Wars. At that time, Dover factory, it is probable that they were similar to mill
demand for American food stuffs increased and New girls elsewhere: single and ranging in age from fifteen to
England agriculture expanded. Many farmers took out loans, twenty-nine years old, working in the mill off and on for a
bought additional land to farm, and initially profited. But period of four to five years.
when Congress passed the Embargo and NonIntercourse In 1823, the factory changed its name to the Dover
Acts preceding the War of 1812, the New England farmers Manufacturing Company. Four years later, the factory
lost their overseas markets and found themselves in debt. changed hands, when the Cocheco Manufacturing Company
Significantly, many of these same farmers had daughters purchased the property and all its works. Although the initial

13

Noon Hour, Cocheco Manufacturing Company. Young Girls
working regularly. A number of others there, some even younger.
Dover, NH, May 17, 1909. National Child Labor Committee
Photographs taken by Lewis Hine. Record Group 102: Records of
the Children’s Bureau, 1908-2003.
National Archives Identifier: 523198
14
company failed, the cotton industry in Dover eventually
thrived; and women, at first the daughters of farmers and
later new female immigrants, consistently played an
important role.
In 1828, new rules came into effect at all the textile mills
in Dover. These rules prohibited the formation of unions,
reduced wages from 58 cents to 53 cents a day, forbade
talking between employees during work hours, and imposed
121,2 cent fines for being late. Female workers rebelled, and
on December 30, 1828, Dover was the scene of the first
women's labor strike in the United States. Half of the 800
mill girls walked off the J*ob and paraded around the red
brick buildings with banners, signs, and fireworks. The mill
owners responded by simply advertising for 400
replacements. In fear of losing their jobs, the women
returned to work. For nearly 100 years, the Cocheco
Manufacturing Company was quite profitable, due in large
part to the long hours and hard work first of the mill girls
and later of children.
The document in this article is taken from the 1820
Census of Manufactures. Interestingly, this census, like the
mills themselves, resulted from the economic circumstances
of the 1810s. The United States Constitution, in Article 1,
Section 2, provides for a population count to be conducted
every 10 years. However, from the beginning, it has been left
to Congress to determine what specific information should
be gathered in a census. Often, Congress is influenced by
economic factors, and this was the case in 1820.

Dover County of Strafford, Cotton Factory-Questions to be
Addressed to the Persons Concerned in Manufacturing
Establishments, by the Marshals and Their Assistants, in Taking
the Accounts of Manufacturers. Rockingham and Strafford
Counties, New Hampshire. Record Group 29: Records of the
Bureau of the Census, 1790-2007.
National Archives Identifier: 5730497
15
The economic changes experienced by the nation’s
economy during the period 1810-1820 resulted in the panic
of 1819 (caused in part when thousands of New England
farmers defaulted on their loans). Subsequent appeals for
government aid to business led Congress to provide for a
Census of Manufactures to be taken as part of the fourth
census. The legislators believed that if they knew more about
the various industries in the country, they would be in a
better position to legislate for agricultural, commercial, and
manufacturing interests.
Because there was no Bureau of the Census at that time,
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams directed a team of
marshals and assistants to gather information on
manufactures. Information from each manufacturer about
raw materials, employees, machinery, expenditures, and
production in an establishment was recorded, primarily on
printed forms. Unfortunately, the results of the census were
incomplete and far from uniform. Some manufacturers
refused to furnish the desired information for fear of being
taxed, and the census takers often interpreted their
instructions differently. A summary of the information
gathered was, however, printed as the "Digest of
Manufacturers" in the American State Papers in early 1823.
Although incomplete, the summary and the individual forms
do reveal the types of products that were being manufactured
in the United States during the early Industrial Revolution
including yarn, cotton sheetings, clocks, furniture, hats,
paper, rum, saddles, cordage, flour, and lumber. The
summary also reveals important sectional differences, such as
that most manufacturing establishments were in the North,
most northern factories were significantly larger than those in
the South, and many more women and children were
employed by factories in the North than in the South.
Due to the negative reaction to the apparent
inaccuracies in the 1820 census, Congress made no provision
for an account of manufactures in 1830. Beginning in 1840,
however, manufacturing returns were taken every ten years.
In this century, they have been taken even more frequently,
the most recent count having been in 1997.

Additional Information:
For more information about the census, visit the United
States Census Bureau at: http://www.census.gov

Article Adapted From:

Potter, Lee Ann and Wynell Schamel. “The 1820 Census of
Manufactures.” Social Education (September 1999):
310-313.

16
 Chapter 3
DRAFT OF THE U.S.
CONSTITUTION AND
SCHEDULE OF
COMPENSATION OF THE
U.S. SENATE
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a
Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by
Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.
~Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution
During the June 2, 1787, session of the
Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin
recommended that the President and Vice President serve
without salary. Said Franklin, “[T]here are two passions
which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men...the
love of power, and the love of money....[W]hen united in
view of the same object, they have in many minds the most
violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men, a post of
honour that shall be at the same time a place of profit, and
they will move heaven and earth to obtain it.”
The men who would seek such positions, he continued,
would not be “the lovers of peace and good order, the men
fittest for the trust” but “the men of strong passions and
indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits.”¹ Franklin’s
proposal was but one in the Convention’s debates regarding
Federal officials’ pay. As his words reveal, these debates were
not just about dollars and cents but also about notions of
who would best lead the nation. While he did not propose
that Congress serve without pay, it is possible that Franklin
assumed that salaries would have some corrupting influence
on the legislative branch as well. Alexander Hamilton
seconded Franklin’s motion of June 2, 1787, “with the view
he said merely of bringing so respectable a proposition
before the Committee.” James Madison, in his “Notes on
Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787," wrote, “It was
treated with great respect, but rather for the author of it,
than from any apparent conviction of its expediency or
18
practicability.”² Ultimately, Franklin’s motion was neither
debated nor accepted.
His proposal, however, reflected a prevalent notion in
the late 18th and early 19th centuries that the best political
leaders were financially independent gentlemen,
uninfluenced by “the love of power, and the love of money,”
in Franklin’s words. They would serve out of a sense of the
country’s best interest rather than personal gain. The failure
of Franklin’s proposal may have been due in part to the fact
that it had become increasingly difficult for even the
relatively well-off to live up to his and others’ ideal. As
historian Gordon Wood has stated, “It had never been easy
for gentlemen to play the role of disinterested public servants
who were supposed to sacrifice their private interests for the
sake of the public.”³ Some Constitutional Convention
delegates suggested that such financial hardship would
actually limit the number of well qualified men to serve in
the government. Madison noted that Roger Sherman of
Connecticut was not “afraid that the Legislature would make
their own wages too high; but too low, so that men ever so fit
could not serve unless they were at the same time rich.”⁴
Representative John Page of Virginia argued that some pay
would be necessary as “it is not to be expected that the spirit
of patriotism will lead a man into the perpetual habit of
making such exertions and sacrifices....”⁵ The Convention
eventually agreed that the people’s representatives would be
paid, the exact amount to be determined by the first
Congress.
 The question remained, however, as to whether the
individual states or the new federal government would pay
the salaries of those who served in Congress. Some members
of the Constitutional Convention, such as Pennsylvania
delegate Gouverneur Morris and John Langdon of New
Hampshire, had voiced practical concerns over the rate of
pay. They argued that states at a great distance from the
capital would bear an added burden in travel expenses for
their Representatives and Senators.
This was not only a financial issue, however. It was also
one of federalism, the balance of power between the states
and the national government. On page three of George
Washington’s copy of the first printed draft of the
Constitution, Article VI, section 10, states that “The
members of each House shall receive a compensation for
their services, to be ascertained and paid by the State in
which they shall be chosen.” Some voiced concerns for the
independence of the national legislature from state influence,
though. If the states provided the funds, legislators might be
dependent upon them. Perhaps they would be less dedicated
to the Constitution’s relatively strong central government that
would soon replace the relatively de-centralized Articles of
Confederation government.⁶ In this sense, the debate over George Washington’s Annotated Copy of a Draft of the U.S.
congressional salaries echoed the wider discussion over the Constitution. Official Records of the Constitutional Convention
appropriate proportion of national to state power. of 1787. Record Group 360: Records of the Continental and
Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention,
Daniel Carroll of Maryland stated, “The States can now 1765-1821.
say: if you do not comply with our wishes, we will starve you:
National Archives Identifier: 1501555
if you do we will reward you.” Mr. Dickinson, from New

19
Jersey, “took it for granted that all were convinced of the
necessity of making the Genl. Govt. independent of the
prejudices, passions, and improper views of the State
Legislatures....If the Genl. Govt. should be left dependent on
the State Legislatures, it would be happy for us if we had
never met in this Room.”⁷ Carroll, Dickinson’s, and other’s
views ultimately won the day. The printed draft featured here
shows Washington’s handwritten corrections that eliminated
state payments and included the phrase “to be paid out of
the Treasury of the United States.”
This article’s other featured document, the Schedule of the
Compensation of the Senate of the United States, dated March 4,
1791, documents the result of painstaking debates by the first
Congress as to the amount of congressional pay. Senators
would be paid a stipend of $6 per day served in Congress,
plus $6 for every 20 miles traveled to the “seat of
government.” Members of the House of Representatives
would receive the same. Senator William Few of Georgia, for
example, attended Congress for 62 days and travelled 958
miles to Philadelphia. He received $659.40: $6 for each day
in Congress and $6 for every 20 miles that he had traveled
(i.e., $287.40). In comparison, Senator Robert Morris of
Pennsylvania received $378 for his 63 days attendance at A Schedule of the Compensation of the Senate of the United States
Congress at $6 per day. Since he was already at the “seat of at their Third Session from the First Day of January 1791 to the
government” in Philadelphia, he received no travel Fourth of March: Account 1078, January 1, 1791 to March 4,
compensation.⁸ 1791, Record Group 217: Records of the Accounting Officers of
the Department of the Treasury.
These documents reveal the importance that delegates
to the Constitutional Convention and representatives to the National Archives Identifier: 5641592

20
first Federal Congress attached to matters relating to public
service and federalism. When discussing congressional pay,
both issues rose to the forefront.
Notes
1. Madison’s Notes on Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Avalon Project
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_602.asp or The James
Madison Papers, James Madison, John C. Payne. John C. Payne’s Copy of
James Madison’s Original Notes on Debates in the Federal Convention of
1787. Library of Congress (LOC) http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/
mjm/28/0300/0382.jpg 10/26/10.
2. Ibid.
3. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 230.
4. Madison’s Notes on Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Avalon Project
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_814.asp or The James
Madison Papers, James Madison, John C. Payne. John C. Payne’s Copy of
James Madison’s Original Notes on Debates in the Federal Convention of
1787. (LOC) http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mjm/28/1200/1215.jpg
10/26/10.
5. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and
Debates, 1774-1875, Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 1st
Congress, 1st Session pp. 701 and 702 of 1274, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=353.
6. Madison’s Notes on Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, Avalon Project.
See: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_814.asp
21
7. Ibid.
8. The first Congress also deliberated whether senators, with more
constituents per person, should earn more than members of the House of
Representatives. To the House’s original bill proposing that members of
both houses receive $6 per day and $6 per every 25 miles traveled, the
Senate resolved, “That there ought to be a discrimination between the
compensation to be allowed to the Senators and to the members of the
House of Representatives,” (See: Annals of Congress, House of
Representatives, 1st Congress, 1st Session at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=353). The
Senate also proposed a graduated increase in their pay in which House and
Senate members would receive the same payment, $6 per day and $6 per
20 miles (considered one day’s travel), until March 4, 1795. After that date,
however, senators would earn $7 per day and $7 per 20 miles. The bill that
emerged from the conference committee that had formed to resolve these
differences met with approval from both houses. The Senate would earn $1
more per day and per mile only from 1795 to 1796, a one-year period of
discrimination in pay. After 1796, Congress once again needed to fix the
rate of compensation for its members with legislation.
Article Adapted From:
Hussey, Michael and Stephanie Greenhut. “Draft of the U.S.
Constitution (August 1787) and Schedule of the
Compensation of the Senate of the United States
(March 1791.” Social Education (January/February 2011):
7-11.
 Chapter 4

PATENTS AND
INVENTIONS

The Congress shall have Power...To promote the Progress

of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times
to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
respective Writings and Discoveries.
~Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution
In 1787 the framers of the Constitution recognized the
importance of science and technology to the growth and
development of the United States and granted Congress the
power to pass laws relating to patents. The first patent law,
enacted in 1790, established the Patent Board, composed of
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the
Attorney General.
Twelve years later, Congress established the Patent
Office in the State Department, headed by the
Superintendent of Patents. In 1836 Congress reorganized the
Patent and Trademark Office and designated the
Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks as the head
official. The Patent and Trademark Office remained in the
State Department until 1849, when it was transferred to the
Department of the Interior, and in 1925 it was transferred to
the Commerce Department, where it is today.
In addition to establishing the office and department
responsible for patents, Congress passed laws governing the
subject matter for which a patent may be obtained and the
conditions necessary for an invention or design to be
patented. The current patent legislation, the America Invents
Act, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President
Barack Obama in 2011. Drawing for an Electric Lamp, 1/27/1880. Patented Case Files,
compiled 1836-1956. Record Group 241: Records of the Patent
A patent for an invention grants the inventor "the right and Trademark Office, 1836 - 1978.
to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale or
selling" the invention in the United States or importing the National Archives Identifier: 595450
invention to the United States. Although a patent grants an
inventor a monopoly for a period of years (today's patents

23

Patent Drawing for a See Saw, June 27, 1871. Patented Case Files,
compiled 1836-1956, Record Group 241: Records of the Patent
and Trademark Office, 1836 - 1978.
National Archives Identifier: 594447
are for 20 years), it also requires the inventor to disclose the
details of his or her invention to the public.
As part of this disclosure, U.S. patent laws require
applicants to submit drawings of their inventions and written
descriptions called specifications. Until 1880 a model of the
invention was also a mandatory part of the patent
application. These requirements ensure that the invention
will be understood by government officials, as well as other
inventors, mechanics, manufacturers, patent agents, and
judges and juries in courts in which legal cases involving
patents might be tried. Patent drawings are not required to
be "working drawings," nor is it necessary that they be drawn
to scale. Examples of patent drawings (featured with this
article) include the 1846 drawing for Elias Howe's sewing
machine, the 1871 drawing of Mrs. S.E. Saul's see saw, the
1880 drawing of Thomas Edison's electric lamp, and the
1869 drawing of W.F. Quinby’s flying machine. These
examples are just a few of the drawings submitted on behalf
of the more than five and a half million U.S. patents that
have been issued since the first patent was granted to Samuel
Hopkins on July 31, 1790, for "making pot and pearl ashes."
Since a U.S. patent does not protect an inventor outside
this country, and a foreign patent does not protect an
inventor in the United States, it is common for inventors to
obtain patents in more than one country. As a result,
significant foreign inventions are usually patented in the
United States because it is an important world market. Thus,
U.S. patent records contain not only the efforts of American

24
inventors but, in many cases, the designs of foreign inventors
as well.
Additional information:
• Learn about President Obama signing the 2011 America
Invents Act at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2011/09/16/president-obama-signs-america-
invents-act-overhauling-patent-system-stim
• Read the America Invents Act at: http://www.gpo.gov/
fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1249enr/pdf/
BILLS-112hr1249enr.pdf
Bibliography:
Allen, Frederick, ed. Great Inventions that Changed the
World. New York: Forbes, Inc., 1994. (compilation of
articles that previously appeared in Invention and
Technology)
Brown, Alford Eugene. Absolutely Mad Inventions:
Compiled from the Records of the United States Patent
Office by A.E. Brown and H.A. Jeffcott, Jr. New York:
Dover Publications, 1970.
Brown, Travis. Historical First Patents: The First United
States Patent for Many Everyday Things. Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow Press, 1994.
Greenleaf, William. Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and
the Selden Automobile Patent. Detroit, MI: Wayne State
University, 1961.
Patent Drawings, Milestone Documents in the National
Archives. National Archives and Records
Administration, Washington, DC, 1986.
Ray, Emily and Wynell Schamel. “Glidden’s Patent
Application for Barbed Wire.” Social Education 61, 1
(January 1997): 53-56.
Schamel, Wynell and Jean West. “Alexander Graham Bell’s
Telephone Patent.” Social Studies And the Young
Learner, (November/December 1991): special
supplement.
Warshofsky, Fred. The Patent Wars: The Battle to Own the
World’s Technology. New York: Wiley, 1994.
United States Patent Office. The Story of the American
Patent System, 1790-1952. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1953.
United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Homepage:
http://www.uspto.gov
Article Adapted From:
Potter, Lee Ann. “Patents and Invention.” 1999 National

25
 History Day Teachers' Guide: Science, Technology Invention in
History, (1999): 38-41.

26
 Chapter 5

LETTER ABOUT THE

SCHOOL LUNCH
PROGRAM
The Congress shall have Power...To make all Laws
which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers
vested by this Constitution in the Government of the
United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
~Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution
In response to an urgent bulletin sent to all school
districts by the State of Florida’s Department of Education
in December 1945, Mrs. Morton Livingston wrote to Senator
Claude Pepper on February 7, 1946. In the single-page letter
featured in this article, Livingston, President of the Parent
Teacher Association of Fort Ogden, Florida, urged the
Senator to support continued Federal aid for school lunches.
Her earnest plea was among many letters and telegrams that
the Senator’s office received as Congress held hearings on
H.R. 3370, The National School Lunch Act.
As early as the mid-nineteenth century, private societies
and associations interested in child welfare and education
initiated school lunch programs in cities throughout the
United States. For example, the Children's Aid Society of
New York started a program in 1853, serving meals to
students attending the city’s vocational school. The Starr
Center Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania began
serving penny lunches in one school in 1894. In Boston, The
Women's Educational and Industrial Union served hot
lunches in 1908 to high schools which were under the
supervision of the Boston School Committee. Similar
programs began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that year and in
Cleveland, Ohio, the next year.
Letter from Mrs. Morton Livingston to Senator Claude Pepper
Schools in rural communities met lunch needs Regarding the School Lunch Program, February 7, 1946. Papers
differently. Because many children came from long distances, Accompanying Specific Bills and Resolutions, compiled 1901-1946.
their lunches usually consisted of cold sandwiches, and Record Group 46: Records of the U.S. Senate, 1789-2011.
preparing and serving a hot lunch was problematic. Usually National Archives Identifier: 5815516
there was no space for a kitchen and little or no funding

28
existed. Sometimes, ingenious teachers devised methods of
preparing nutritious and warm meals for students. Former
students who attended a one-room schoolhouse in rural
Calvert County, Maryland in the 1920s recalled that their
teacher would encourage students to bring in vegetables such
as potatoes, turnips, and cabbage along with a ham bone to
make soup for a cold winter day. The contributions to the
soup would be placed in a large kettle on the top of the wood
stove when the students arrived in the morning, and by noon,
the students enjoyed a hot and wholesome lunch.
Formal and informal school-lunch programs continued
to expand during the early twentieth century supported by
charitable organizations, associations such as the Parent-
Teacher Association, school districts, and individuals. By
1931, it was estimated that there were 64,500 school
cafeterias in operation throughout the nation. With the
advent of the Great Depression the early 1930s, concern
about hunger and malnourishment among school-children
increased. Many state, municipal, and local governments
initially adopted legislation to enable schools to serve
noonday meals to children.
As the Depression worsened, however, most state and
local governments could no longer fund the increasingly
heavy burden of providing lunches for students and
charitable organizations did not have the necessary resources.
Another source of funding was needed, and the federal
government stepped into the school-lunch program.
29
From the outset, the federal school-lunch program had
two purposes: (1) to help dispose of surplus agricultural
commodities owned by the government as a result of price-
support agreements with farmers and (2) to help prevent
nutritional deficiencies among low-income schoolchildren.
The earliest federal aid to the school-lunch program was
a component of legislation intended to decrease
unemployment. Under the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, created during the Hoover administration,
loans were granted to towns to cover the cost of labor
employed in preparing and serving school lunches. Federal
assistance to the school-lunch program expanded to other
areas in 1933 and 1934 under the operations of the Civil
Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration, reaching thirty-nine states and employing
more than 7,000 women.
With the start of the Franklin D. Roosevelt
administration, additional federal aid to the school-lunch
program came as assistance to farmers. Farmers had suffered
economically from low prices and overproduction since the
end of World War I. During the Depression these conditions
worsened as surplus farm products continued to mount, and
prices of farm products declined dramatically. Meanwhile
millions of schoolchildren were unable to pay for school
lunches, and limited resources at home often meant that
families could not provide meals from home. The danger of
malnutrition among children became a national concern.
The need for greater federal assistance was essential to aid

Poster: "Every child Needs a Good School Lunch", 1941 –
1945. World War II Posters. Record Group 44: Records of
the Office of Government Reports. 1932 - 1947.
National Archives Identifier: 514223
30
both agriculture and the school lunch program.
In 1935, Congress passed legislation that made money
available to the Secretary of Agriculture to purchase surplus
agricultural commodities. The Federal Surplus Commodities
Corporation, an agency under the direction of the Secretary
of Agriculture, purchased surplus commodities, including
pork, diary products, and wheat, and made them available to
schoolchildren who could not afford to pay for lunches and
needed nutritional food. Almost 4,000 schools received
commodities for lunch programs by March of 1937. Within
two years, the number of participating schools increased to
14,075 and almost 900,000 children took part in the
program. The program continued to increase and by 1942,
the peak year, over 5 million schoolchildren participated in
the school-lunch program. After 1942, the effects World War
II upon the food supply became evident; surplus food was
needed for the troops.
The Works Project Administration (WPA), another New
Deal program, had an impact on the school-lunch program.
The WPA, created in 1935, provided work for needy persons
on public works projects. The Community Service Division
of the WPA gave jobs to thousands of unemployed women in
cities, towns, and rural communities across the nation. These
women were responsible for preparing and serving school
lunches. In March, 1941, WPA school lunch programs
operated in all states, the District of Columbia and Puerto
Rico employing over 64,000 people. World War II also had
an impact on this program as more and more people were
employed in the defense industry.
Federal funding of the school-lunch program during
World War II continued on a year-to-year basis. As the war
drew to a close, many school boards hesitated to include the
school lunch program because of the decrease in federal
support through donated food, and the concern that yearly
appropriations would not assure a continuation of the
program. At the same time, however, young men responding
to the draft call of World War II were repeatedly rejected
from service due to conditions arising from serious
malnutrition. As a result, support increased for a permanent
program.
Support for the program came from both individuals
such as Mrs. Livingston as well as organizations. Joe Hall,
Supervisor of Health and Education in Tallahassee, Florida
wrote on February 15, 1946: “I consider that proper food is
the greatest contributing factor to the health of our children
and will do more for their physical well being than any other
one thing that can be done.” Dozens of Parent-Teacher
Associations sent telegrams, letters, and resolutions
requesting support for H.R. 3370. They ranged from a
single line: “URGE YOUR SUPPORT OF SCHOOL
LUNCH PROGRAM VITALLY IMPORTANT HERE”
from the Largo Parent Teachers Association in Florida, to an
eloquent appeal from the Rotary Club of Perry, Florida:
“Now is the time to establish once and for all that serving hot
lunches in school is not an emergency relief measure, not a
31
device for the disposal of surplus food, but a necessity for our
children’s health and educational progress.”
Special interest groups set forth their needs. The
National Fisheries Institute, Inc. wrote on February 25, 1946,
to ensure that the words “and other food” were retained in
Bill 3370 to give “the necessary protection that the fish and
shellfish industry has long sought in the school lunch
program.”
Mildred Hezian, a student at St. Stephen School in
Chicago, Illinois brought up the issue of federal government
subsidies for students who attended parochial schools.
On June 1, 1944, she wrote: “I would like to get free milk just
like public school. We all pay our taxes and [milk] makes us
all healthy. Everyone likes milk. I know I do. I never drink
coffee. So please try to send it.”
In 1944 and 1945, both the House and the Senate held
hearings on the creation of a permanent school-lunch
program. Following the hearings on the proposed legislation,
the House Committee on Agriculture issued a report stating
the need for permanent legislation for a school lunch
program. The report pointed out that operating on a year-to-
year basis was inefficient and depending solely on
agricultural surpluses could lead to a “nutritionally
unbalanced or nutritionally unattractive” diet.
The report also noted that “for the past 10 years, [the
School Lunch Program has] proven for exceptional benefit to
the children, schools, and agriculture of the country as a
whole.” Through permanent legislation, the school lunch
program could be nationally coordinated and the program
would encourage and increase financial participation and
active control by the states. Finally, the report pointed out the
importance to children and their families of learning proper
nutrition.
The National School Lunch Act was signed into law by
President Harry S. Truman on June 4, 1946. Upon signing
the bill, Truman said
Today, as I sign the National School Lunch Act, I feel that
the Congress has acted with great wisdom in providing the
basis for strengthening the nation through better nutrition
for our school children. In my message to Congress last
January, I pointed out that we have the technical knowledge
to provide plenty of good food for every man, woman, and
child in this country, but that despite our capacity to
produce food we have often failed to distribute it as well as
we should. This action by the Congress represents a basic
forward step toward correcting that failure. In the long
view, no nation is any healthier than its children or more
prosperous than its farmers; and in the National School
Lunch Act, the Congress has contributed immeasurably
both to the welfare of our farmers and the health of our
children.
Bibliographical Note:
Development” by Gordon W. Gunderson. Administrator’s
Reference manual, United States Department of Agriculture
Food and Nutrition Service. The National School Lunch Program
Background and Development by Gordon W. Gunderson. FNS 63-
Food and Nutrition Service, USDA.
Additional Information:
• The complete statement by President Truman at the
signing of the National School Lunch Act is in the Public
Papers of the President: Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953.
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum,
Independence, MO, and is available online at
www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php
• The Department of Agriculture set the most recent
government nutritional standards with the MyPlate
Symbol, which replaced the Food Pyramid Symbol in June
2011. The MyPlate symbol is available online at
www.choosemyplate.gov
Article Adapted From:
McNatt, Missy. “Letter About the School Lunch Program.”
Social Education (September 2009): 198-202

Background information for the article came from “The

National School Lunch Program: Background and

32
 Chapter 6

THE TWENTY-SIXTH
AMENDMENT AND
YOUTH VOTING RIGHTS
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall
deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this
Constitution...which shall be valid to all Intents and
Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by
the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States.
~Article V of the United States Constitution
The slogan "Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote"
reflected the mood of the public and its leaders when, in the
midst of the Vietnam War, the right to vote was extended to
18-year-olds. Codified as the 26th amendment to the
Constitution, the joint resolution, passed by Congress on
March 23, 1971, was ratified by the States by July 1—more
quickly than any other amendment in U.S. history.
Getting the resolution through Congress took a great
deal longer than getting it ratified by the States. Beginning in
1942, Jennings Randolph of West Virginia introduced the
resolution in every Congress through the 92d in 1971. Real
momentum toward the extension of the vote began after the
negotiation of the peace accords for the Korean War, when
President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported Randolph's
proposal to extend the right to vote to those "old enough to
fight and die for the United States." Presidents Lyndon B.
Johnson and Richard M. Nixon added similar endorsements.
It was not, however, until the pressure created by the antiwar
movement of the 1960s intensified that Congress finally
passed the Jennings proposal in 1971.
Legal developments during the 92nd Congress caused
legislators to seek a constitutional amendment to lower the
voting age. In 1970 Congress attempted to lower the voting
age to 18 through legislation. That legislation was challenged
in court in Oregon v. Mitchell. Because the Constitution gave
states the power to establish most voting qualifications, the
Supreme Court upheld the statute as it pertained to Federal
elections but declared the act unconstitutional insofar as it
34
pertained to state elections. Since most of the states required
voters to be 21 years of age, this decision would have
necessitated separate ballots for Federal and state races in the
same election. With this complication unresolved, the
Presidential election of 1972 would, no doubt, have been not
only very expensive but also chaotic. According to Dennis J.
Mahony, political science professor at California State
University–San Bernardino, "The rapidity with which the
Amendment was ratified is attributable to a general desire to
avoid such chaos."
The Amendment Process
In Article V of the Constitution, the founders described
a process for amending the charter in such a way as to
balance two conflicting goals. On the one hand, they wanted
to devise a process easier to use than that employed under
the Articles of Confederation. At the same time, they
wanted to ensure a process that would work only when a
strong consensus made it clearly necessary to change the
Constitution.
With these opposing goals in mind, the delegates to the
Constitutional Convention in 1787 created an amendment
process composed of two sets of alternatives. Congress could
either propose amendments backed by a two-thirds majority
of both of its Houses or call a convention to propose
amendments at the request of two-thirds of the state
legislatures. Afterward, the proposed amendments had to be
ratified by either three-fourths of the state legislatures or by
conventions in three-fourths of the States. With this process,
the Framers attempted to balance the need for adaptability
with the desire for stable government.
Since 1789, when the process became the law of the
land, more than 5,000 proposals to amend the Constitution
have been introduced to Congress, but only 33 have ever
received the necessary two-thirds vote of both Houses. Of
these, only 27 have been ratified by three-fourths of the
States. Change is possible but extremely difficult to enact,
thereby meeting both goals of the founders.
Expansion of Voting Rights
At the time the Constitution was written, most eligible
voters were white male land owners. Since then, voting rights
have slowly expanded as a result of various amendments that
abolished restrictions based on race, color, previous servitude,
gender, or failure to pay taxes.
The 15th amendment extended the vote to black males,
the 19th removed barriers to the ballot for women, and the
24th abolished poll taxes. Although the 15th amendment
was adopted shortly after the Civil War, real freedom to vote
was consistently denied to black Americans for decades
through intimidation by violence, cheating at the ballot
boxes, and legislated disfranchisement in the form of poll
taxes and literacy tests. Not until the civil rights movement Joint Resolution Proposing the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the
of the 1950s and 1960s galvanized Congress into action to U.S. Constitution, March 23, 1971. Enrolled Acts and
protect the voting rights of all U.S. citizens did black Resolutions of Congress, Record Group 11: General Records of
the United States Government, 1778-2006.
Americans truly enjoy the freedom to vote.
National Archives Identifier: 1415809

35
 The story of the passage of the 19th amendment relates
a different suffrage struggle. First introduced at the Seneca
Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, the amendment
opening the ballot box to women was not proposed in
Congress until 1870. For almost 50 years, the battle to get the
proposal approved by Congress was unsuccessful. With the
outbreak of World War I, attention focused on the
contributions women made to the war effort in the
workplace. Afterward, women successfully argued that if they
could work to defend the country, they also deserved the right
to vote. Congress was persuaded to approve the amendment
in 1919, and it was ratified on August 26, 1920.
The President's Role
The Constitution makes no provision for the President Footage from the Twenty-sixth Amendment certification ceremony,
to take part in the amendment process, but in the case of the July 5, 1971. Navy Photographic Center Motion Film Collection,
26th amendment, President Nixon held a ceremonial signing Series 1211. Richard Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, CA.
of the certified document on July 5, 1971, and invited three Available at: http://www.presidentialtimeline.org
18-year-olds to add their signatures below his. No doubt
Nixon's decision to publicly endorse the amendment was
based on the popularity of the action—indeed, all the States between the ages of 18 and 21 as "educated, motivated and
had ratified the amendment by July 1—and the recognition involved." Furthermore, he added, "Young people are aware
that adoption of the amendment enabled approximately 11 of the world around them and are familiar with the issues
million new voters to participate in the national elections of before government officials. In many cases they have a
1972. clearer view because it has not become clouded through time
Response of Young Citizens and involvement. They can be likened to outside consultants
called in to take a fresh look at our problems."
Congressional leaders and others expressed great
confidence in American youth during the debate over the Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana observed, "The surest
26th amendment. Senator Randolph described Americans and most just way to harness the energies and moral

36
conscience of youth is to open the door to full citizenship by
lowering the voting age. Youth cannot be expected to work
within the system when they are denied that very
opportunity." Senator Bayh also proclaimed, "Passage of this
amendment will challenge young Americans to accept even
more responsibility and show that they will participate."
Many political observers at the time predicted that high
numbers of young voters would register and vote, thereby
having a profound effect on U.S. electoral politics. The fact
is, however, that 18- to 20-year-olds participated at a
significantly lower rate than the general population in every
election until the Presidential election of 1992.

Article Adapted From:

Schamel, Wynell. “The 26th Amendment and Youth Voting
Rights.” Social Education (October 1996): 374-376.

37
 Chapter 7

THE PROTECTION OF
WORKING CHILDREN

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 X to the United States Constitution
Child labor, a leading issue in the Progressive
movement of the early 1900s, was still in the forefront of
the political scene in the United States during the 1920s. In
1924 the Federal Government championed the cause of
working children with a proposed amendment to the
Constitution—an amendment that would remove the
regulation of child labor from each of the 48 states and place
it in the hands of Congress. The change required an
amendment because state governments held the power to
regulate labor under the reserve powers of the 10th
Amendment. Reformers believed that Federal regulation
would end the exploitation of children.
Congress had previously attempted to gain control over
child labor. In 1916, the Keating-Owen Act forbade
interstate commerce of products manufactured by companies
employing children. In 1918, however, the Supreme Court,
by a vote of five to four, declared this law unconstitutional
because it interfered in a purely local matter to which, the
Court reasoned, Federal authority did not extend. Similarly,
in 1923 the Court declared unconstitutional the Revenue Act
of 1919, which imposed a 10-percent tax on the net profits
of any company employing children. Until they were
Public Law 64-249, 39 STAT 675, to Prevent Interstate
declared unconstitutional, these two Federal laws extended
Commerce in the Products of Child Labor, and for Other Purposes,
protection to thousands of children not protected by state September 1, 1916; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress,
laws. compiled 1789 - 2008. Record Group 11: General Records of the
In June 1924, the U.S. Congress adopted the proposed United States Government, 1778 - 2006.
child labor amendment by a two thirds vote in both houses— National Archives Identifier 5730381
the House of Representatives voting 297 to 69 and the

39

HJ Res 184, Proposing a Constitutional Amendment Limiting Child
Labor, 1924; Papers Accompanying Specific Bills and Resolutions,
compiled 1903 - 1972. Record Group 233: Records of the U.S.
House of Representatives, 1789 - 2011.
National Archives Identifier 5678181
40
Senate, 61 to 23. The text of that amendment reads as
follows:
“Section 1: The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and
prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.
Section 2: The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article
except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent
necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by the Congress.”
Proponents of the proposed amendment included the
Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, the
Department of Commerce, and the National Child Labor
Committee, which had hired photographer Lewis Hine from
1908 to 1912 to document the conditions of child labor in
the United States. (Some of Hine’s Photographs are included
here.)
Only six of the required 36 states approved the
amendment during the first two years after its adoption. In
1933, the National Recovery Administration pushed for its
ratification because child labor reduced the number of jobs
available for adults and tended to lower adult wage rates.
During this same period, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins
argued that "this is the time to make permanent, through the
amendment, a beneficial change in the standards so as to
keep boys and girls out of industry and give them the chance
in life to which they are entitled."1
Through the efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
and the National Recovery Administration, the amendment
 7.3 National Child Labor Committee Photographs
Taken by Lewis Hine
Photograph of Glass Factory Worker Rob Kidd, June 23, 1911.
National Child Labor Committee Photographs taken by Lewis Hine.
Record Group 102: Records of the Children's Bureau, 1908-2003.
National Archives Identifier: 523439
41
received the support of nine more states by the end of 1933.
Roosevelt continued to lobby the states in support of
ratification of this amendment, albeit unsuccessfully,
throughout the 1930s.
Finally, in 1938 the Supreme Court ruled as
constitutional one Federal child labor law: the Walsh-Healy
Act. This act, the first child labor restriction placed upon the
states upheld by the Court, prohibited employment of boys
under 16 and girls under 18 by Government contractors for
work exceeding $10,000 in value. In that same year, Congress
passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the
Wages and Hours Law, a major provision of which
prohibited child labor in all industries engaged in producing
goods in interstate commerce and placed a limitation on
the labor of boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 18 in
hazardous occupations. It also withstood legal challenges.
Federal legislation passed by Congress, upheld by the
Supreme Court, and enforced by the executive agencies
gradually accomplished what the unratified amendment had
proposed: the protection of our youngest citizens’ rights in
the area of employment and labor. As a result, the impetus to
ratify the amendment evaporated.
Article Adapted From:
Freeman, Elsie, Wynell Burroughs Schamel, Jean West, and
Tom Gray. “The Protection of Working Children.”
Social Education (April/May 1992): 236-239.
 EXECUTIVE
BRANCH
The Executive Power shall be vested in a President of
the United States of America. He shall hold his
Office during the Term of four Years, and, together
with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be
elected...
~Article II, Section 1 of the United States
Constitution

911: White House Grounds,

September 14, 2001. Photographs
Related to the George W. Bush
Administration. Collection GWB-
WHPO: Records of the White House
Photo Office (George W. Bush
Administration),
 Chapter 8

GENERAL ELECTION OF
1876

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the

Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,
equal to the whole number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person
holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United
States, shall be appointed an Elector.
~Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution
The election of 1876 between Democrat Samuel L.
Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes occurred at a
precarious time. The end of the Civil War had brought
economic expansion that unfortunately was short lived. A
devastating depression followed the Panic of 1873, causing
the closure of banks and businesses, and widespread strikes,
unemployment, and homelessness. President Ulysses S.
Grant, a war hero, was unable to guide the nation through
the economic crisis. Scandals in his administration
undermined his ability to lead and further eroded confidence
in his presidency.
Adding to the anxiety of the times, hopes for a national
reunion on the eve of the centennial of the American
Revolution were threatened by strong sectional differences.
Blacks were voting Republican in the traditionally
Democratic South. White Southerners were eager for
Radical Reconstruction to end and for federal troops to
leave the region. Northern Republicans were concerned
about the election of former Confederates to Congress and
attempts to limit the civil rights of blacks in the South.
The Democrats selected New York Governor Samuel J.
Tilden as their choice for president. Tilden was well known
for having been instrumental in prosecuting corrupt
politicians in New York. He had amassed a fortune as a
corporate lawyer, railroad reorganizer, and land and stock
speculator. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat and believed in a
high standard of morals for government officials. Thomas A.
44
Hendricks of Indiana was selected as the vice presidential
candidate.
Delegates to the Republican convention, amidst
disagreement and doubt, selected Rutherford B. Hayes of
Ohio as their candidate. Hayes was a Harvard trained lawyer
with a creditable military record as a Union army general. As
a member of the House of Representatives, he had
supported Reconstruction and campaigned for giving blacks
the right to vote in Ohio as well as in the South. He was a
three-term governor of Ohio and was known as a loyal party
member and a reformer. His running mate was William A.
Wheeler of New York.
During the campaign, the Democrats focused on the
corruption in the southern "carpetbagger" governments
and the scandals in Grant's administration. They stressed
Tilden's honesty and history of being a reformer. The
Republicans emphasized Hayes's pledge to work for civil
service reform and his willingness to end Reconstruction in
the South.
On election night, newspapers reported Tilden the
winner. He had, after all, received about 3 percent, or
250,000, more popular votes than Hayes. He did not,
however, receive the majority of votes from the Electoral
College. The Electoral College was invented by the framers
of the Constitution as a compromise between those who
favored letting Congress select the executive and those who
advocated direct popular election. Originally, the plan for the
Electoral College included the eight major points described
 The Disputed Election of 1876 The Disputed Election of 1876
STATE ELECTORAL VOTES CANDIDATE STATE ELECTORAL VOTES CANDIDATE

Alabama 10 Tilden Missouri 15 Tilden

Arkansas 6 Tilden Nebraska 3 Hayes
California 6 Hayes
Nevada 3 Hayes
Colorado 3 Hayes
New Hampshire 5 Hayes
Connecticut 6 Tilden
New Jersey 9 Tilden
Delaware 3 Tilden
New York 35 Tilden
Florida 4 (Contested) Hayes
North Carolina 10 Tilden
Georgia 11 Tilden
Ohio 22 Hayes
Illinois 21 Hayes
Oregon 3 (1 Contested) Hayes
Indiana 15 Tilden
Pennsylvania 29 Hayes
Iowa 11 Hayes
Rhode Island 4 Hayes
Kansas 5 Hayes
Kentucky 12 Tilden South Carolina 7 (Contested) Hayes

Louisiana 8 (Contested) Hayes Tennessee 12 Tilden

Maine 7 Hayes Texas 8 Tilden

Maryland 8 Tilden Vermont 5 Hayes

Massachusetts 13 Hayes Virginia 11 Tilden
Michigan 11 Hayes West Virginia 5 Tilden
Minnesota 5 Hayes Wisconsin 10 Hayes
Mississippi 8 Tilden
Tilden: 184 Hayes: 185 (20 Contested) Total: 369

45
in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution:
1. Each state would be allocated a number of electoral votes
equal to the sum of its senators and representatives in
Congress.
2. Each state legislature would decide the method for
choosing electors in its respective state.
3. Electors would meet in their own state capitals and each
cast two votes on one ballot.
4. The president of the Senate would open and count the
electoral votes before a joint session of Congress.
5. The candidate who received the largest number of votes
and who won a majority of the Electoral College would
become president.
6. The candidate who received the second largest number of
votes would become vice president.
7. In the case of a tie between candidates or if no one
received a majority of the electoral votes, the House of
Representatives would choose the president from the
candidates. Voting would be by state, each state having one
vote, with a majority needed for a choice to be made.
8. In the case of a tie between two or more candidates having
the second largest number of votes, the Senate would
choose the vice president from among them.
46
The framers of the Constitution carefully crafted the
Electoral College, hoping that it would provide an effective
system for electing the president. But the system was not long
in use before the first of several problems with its structure
was revealed. This occurred in the election of 1800 as a
result of the rise of political parties.
In 1800, the two political parties nominated their
candidates for president and vice president, and in each state,
chose a slate of electors to vote for their party's candidates.
Voters in the general election cast their ballots not for the
candidates themselves, but for electors. The Democratic
Republicans nominated Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr,
and the Federalists nominated John Adams and Charles
Pinckney, for president and vice president, respectively.
Jefferson and Burr won the election, both receiving 73
electoral votes, while Adams received 65, Pinckney 64, and
John Jay one vote. Since Burr and Jefferson tied, both
receiving a majority, the choice was sent to the House of
Representatives. The House cast 36 ballots before it finally
chose Jefferson. This election highlighted the problem with the
double-voting system as described in the Constitution, and led
to demands for an amendment requiring separate votes for
president and vice president. The Twelfth Amendment was
approved by Congress in 1803, and ratified in time for the next
election in 1804.
The only other time a president was selected by the
House of Representatives occurred in the election of 1824,
when no candidate for president received a majority of the
electoral votes. In that election, Andrew Jackson received 99
electoral votes, John Quincy Adams 84, William Crawford 41,
and Henry Clay 37. Jackson also led in the popular vote. In
accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, the top three
candidates' names were placed before the House, where the
votes controlled by Clay would decide the election. Clay's
support went to Adams, who was thus elected president even
though Jackson had more electoral votes and a larger popular
vote. Clay was eventually appointed secretary of state by
Adams.
The election of 1876 proved to be the next major
challenge to the electoral system. Although Tilden won the
popular vote, he had only 184 undisputed electoral votes (one
vote shy of the 185 majority by then required to be elected).
Hayes had 165 electoral votes. There were 20 contested
electoral votes. One of the contested electoral votes came from
a disqualified elector in Oregon. It was readily resolved in
Hayes's favor. The other disputed electoral votes came from
Florida (4), Louisiana (8), and South Carolina (7). In these
states, the Republican controlled election boards claimed
Hayes as the winner, while the Democrats maintained that the
actual winner was Tilden. Each of these three states submitted
two conflicting certificates of election. Tilden needed only one
of these states to become president, while Hayes needed all
three. The Constitution provides for the House to choose a
president if no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral
College. The Democratic majority in the House would have
elected Tilden.
47
In December, following the election, Congress
reconvened in a state of stalemate. The Republican controlled
Senate and the Democratic controlled House quarreled over
who should determine which electoral returns from the three
southern states to accept. The Twelfth Amendment states only
that "the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the
Senate and the House of Representatives, open all the
certificates and the votes shall then be counted."
The Republicans in the Senate argued in favor of the
Senate's right to count the disputed electoral votes, while the
Democrats in the House argued that only the two houses
acting together could determine which votes were legitimate.
Eventually, the Senate and House created committees to
consider compromise solutions. Meeting in January 1877, the
congressional committees recommended creating a
nonpartisan electoral commission composed of five
representatives (three Democrats and two Republicans), five
senators (two Democrats and three Republicans), and five
members of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court justices
(two were known to be Republicans and two were Democrats)
were to select a fifth justice. Everyone understood that an
independent would be selected. When Supreme Court justice
David Davis, an independent who it was presumed would
become the fifth member from Supreme Court, resigned from
the Supreme Court to take a seat in the Senate, the position
was filled by a Republican. Thus. there were eight Republicans
and seven Democrats on the commission. The fifteen member
commission was to hear legal arguments from each side, then
determine whether or not to further investigate the

Rejected Electoral Ballot from Louisiana, December 6, 1876. SEN
44A-K1. 44th Congress. Record Group 46: Records of the U.S.
Senate
circumstances of the disputed elections. Many citizens from
the three states wrote to their congressmen and senators urging
them to accept or reject the disputed votes. Many special
interest groups recruited signatures on petitions from citizens
in their congressional districts and forwarded them to
Congress.
Private negotiations between Democrats and Republicans
now took place in an attempt to keep the situation from
erupting into violence. Meeting at the Wormley Hotel in
Washington, D.C., at the end of February, Hayes supporters
agreed that, if elected, Hayes would withdraw all federal
troops from the South, appoint a southerner to the Cabinet,
and assist in the rebuilding of the war torn South. Tilden
refused to speak out against the behind the scenes negotiations,
warning his party's firebrands that another civil war would
"end in the destruction of free government."
Congress began the electoral ballot count on February 1,
1877. When the ballots from Florida were reached, two
envelopes holding what were claimed to be the official set of
ballots were in the box. The problem was referred to the
commission. By a partisan vote of 87, the commission decided
not to investigate the Florida returns any further, and accepted
those signed by Florida's Republican governor for Hayes. The
House (with a Democratic majority) rejected the commission's
findings, but the Republican Senate approved. Hayes received
Florida's votes. The same 87 commission vote followed by
Senate approval gave Hayes the votes from Louisiana and
South Carolina.

48
 On March 2, Senate pages marched in procession to the
House chamber, carrying two mahogany boxes filled with
electoral ballots. The House galleries were filled with excited
citizens when, at 4:00 in the morning, the ballots were counted
and Hayes and Wheeler were declared elected.
Ten years later, in 1887, legislation was passed that gives
final authority to each state to decide on the legality of a set of
electoral votes. This legislation also requires a concurrent
majority of both the Senate and the House of Representatives
to reject any disputed electoral vote.

Additional Information:
The Federal Register’s Electoral College Home Page is:
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/
The website of the Federal Election Commission is
www.fec.gov

Article Adapted From:

Schamel, Wynell, Lee Ann Potter, and Katherine Snodgrass.
“The General Election of 1876.” Social Education
(September 2000): 286-292.

49
 Chapter 9

LINCOLN’S SPOT
RESOLUTIONS

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the

Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia
of the several States, when called into the actual Service
of the United States.
~Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution

The Congress shall have Power...To declare War...To

provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws
of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.
~Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution
Tension has existed between the legislative and the
executive branches of the U.S. government over war
powers since the Constitution simultaneously vested
Congress with the power to declare war and the President
with the power of Commander in Chief. Although Jefferson
insisted on congressional approval before sending troops into
combat, later Presidents have not felt bound by this
precedent. Their alternate view was boosted by the Supreme
Court in 1827 in the case Martin v. Mott. The Court ruled
that it was constitutional for Congress to vest the president
with the discretionary authority to decide whether an
emergency had arisen and to raise a militia to meet such a
threat of invasion or civil insurrection. Nonetheless, in the
winter of 1845-46, as relations between the United States
and Mexico deteriorated, there was no express delineation of
powers between the two branches.
Prior to Texas's independence, the Nueces River was
recognized as the northern boundary of Mexico. Spain had
fixed the Nueces as a border in 1816, and the United States
ratified it in the 1819 treaty by which the United States had
purchased Florida and renounced claims to Texas.
Even following Mexico's independence from Spain,
American and European cartographers fixed the Texas
border at the Nueces. When Texas declared its
independence, however, it claimed as its territory an
additional 150 miles of land, to the Rio Grande. With the
annexation of Texas in 1845, the United States adopted
Texas's position and claimed the Rio Grande as the border.
51
Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the United
States and refused to recognize either the Texas annexation
or the Rio Grande border. President James Polk sent a special
envoy, John L. Slidell, to propose cancellation of Mexico's
debt to United States citizens who had incurred damages
during the Mexican Revolution, provided Mexico would
formally recognize the Rio Grande boundary. Slidell was also
authorized to offer the Mexican government up to $30
million for California and New Mexico.
Between Slidell's arrival on December 6, 1845, and his
departure in March 1846, the regime of President Jose
Herrara was overthrown and a fervently nationalistic
government under General Mariano Paredes seized power.
Neither leader would speak to Slidell. When Paredes publicly
reaffirmed Mexico's claim to all of Texas, Slidell left in a
temper, convinced that Mexico should be "chastised."
Zachary Taylor
The agent for chastisement was already in place. On
January 13, 1846, more than 3,500 troops commanded by
General Zachary Taylor moved south under President Polk's
order, from Corpus Christi on the Nueces River to a location
on the north bank of the Rio Grande. Advancing on March
8 to Point Isabel, the U.S. troops found that the settlement
had been burned by fleeing Mexicans. By March 28, the
troops were near the mouth of the Rio Grande across from
the Mexican town of Matamoros.
Polk claimed the move was a defensive measure, and
expansionists and Democratic newspapers in the United
States applauded his action. Whig newspapers said that the
movement was an invasion of Mexico rather than a defense
of Texas. While newspapers in Mexico called for war,
General Pedro de Ampudia warned, "If you insist in
remaining upon the soil of the department of Tamaulipas, it
will clearly result that arms, and arms alone, must decide the
question."
General Ampudia's prediction came true on April 25
when Mexican cavalry crossed the Rio Grande and attacked
a mounted American patrol, killing five, wounding eleven,
and capturing forty-seven.
President Polk
In Washington, President Polk, although unaware of the
developments, had drafted a message asking Congress to
declare war on Mexico on the basis of Mexico's failure to pay
U.S. damage claims and refusal to meet with Slidell. At a
cabinet meeting on May 9, he notified his cabinet that he
would ask for war in a few days. Only Secretary of the Navy
George Bancroft counseled for delay, waiting for a Mexican
attack.
On that evening, Polk received Taylor's account of the
April 25 skirmish. Polk revised his war message, then sent it
to Congress on May 11 asserting, "Mexico has passed the Message of the President Concerning Relations Between the
boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and United States and Mexico, May 11, 1846. Presidential
shed American blood upon America's soil." On May 13, Messages, compiled 1789 – 1875. Record Group 46: Records of
Congress declared war, with a vote of 40-2 in the Senate and the U.S. Senate, 1789 – 2011.
174-14 in the House. National Archives Identifier: 595428

52
 Although Congress had declared war, it was not without
Map of U.S.-Mexico border 1847
reservation. An amendment was proposed, although
defeated, to indicate that Congress did not approve of Polk's
order to move troops into disputed territory. Sixty-seven
Whig representatives voted against mobilization and
appropriations for a war.
Ohio Senator Tom Corwin accused Polk of involving Nueces River
the United States in a war of aggression. Senator John C.
Calhoun of South Carolina abstained from voting, correctly
foreseeing that the war would aggravate sectional strife.
Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster voiced doubts about
the constitutionality of Polk's actions, believing that Polk had Rio Grande
failed to consult adequately with Congress. As the war
deepened, "Conscience" Whigs denied Polk had tried to
avoid war.
A freshman Whig Congressman from Illinois, Abraham
Lincoln, questioned whether the "spot" where blood had
been shed was really U.S. soil. On December 22, 1847, he
introduced the "Spot Resolutions." One of several
congressional resolutions opposing the war, it was never acted
upon by the full Congress. Lincoln's action temporarily The Disturnell map of 1847 was appended to the Treaty of
earned him a derisive nickname, "spotty Lincoln," coined by Guadalupe Hidalgo. Record Group 11: General Records of the U.S.
one Illinois newspaper. Government.
Other citizens shared their legislators' concern,
particularly those in the Northeast who saw the war as a ploy because he believed the war an immoral advancement of
to extend slavery. The most celebrated was Henry David slavery.
Thoreau, who refused to pay his $1 Massachusetts poll tax Acerbic former President John Quincy Adams described
the war as a southern expedition to find "bigger pens to cram

53

Resolution introduced by Congressman Abraham Lincoln to
“establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of
our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil,” December
22, 1847. Bills and Resolutions Originating in the House of
Representatives, 30th Congress, Record Group 233: Records of
the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789-2011.
National Archives Identifier: 306605
54
with slaves." Regional writer James R. Lowell, author of the
Biglow Papers, had his Yankee farmer Hosea Biglow scorn
fighting to bring in new slave states. Charles Sumner, a noted
abolitionist, also condemned the war from pacifist
principles. Philadelphian Joseph Sill's diary records
widespread public disapproval for the war by October 1847.
The Massachusetts state legislature resolved the war an
unconstitutional action because it was initiated by order of
the President with the "triple object of extending slavery, of
strengthening the slave power and of obtaining the control of
the free states."
Concern that Taylor's order sending troops into the
disputed territory provoked the clash was foremost in an
October 1847 article in one Whig newspaper, The American
Review: "The Constitution contemplates that before
deliberate hostilities shall be undertaken in any case, a
declaration of war shall be made; but in this case a hostile
aggressive move was made under the personal orders of the
President."
Ironically, when Lincoln became President, he extended
the war powers of the executive, action he had criticized as a
Congressman. Following the firing on Fort Sumter, he
declared a naval blockade on his own authority. The capture
and condemnation of four runners led to a case that went to
the Supreme Court. In 1863 the Court affirmed Lincoln's
actions in the Prize Cases, 2 Black 635.
Article Adapted From:
Mueller, Jean West and Wynell B. Schamel. "Lincoln's Spot
Resolutions." Social Education (October 1988): 455-457,
466.

55
 Chapter 10

RIGHTS IN TIMES OF
CRISIS: AMERICAN
CITIZENS AND
INTERNMENT
[The President] shall take the following Oath or
Affirmation:-- “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I
will faithfully execute the Office of President of the
United States, and will to the best of my Ability,
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the
United States.”
~Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution
No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation.
~Amendment V of the United States Constitution
As we commemorate the 225 anniversary of the
signing of the Constitution, we also celebrate 225 years of
the most complete, thorough protections enjoyed by citizens
anywhere in the world. But we cannot let our pride in this
accomplishment obscure the many instances when Federal
officials, sworn to uphold the Constitution, have restricted
the rights guaranteed to the American people, citing national
interest as their justification. One of the most disturbing
patterns in American history is that of Government
suspension of personal liberties during times of national
crisis or war.
During the Presidency of John Adams, when war with
France appeared imminent, the Federalists in Congress
stifled dissent and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts,
thereby curbing the rights of free speech and free press. Ten
individuals were convicted under the provisions of the
Sedition Act and sentenced to pay fines, serve prison
sentences, or both. In the 1860s the dissolution of the Union
and the outbreak of the Civil War resulted in the enactment
of numerous measures that violated citizens' liberties. The
press was censored, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended,
and more than 13,000 persons were arrested and held
without trial. Again, during the crisis of World War I, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, July 6, 1789. Enrolled Acts and
Espionage and Sedition Acts were adopted that resulted Resolutions of Congress, compiled 1789 - 2008. Record Group 11:
in the conviction of nearly 1,000 dissenters. Religious General Records of the United States Government, 1778 - 2006.
pacifists and critical journalists were among those punished. National Archives Identifier: 5641586
In considering six different cases, the Supreme Court upheld
these Federal acts in decisions that have never been

57
overturned.
The 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor not only
thrust the United States into a conflict of unprecedented
magnitude, but it also precipitated the suspension of U.S.
citizens’ rights on a larger scale than had ever occurred
before in the Nation's history, this time based on race rather
than dissent. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing military
commanders to exclude civilians from military areas; the
language of the order, however, did not specify any ethnic
group. Nevertheless, based on this authority, Lt. Gen. John L.
DeWitt of the Western Defense Command announced
curfews that were directed solely at Japanese Americans.
Next, he encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese
Americans from a limited number of areas; about seven
percent of the total Japanese American population in these
regions complied. On March 19, 1942, under the authority
of the Executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation
No. 4, which began the controlled, involuntary evacuation
and detention of west coast residents of Japanese descent on
a 48-hour notice. On March 21, only a few days before the
Executive Order 9066 dated February 19, 1942, in which President
posting of DeWitt's proclamation, Congress had passed
Franklin D. Roosevelt Authorizes the Secretary of War to Prescribe
Public Law 503, which made violation of Executive Order Military Areas, February 19, 1942. Executive Orders 9041 -
9066 a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison 9070, 1/26/1942 - 2/24/1942. Record Group 11: General
and a $5,000 fine. From the end of March to August, Records of the United States Government, 1778 - 2006.
approximately 112,000 persons left their homes for civil National Archives Identifier: 5730250
control stations, proceeded peaceably to assembly centers,
and then were moved by the military to relocation centers

58
across the interior of the country. Nearly 70,000 of the
evacuees—62.5 percent—were American citizens. No
charges of disloyalty were ever filed against any of these
citizens, and no means of appealing their loss of property
and personal liberty were available to them.

Real democracy is not hereditary. It is a way of

living.
—Student government page, Memoirs, 1944 Hunt High School yearbook, Minidoka Relocation Center

The Government’s actions were challenged in three

major Supreme Court cases: Hirabayashi v. United States (1943),
Ex parte Endo (1944), and Korematsu v. United States (1944). The
Korematsu case challenged the constitutional validity of
internment. Fred Korematsu was a nisei (an American born
individual of Japanese ancestry) who wished to join the Army
and fight America’s foes. He eluded internment by going into
hiding, but he was caught, tried, and convicted under Public
Law 503. He received five years probation and was sent to
the Topaz, UT, relocation center. His lawyers, from the
American Civil Liberties Union, took the case to the
Supreme Court. They argued that his conviction should be
overturned because internment violated the following parts Judgement, September 8, 1942. United States v. Korematsu, 1942 -
of the Constitution: 1984. Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United
States, 1685 - 2004.
Article I, section 1—by delegating unlimited legislative
National Archives Identifier: 296052
powers to courts, juries, and military commanders;

59
Article III, section 1—by delegating unlimited judicial
power to military commanders;
Amendment 5—by depriving Korematsu of liberty and
property without recourse to due process of law;
Article I, section 9—by creating, in effect, a bill of
attainder;
Amendment 8—by inflicting cruel and unusual
punishment;
Amendment 4—by sanctioning unreasonable search and
seizure;
Amendment 6—by interning him without a charge of
crime; and
Article III, section 3—by attainting Korematsu with
treason on the basis of racial ancestry.
In spite of these arguments, the Court upheld the legality of
internment.
After many years of struggle by JapaneseAmerican
groups, Congress enacted Public Law 100383 on August 10,
1988, which recognized that "a grave injustice was done to
Minidoka Relocation Center. Betty Yasunobu, Nellie Arai,
both citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese
salesgirl. Selling skates in Community store December 9, 1942.
ancestry by the evacuation, relocation and internment of Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority.
civilians during World War II," and "for these fundamental Record Group 210: Records of the War Relocation Authority,
violations of the basic civil liberties and constitutional rights 1941-1989.
of those individuals of Japanese ancestry, the Congress
National Archives Identifier: 536574
apologizes on behalf of the Nation." Nevertheless, Korematsu,
along with the World War I sedition decisions, remains the

60
standing legal precedent, sanctioning the right of the
Government to curtail American citizens' liberties in times of
crisis.

Additional Information:
The Supreme Court has handled cases pertaining to the
conflict of individual rights and national security in times of
war on numerous instances. Some examples are:
Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wallace 2 (1866) (see Chapter 16)
Ex parte Merryman, Fed Case 9487 (1861)
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)
Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919)
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)
Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943)
Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944)
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393
U.S. 503 (1969)

Article Adapted From:

Freeman, Elsie, Jean West and Wynell Burroughs Schamel.
“Rights in a Time of Crisis: American Citizens and
Internment.” Social Education (September 1991):
311-313.

61
 Chapter 11

WATERGATE AND THE

CONSTITUTION

The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of

the United States, shall be removed from Office on
Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or
other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
~Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution

The House of Representatives...shall have the sole

Power of Impeachment.
~Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution
When Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of
the Watergate scandal, it was only the second time in our
history that impeachment of a President had been
considered. Nearly every action taken with regard to the case
had some constitutional significance. The document shown
here deals with a specific question: Should the Watergate
Special Prosecutor seek an indictment of the former
President?
It is two pages of a three-page memorandum written for
the Watergate Special Prosecutor in August 1974, after
Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency and before President
Ford pardoned him. (The third page adds one more item to
the pro-indictment list and adds another category, “delay
decision.”)
The Office of the Special Prosecutor was created by
Executive Order in May 1973 and twice faced the question
of whether to seek an indictment of Richard Nixon. The first
time was in March 1974, when the grand jury handed down
indictments of seven White House aides for perjury and
obstruction of justice.
President Nixon was named an “unindicted
coconspirator” at that time because Watergate Special
Prosecutor Leon Jaworski advised the grand jury that in his Memorandum to the Special Prosecutor, Re:Indictment of Richard
opinion a sitting President could not be indicted. In his view, M. Nixon. Series: J. Fred Buzhardt’s Files, Collection RN-
the House Judiciary Committee was the appropriate body SMOF: White House Staff Member and Office Files (Nixon
Administration), 1/20/1969-8/9/1974. Richard Nixon
under the Constitution for examining evidence relating to the
Library, Yorba Linda, CA.
President.

63
 The House Judiciary
Committee pursued its
constitutional mandate and
drew up five articles of
impeachment, three of which
they approved in the summer of
1974. When the President was
forced by the Supreme Court in
August 1974 to surrender tape
recordings that revealed his
knowledge of the cover-up,
even his staunchest supporters
in the House admitted that they
would have to vote in favor of
impeachment. On August 9,
1974, President Richard Nixon
resigned the Presidency and
became citizen Richard Nixon.
Thus, for the second time
the Watergate Special
Prosecutor's Office faced the
question of whether or not to
Government Exhibit 133: Chapstick Tubes with Hidden Microphones, ca. 1972. United States v. G. seek an indictment. Article I,
Gordon Liddy, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, James McCord, Bernard Barker, Section 3, Clause 7 of the
and Virgilio Gonzalez, Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685 - Constitution provides that a
2004. person removed from office by
National Archives Identifier: 304967 impeachment and conviction
“shall nevertheless be liable to
Indictment, Trial, Judgment

64
and Punishment, according to the Law.” But there are no
guidelines in the Constitution about a President who has
resigned. The memorandum shown here is typical of others
in this file. It outlines reasons for and against pursuing an
indictment against Richard Nixon.

Article Adapted From:

Gray, Leslie and Wynell Burroughs Schamel. “Constitutional
Issues: Watergate and the Constitution.” Social Education
(February 1987): 88-90.

65
 Chapter 12

A LETTER ABOUT
FEDERALISM

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States

which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all
Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law
of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be
bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of
any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
~Article VI of the United States Constitution
Federalism has been an integral part of the American
system of government since its inception. Our Constitution
divides governmental power between the national
government and the state governments, giving substantial
functions to each. As Frederick Ogg points out, the relation
between these two centers of power is dynamic, not static,
and "must be readjusted and reshaped by each generation to
meet the changing needs of our society." In response to these
changing needs, our federal system has evolved from a
relationship of near equality at the formation of the Union
to one of national dominance today.
The generation that lived in the years just before the
Civil War struggled with this evolution. Their challenge was
to balance the power relation between the national
government and the states during a time of increasing
tension over different economic and social systems in the
North and South. In an attempt to protect infant industry in
the North, the national government imposed tariffs so high
that Southerners were forced to purchase what they
considered to be inferior goods from the North.
In 1828, the passage of The Tariff of Abominations, as
it was called in the South, provoked a constitutional crisis;
South Carolina threatened to secede rather than be bound
by a law of the national government that it considered null
and void. A combination of compromises and threat of force
averted the crisis temporarily, but this crisis of state vs.
national supremacy was ultimately joined by the secession of
67
the Confederate States from the Union and the war that
followed.
The generation of the 1950s also had to define this
relationship between states and national government.
Because of the centralization of federal power following two
world wars and the social welfare legislation of the New
Deal, the national government was left with greatly
expanded powers. Against this background were set the
tensions created by state segregation laws that violated the
rights of black Americans under the Constitution. Unlike the
crisis of the 19th century, this crisis was settled by the
Supreme Court. Beginning with the Brown decision, the
Supreme Court struck down all state segregation laws that
came before it, effectively dismantling long-established
customs of the South. On March 12, 1956, 101 members of
Congress signed a "Declaration of Constitutional Principles"
in which they decried "the Supreme Court's encroachment
on rights reserved to the States and to the people, contrary to
established law and to the Constitution."
Many white Southerners had broken with Southern
political tradition when they voted for the Republican
candidate Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 because they believed
he would favor states' rights. The document shown here is
from just such a supporter. Documents accompanying this
letter reveal that W.D. Lawson was "a very highly regarded
cotton merchant" who had served as chair of the Citizens for
Eisenhower Movement in Gaston County, N.C., in 1952. In
his letter Lawson refers to this crisis in federalism.
 Article Adapted From:
Gray, Leslie and Wynell Burroughs. “Constitutional Issues:
Federalism.” Social Education (March 1987): 162-163.

Letter to General Lucius D. Clay from W.D. Lawson, January

21, 1956. Records as President (White House Central Files
1953-1961), Official File. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential
Library, Abilene, KS.

68
 Chapter 13

PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S
ADDRESS TO THE
NATION ON THE JAMES
MEREDITH CASE
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States
which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all
Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law
of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be
bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of
any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
~Article VI of the United States Constitution
He was not allowed to attend a major southern
university. He was constantly threatened and verbally abused.
He was even accused of stealing. James H. Meredith was
black. On January 21, 1961, one day after President John F.
Kennedy was inaugurated, Meredith applied for admission to
the University of Mississippi. Having attended Jackson State
University, the University of Maryland, Washburn University
and the University of Kansas with a record of excellent
grades, Meredith felt confident of his decision to apply.
However, academic achievement was not his primary reason
for applying. The University of Mississippi did not admit
blacks. James Meredith wanted to change that.
Meredith wrote a letter requesting information on
admission to the registrar's office at the university. He also
wrote to the four other universities he had attended, asking
that his transcripts be sent to the University of Mississippi.
He followed all admission procedures very carefully. On
February 21, he enclosed in a second letter a $10 deposit for
a room in the men's dormitory. Despite his efforts, the
University of Mississippi rejected his application after
Meredith informed them in his letter of February 21 that he
James Meredith's Letter to the Registrar, University of Mississippi
was black. May 15, 1961. Assistant Attorney General Mississippi Files,
The registrar at "Ole Miss, '' Robert B. Ellis, wrote compiled 7/1959 - 1963. Collection JFK-161: The Personal
Meredith that his application was received after the deadline Papers of Burke Marshall, 1944 - 2003. John F. Kennedy
for registration and was therefore not acceptable. Meredith’s Library, Boston, MA
room deposit was returned. National Archives Identifier 193218
Meredith fought back. He again sent the $10 deposit to
Ellis requesting that it be used for his stay during the next

70
summer session. However, on May 25, Ellis wrote to inform
Meredith that his undergraduate credits could not be
transferred from Jackson State because that school was not a
member of the Southern Association of Colleges and
Secondary Schools. Ellis added that the application did not
meet other requirements, but he failed to say what they were.
He also said that Meredith's file had been closed. On May
31, 1961, Meredith responded by filing suit in the U. S.
district court against the University of Mississippi, claiming
that he had been denied admission because of his race.
The trial lasted a year. The credibility of the case rested
solely on Meredith's testimony. Beginning with the
deposition, Meredith faced questions, many of which had
nothing to do with his application for admission to the
university. The questions were aimed at intimidating him and
falsifying his story. They asked where his wife was from, who
had married them, what type of car he had driven to the
hearing, if he had credit cards or paid cash for everything.
They even asked him to spell the words “notary public.” For
blacks in southern courtrooms at that time, questions such as
these were known as “the treatment.” Finally, the court ruled
against Meredith, asserting that he had not met all the
procedures required for admission, including obtaining
letters of recommendation from alumni. Meredith had failed
to satisfy the court that his admission to the University of
Mississippi was denied on the grounds that he was black.
Meredith appealed this decision to the U. S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His case finally received full
71
attention from the court, the State of Mississippi, and the
United States public. On June 25, 1962, more than a year
after he had initially applied to the university, the U.S. Fifth
Circuit Court handed down its decision. James Meredith was
to be allowed to attend the University of Mississippi. The
court stated in its decision that Mississippi schools practiced a
segregationist policy and further explicitly recognized the
difficulty for a black student to meet the requirement of
obtaining letters of recommendation from alumni, since
there were no black alumni of the university nor any white
alumni likely to be willing to write them. The court also said
that the requirement for such letters was adopted by the
university only a few months after the historic Supreme
Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas.
Meredith's legal victory was challenged. Mississippi
Governor Ross Barnett proclaimed on September 13, 1962,
that the State of Mississippi would not conform to the federal
court decision. The state would defy the court order to admit
James Meredith to the state university, Governor Barnett
declared: “The operation of the public school system is one
of the powers which was not delegated to the Federal
Government but which was reserved to the respective states
pursuant to the terms of the Tenth Amendment.” He went
on to say that the federal government had used the judicial
system illegally to take away the reserved powers of the
State of Mississippi.
Governor Barnett declared that Mississippi was “no longer
subject to the laws of the United States.”
All three branches of the state government of
Mississippi were determined to take as many actions as
possible to obstruct execution of the federal court's decision
allowing a black to enroll in a white university. Meredith was
tried, convicted, and sentenced to a year in jail on charges of
false voter registration. A few days later, the Mississippi
legislature held an emergency midnight session to pass a law
stating that a person could not enroll in the university if he
or she were involved in a criminal proceeding, or if he or she
were convicted of a crime with a minimum sentence of a fine
of $300 or a year in jail. The governor was appointed
registrar of the university effective September 20, the day
Meredith first arrived on campus.
The U.S. Government would not tolerate the defiance
of the State of Mississippi. On September 30, 1962, the
President of the United States issued an Executive order
stating that justice was not going to be obstructed by any
person or state. President Kennedy knew that above all, a
president has the responsibility to enforce the law and University of Mississippi Radio and Television Speech September
maintain order throughout the country. On October 1st, the 30, 1962. John F. Kennedy President’s Office Files; Speech Files;
Radio and Television Report on Situation at the University of
president communicated his order on the Meredith case in a
Mississippi. Papers of President Kennedy: President's Office Files:
radio and television address. In this speech, Kennedy Speech File, compiled 1961 - 1963. Collection JFK-POF: Papers
reaffirmed the supremacy of the federal courts over the state of John F. Kennedy: President’s Office Files,
courts in settling constitutional issues. 1/20/1961-11/22/1963. John F. Kennedy Library, Boston,
James Meredith, in pursuing the constitutional MA.
procedure to enact change within our system, had effected a National Archives Identifier: 193913

72
revival of a question as old as the Constitution itself: are the
state governments the ultimate authority in this country or is
the federal government? John Kennedy responded in no
uncertain terms, the Constitution is the supreme law of the
land and the federal courts are its final interpreters.

Additional Information:

Find other documents related to President Kennedy in the

Digital Archives at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
and Museum website: http://www.jfklibrary.org

Article Adapted From:

Burroughs, Wynell and Jean W. Mueller. “President
Kennedy's Address to the Nation on the James Meredith
Case.” Social Education (February 1986): 145-146.

73
 Chapter 14

LETTER TO PRESIDENT
HARRY TRUMAN ABOUT
THE MURDER OF HARRY
T. MOORE
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
~Amendment I of the United States Constitution
In late December of 1951, a news story out of
Mims, Florida, shocked the nation. The story contained
elements of prejudice, discrimination, injustice, lynching,
rape, bombings, and murder. The story not only made
headlines across the country, but also the world. On the
evening of December 25, a bomb was placed under the floor
joists of the bedroom of Harry T. Moore, a former
schoolteacher and the Executive Secretary of the Florida
chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, while he, his wife, and daughter slept in their
beds. Moore had drawn attention to himself through his civil
rights activities, which included registering African
Americans to vote, fighting against unfair labor practices,
and exposing cases of lynching and police brutality. His
campaign against what he believed was the wrongful
conviction of three African American males accused of
raping a white woman, known as the Groveland case,
however, attracted the immediate attention of the Ku Klux
Klan. Moore died as a result of his injuries, followed by his
wife nine days later. He was the first NAACP official
murdered in the modern civil rights struggle.
The public outcry following the shocking murder of
Harry and Harriette Moore was swift. Letters, cards, and
petitions poured in to the White House from labor unions,
private citizens, community organizations, and
schoolchildren from across the country. According to White
House mail clerk R. G. Moore, by March 1952,
approximately 6,245 cards were being held in the mail room
75
regarding the bombing in Florida. One of those letters
addressed to President Harry Truman was written by Miss
Arden Rappaport, a student at Sarah Lawrence College in
Bronxville, New York. She challenged the President,
We, as a nation standing for freedom and equality for all
men, must pursue the ruthless undemocratic men who killed
this citizen for trying to assert the natural rights of his
people. These men should be apprehended and punished as
living examples that the United States not only preaches high
moral values, but lives and acts by her own dictates and
principles.
As with the others who wrote to the President, she expected
him to do something. The writers all implored, directed, and
told the president:
“You, as President, must bear the full burden for the shocking
murder of Harry Moore...your civil rights proclamations are
fine, but actions speak louder than words.” –Vivian Schatz, a
citizen from Brooklyn, NY
“What are you going to do about it, Mr. President? We call
upon you to enforce our Constitution.” –A petition issued
and signed by members of the 7th South Club, American
Labor Party
“I am white, born Christian and Protestant, but I know the
history of Nazi Germany, where such incidents started with
actions against Communists, then spread to labor union
reprisals, the actions against Jews and finally against
Catholics, Protestants, conservatives, including those who

Letter from Miss Arden Rappaport to Harry S. Truman
Regarding Harry T. Moore, January 21, 1952. File
144-18-205 Serial 7. Record Group 60: General Records of
the Department of Justice, 1790-2002.
National Archives Identifier: 6050580
76
had looked aside in the beginning. I am only too well aware
that our treatment of the Negro, of Jews and of other
minorities in the North leaves much to be desired. I can only
say that I do as much as I can to change conditions here for
the better, and that I feel sure that conditions should be
improved all over our country so that it will be a better place
for all of us to live in.” –Mary E. Kiplinger, a citizen from
New York, NY
On October 11, 1952, Truman gave a speech in
Harlem, NY, that encapsulated much of his actual response,
and highlighted the efforts of his administration:
It was also last year that the Nation was shocked by the bomb
murder in Florida of Harry T. Moore and his wife. These
tragic deaths came shortly after the bombings of synagogues
and Catholic churches and of the housing project at Carver
Village. For several months the FBI has been gathering
evidence on the mobs responsible for these outrages. And
this week the United States Government began to present
evidence to a Federal grand jury at Miami.
The Federal grand jury he referenced in the speech had
been convened as a result of the FBI investigation in 1951.
Immediately following the Moore bombing over 75 special
agents were sent to Brevard County, Florida, where they
interviewed over 1,500 people.
In June 1953, the Federal grand jury described the Klan
activity in Florida as a “catalog of terror.” The presiding
judge, however, dismissed the case, ruling there was no
Federal jurisdiction in the incidents. As a result, the Article Adapted From:
investigation was officially closed in 1955.
Jones, Megan. “Letter to President Harry Truman about the
That was not the end of the story, though. In 1978 and
Murder of Harry T. Moore.” Social Education
again in 1992, the case was re-opened by the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement, but no new evidence was (November/December 2011): 320-323.
uncovered until 2005. On August 16, 2006, Florida Attorney
General Charlie Christ announced the conclusion of his 20-
month investigation. The report named four suspects found
to be directly involved in the bombing, two of whom had
been suspects in the original 1951 investigation. All four
suspects were members of the Ku Klux Klan, but were
deceased by the time the report was released. To this day,
the Moore case remains unsolved.

Additional Information:

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum http://

www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/trumancivilrights/
index.php

Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore from PBS.

www.pbs.org/harrymoore

The Harry T. & Harriette V. Moore Cultural Complex, Inc.

http://www.harryharriettemoore.org/

77
 Chapter 15

NO RELIGIOUS TEST: A
LETTER TO CANDIDATE
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
~Amendment I of the United States Constitution
Among the records kept in the historic courthouse of
Fairfax County, Virginia, is an oath that officeholders in
1751-52 were required to sign. Public servants declared that
there was no transubstantiation “in the sacrament of the
eucharist or in the elements of bread and wine at or after the
consecration thereof.” This religious test thus excluded
Roman Catholics from public office in Fairfax County, and
its use was the rule rather than the exception in colonial
America.
Following the Revolutionary War and the
disestablishment of the Church of England in the United
States, however, many states adopted measures to promote
greater religious toleration. The national government, too,
advanced religious freedom, first in the Northwest
Ordinance, then in the Constitution, and finally in the First
Amendment. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution stipulated
“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to
an office or public trust under the United States.” This
measure was far too radical for the states, most of whom
retained in the constitutions religious tests for state office.
These persisted as late as 1961 when Maryland’s requirement
that officeholders declare a belief in God was challenged and
found unconstitutional. In Torasco v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, the
Court unanimously ruled that the “religious test for public
office unconstitutionally invades the appellant’s freedom of
belief and religion and therefore cannot be enforced against
him.”
79
A more insidious evasion of the Constitution’s
prohibition against religious test was the informal
requirement for public office that candidates belong to a
mainstream Protestant sect. Because members of other
religions were prevented from seeking and holding office,
they were relegated to second-class citizenship, compromising
the integrity of the government.
The presidential election of 1928, which was marred by
religious bigotry, illustrates this informal test. The Democrats
nominated New York governor Alfred E. Smith, a Roman
Catholic of Irish extraction, as their candidate for president.
Conservative Protestants turned his religion into a political
issue, claiming that Smith, if elected, would be a puppet of
the pope. Smith rebutted in a May 1927 article in Atlantic
Monthly.
What is this conflict about which you talk? It may exist in
some lands which do not guarantee religious freedom. But in
the wildest dreams of your imagination you cannot conjure
up a possible conflict between religious principle and political
duty in the United States except on the unthinkable
hypothesis that some law were to be passed which violated
the common morality of all God-fearing men. And if you
can conjure up such a conflict, how would a Protestant
resolve it? Obviously by the dictates of his conscience. This is
exactly what a Catholic would do. There is no ecclesiastical
tribunal which would have the slightest claim upon the
obedience of Catholic communicants in the resolution of
such a conflict.
 Smith’s distinguished record as a public servant bore out
his assertion that the religious issue was a straw man; but the
Republicans did little to dispel the slurs against Smith, and
their nominee, Herbert Hoover, won the election in a
landslide.
It was not until 1960 that the nation was asked to
reconsider its decision of 1928. John F. Kennedy, another
Roman Catholic, had swayed voters even in Protestant
strongholds such as West Virginia, defeated Protestant
candidates, and won the Democratic Party’s nomination for
the presidency. Nonetheless, his faith was an issue in the
campaign. Kennedy’s most important speech on religion and
public service was made before the Greater Houston
Ministerial Association in Houston, Texas, on September 12,
1960. In part, he said, “I am not the Catholic candidate for
President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for
President who happens also to be Catholic. I do not speak for
my Church on public matters—and the Church does not
speak for me…[I]f the time should ever come—and I do not Address to the Houston Ministers Conference, September 12,
concede any conflict to be even remotely possible—when my 1960. Independent Film Producers Collection. John F. Kennedy
office would require me to either violate my conscience or Library , Boston, MA.
violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; John F. Kennedy Library Digital Identifier: IFP-140
and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the
same…[I]f this election is decided on the basis that 40 A letter sent to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy .
million Americans lost their chance of being President on the Kennedy from Mrs. Robert Alexander is one particularly
day they were baptized, then it is the whole Nation that will thoughtful example selected from the many letters sent to the
be the loser...” candidate in response to his speech to Houston’s ministers.

80
 Kennedy received so many letters on religious issues that a
staff member was assigned to handle the load. When he won
the election, it was viewed by many as a victory for religious
freedom.
The issues of religious tests did not end in 1960. By the
1980’s, Christian evangelicals emerged as a political force.
Public response to former ministers’ candidacies, including
presidential candidates Pat Robertson (1988) and Jesse
Jackson (1984; 1988), raised new questions about religion and
public office.

Additional Information:

Find other documents related to President Kennedy in the

Digital Archives at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
and Museum website: http://www.jfklibrary.org

Article Adapted From:

Mueller, Jean West and Wynell Burroughs Schamel. “No
Letter to Senator Kennedy about Religious Tests. JFK 1960 Religious Test: A Letter to Candidate John F. Kennedy.”
Campaign Files, Religious Issue Files of James Wine, Box 1002, Social Education (November 1988): 507-509,533.
Folder Correspondence: A (2 of 4 folders). John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library, Boston, MA.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Digital Identifier:
JFKCAMP1960-1002-002-p0006

81
 JUDICIAL
BRANCH
The judicial Power of the United States shall be
vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior
Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain
and establish.
~Article III, Section 1 of the United States
Constitution

Photograph of Supreme Court Building.

Series: Photographic Records Made By
The National Archives, Record Group
64: Records of the National Archives and
Records Administration, 1789-2007.
 Chapter 16

SEPARATION OF
POWERS

The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts,

shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.
~Article III, Section 1 of the United States
Constitution
It is safe to say that a respect for the principle of
separation of powers is deeply ingrained in American
thought. The nation subscribes to the original premise of the
framers of the Constitution that the way to safeguard against
tyranny is to separate the powers of government among
three branches so that each branch checks the other two.
Even when this system thwarts the public will and paralyzes
the processes of government, Americans have rallied to its
defense.
At no time in this century was the devotion to that
principle more vigorously evoked than in 1937, when
Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) introduced a plan to increase
the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. The conflict
set off by the President's plan is more understandable when
viewed in the historical context of expanding judicial power
as well as in the contemporary context of pro- and anti-New
Deal politics.
In the early national period, the judiciary was the
weakest of the three branches of government. When Chief
Justice John Marshall established the principle of judicial
review in Marbury v. Madison by declaring an act of Congress
unconstitutional, he greatly strengthened the judiciary. Even
though the high court exercised this prerogative only one
other time prior to the Civil War (Dred Scott v. Sanford), the
establishment of judicial review made the judiciary more of
an equal player with the executive and legislative branches.
84
After the Civil War, the Court entered a phase of
judicial activism based on a conservative political outlook
that further enhanced its own power. In accepting the view
that the 14th Amendment should be interpreted to protect
corporations, the Court struck down laws that protected
workers, such as minimum wage laws and laws prohibiting
child labor. Critics of the Court's stand, including Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, argued that these decisions were not
based on the Constitution but upon the laissez-faire
theory of economics. By 1937 the Court was regarded by
many as an enemy of working people.
This sentiment was exacerbated by the Great
Depression. In 1935-36, the Court struck down eight of
FDR's New Deal programs, including the National Recovery
Act (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA).
Public antijudicial sentiment intensified; many critics
questioned the constitutionality of the concept of judicial
review itself. As a result of this reaction, several constitutional
amendments were introduced into Congress in 1936,
including one that would require a two-thirds vote of the
Court whenever an act of Congress was declared
unconstitutional; another that would permit Congress to
revalidate federal laws previously declared unconstitutional
by re-passing them with a two-thirds vote of both houses,
and even one that would abolish altogether the Court's power
to declare federal laws unconstitutional.
FDR remained silent, hoping that the anti-judicial
public sentiment would continue to grow without his having
to enter the fray. He avoided any direct references to the
Court in the 1936 election campaign. After his election
victory, however, he submitted to Congress early in February
1937 a plan for "judicial reform," which forever came to be
known as his attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court. Given
Roosevelt's record for legislative success, it is interesting to
discover why this plan to reconstitute the Court with Justices
more favorable to the New Deal backfired.
Franklin Roosevelt and his Attorney General, Homer
Cummings, had considered several options. They could have
attacked the issue of judicial review head on, as Congress's
proposed amendments had sought to do, but they chose not
to, perhaps anticipating the public's attachment to the idea
of the judiciary as the guardian of the Constitution. Instead,
they chose to change the number of Justices on the Court,
which had been done six times since 1789. Their plan had a
different twist, however, for it proposed adding a justice for
every justice over the age of 70 who refused to retire, up to a
maximum of 15 total.
This proposal was all the more appealing because Justice
Department lawyers had discovered that the very same idea
had been proposed by Justice James C. McReynolds, one of
the most conservative justices then sitting on the Court, when
he had been President Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General
in 1913. The administration could not resist the appeal of
such irony, and without consulting Congress, the President
and his New Deal aides blundered into one of the biggest
political miscalculations of their tenure. By masking their
85
true intentions, they created a split within their own party
from which they never fully recovered.
It was expected that the Republicans would cry foul, but
when the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
Democrat Hatton Sumners of Texas, announced his
opposition, the plan was as good as dead. Further resistance
to the plan developed in Congress as the Court began a
reversal of its previous conservative course by ruling in favor
of such legislation as the National Labor Relations Act and
the Social Security Act. Congressmen urged the White
House to withdraw the bill, but confident of victory, FDR
refused to back down. The cost was the alienation of
conservative Democrats and the loss of the fight in Congress.
Letters poured into the White House and the Justice
Department both attacking and supporting the President's
plan. Many of the letters of support came from ordinary
citizens who had worked in industries hurt by the Great
Depression. The Worker's Alliance of Kalispell, MT, wrote,
"We consider that Recovery has been delayed materially by
the dilatory action of the Supreme Court. An immediate
curb on the Supreme Court is of utmost importance, then an
amendment to put it in its proper place would be well and
good." But others, most notably the legal establishment and
the press, thought that the Supreme Court was already "in its
proper place."
One of the most outspoken members of the press was
the Rochester, NY, newspaper publisher Frank Gannett.
Gannett sent a letter to the Office of the Solicitor in the
 Justice Department that was then referred to the Attorney
General. Like many others in the same Justice Department
file, it expresses the concern that the real issue is not judicial
reform but the continued expansion of executive power.
Even those who trusted Roosevelt, and who believed in
what the New Deal was trying to accomplish, were wary. The
following excerpt from a telegram to President Roosevelt is
typical:
Please watch your step while attempting to curb the powers
of the honorable Supreme Court of the United States. Such
action may be in order while so able a person as your
excellency may remain in the president's chair but please let
us look to the future when it might be in order for the
citizenship of our great country to look to the Supreme
Court for guidance which we might justly require.

Article Adapted From:

Gray, Leslie and Wynell Burroughs. “Constitutional Issues:
Separation of Powers.” Social Education (January 1987):
Statement by Frank E. Gannett, of Gannett Newspapers 28-30.
Regarding President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Attempt to Pack the
Supreme Court, 2/23, 1937. File Unit 235868 Sub 1 Jan. 10,
1936 - February 26, 1937, Straight Numerical Files, compiled
1904 - 1974. Record Group 60: General Records of the
Department of Justice, 1790 - 2002
National Archives Identifier 6207444

86
 Chapter 17

THE WRIT OF HABEAS

CORPUS

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not

be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or
Invasion the public Safety may require it.
~Article I, Section 9

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of

Impeachment, shall be by Jury.
~Article III, Section 2
It was a simple but powerful plea:
Indianapolis 28 Dec. 1864
Hon. E.M. Stanton Scty War
Dear Sir I have been condemned to die without evidence.
Please examine the facts and advise the President to this
much for an old acquaintance and friend.
Yours very truly
L.P. Milligan
Lambdin P. Milligan sent this letter to Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton concerning his court martial in what was
to become an extremely important civil liberties case—Ex
parte Milligan. The Supreme Court decided whether the
president has the right, in regions where the civil courts are
in operation, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and to
substitute trial by the military.
Despite its brevity and simplicity, Milligan’s letter raises
numerous questions. What crime was Milligan guilty of ? Was
he really sentenced without evidence or is this just his
opinion? Why does he refer to the secretary of war as “an old
acquaintance and friend?” In short, what is the story behind
this piece of history?
Habeas Corpus
Article I, Section 9,Clause 2 of the Constitution states,
“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be
88
suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the
public safety might require it.” A writ of habeas corpus is
one of the oldest civil liberties in the English-speaking world.
Address to the jailer of a prisoner by a judge, its literal
translation is “Thou (shalt) have the body (in court),” that is,
the jailer must produce the prisoner and explain to the judge
why the prisoner is being held. If the judge finds that the
prisoner is being unlawfully detained, the judge may order
the prisoner’s release. Habeas corpus has served over the
centuries as a protection for citizens against arbitrary
detainment and has allowed the judiciary to intervene to
protect individuals from arbitrary use of legislative and
executive power.
Northwestern Confederacy
During the Civil War, President Lincoln found it
necessary to proclaim in September of 1862, that “all
persons…guilty of any disloyal practice…shall be subject to
martial law and liable to trial and punishment by Courts
Martial or Military Commissions.” In October 1864,
Milligan and four others were tried in a military court in
Indiana and found guilty of conspiring with the Confederate
States of America to set up a “Northwestern Confederacy.”
The military court sentenced all of them to hang the
following May. Milligan maintained that he was innocent of
the charges and that he had been framed by a political
opponent in Indiana. Because he had been tried in a military
court where the rules of evidence, procedure, and appeal are
different, Milligan’s only recourse was to appeal for a

Charges and Specifications Preferred Against William A. Bowles,
Andrew Humphreys, Horace Heffren, Lambdinn P. Milligan, and
Stephen Horsey, ca. 1864. Court Martial Case Files, compiled
12/1800 - 10/1894. Record Group 153: Records of the Office
of the Judge Advocate General (Army), 1792 - 2010.
National Archives Identifier: 3819336
89
presidential pardon.
Two weeks after he was sentenced, Milligan wrote to his
old friend Edwin Stanton, who was then Lincoln’s secretary
of war. Ironically, these two men had taken their bar
examinations together some 30 years before but were now as
much enemies as any two soldiers on the field of battle. As
far as we now know, Stanton never replied to the letter.
President Johnson
The war ended in April 1865, concluding the
suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. In early May,
shortly before Milligan’s scheduled execution, his lawyers
filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus at the U.S. circuit
court, in Indianapolis. The lawyers argued that a military
court has not right to try a citizen if a civil court is in
operation. Supreme Court Justice Davis, sitting as a member
of the circuit court, felt the lawyer’s request to be an issue
requiring decision by the Supreme Court. But Milligan and
his fellow conspirators were sentenced to hang before any of
this could come to pass. Justice Davis wrote a moving letter to
President Andrew Johnson asking him to stay the execution
until the Supreme Court could hear the case.
President Johnson complied, reluctantly, to Justice
Davis’s request, first by staying the execution until June and
later by commuting the sentence to life in prison. The order
to commute the sentence was delivered to Edwin Stanton
with instructions not to tell the prisoners until just before
their scheduled execution that they were to live. Believing
that even the Constitution could not save him, Milligan spent
what he thought were his last days arranging his own funeral the United States of America and Nazi Germany or
and writing an address, which he expected to deliver before Communist Russia.”
he was hanged.
Free People Article Adapted From:
In due course, the Supreme Court considered the case
and ruled in favor of Milligan’s contention that a citizen’s Gray, Leslie and Wynell Burroughs. “Constitutional Issues.”
right to a trial in a civil court could not be revoked even if Social Education (November/December 1986): 549-550.
war produced situations in which the privilege of the writ of
habeas corpus might be revoked. Justice Davis, writing for
the majority, argued that the case went to the very heart of
what it meant to be a free people. He wrote into his decision
a reminder that one of the grievances against King George
III in the Declaration of Independence was that he had
“rendered the military power independent of and superior to
the civil power.”
He went on to say, “No graver question was ever
considered by this court, nor one which more clearly
concerns the rights of the whole people; for it is the
birthright of every American citizen when charged with a
crime, to be tried and punished according to the law.” On
April 12, 1866, Milligan and his fellow prisoners were
released from custody by order of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Civil War was a crisis that stretched the
Constitution, but this Supreme court decision defined just
how far it could be stretched by drawing a clear line between
the government’s need for security and the rights of
individual citizens. As historian Allan Nevins observed, “ The
heart of this decision is the heart of the differences between

90
 Chapter 18

DUE PROCESS AND

RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED,
CLARENCE EARL
GIDEON’S PETITION
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury
of the State and district wherein the crime shall have
been committed...and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the
witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for
obtaining witnesses in his favor, and have the Assistance
of Counsel for his defense.
~Amendment VI of the United States Constitution
The Sixth Amendment guarantee of the right to
a lawyer has expanded significantly during the past 60 years.
The most important case in the expansion of the right to
counsel occurred as a result of the case Gideon v. Wainwright in
1963.
Reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary
system of criminal justice, any person hailed into court, who is too poor
to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided
for him. This seems to be an obvious truth....That government hires
lawyers to prosecute and defendants who have the money hire lawyers to
defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief that
lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries. The right of one
charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and
essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours.
—Justice Hugo Black Opinion, Gideon v. Wainwright
In 1932, in the first of the Scottsboro appeals to come
before the Supreme Court, Powell v. Alabama, the Court ruled
that the right to counsel in a capital case was fundamental to
due process. The Court found that the indigent defendants
in this case were not provided adequate time to hire lawyers
and that the court-requested lawyers had inadequate time to
prepare a defense. The decision appeared to incorporate the
sixth amendment into the Constitution through the 14th
amendment, but 10 years later, the Supreme Court
rejected incorporation of the right to counsel in Betts v. Brady.
92
Not until the early 1960s did the Supreme Court begin
to incorporate the fifth and sixth amendments into the
Constitution. Malloy v. Hogan extended the right against self-
incrimination to the States in 1964. The sixth amendment
was incorporated in the landmark case of Gideon v.
Wainwright.
Clarence Earl Gideon, an indigent with five prior
convictions, was arrested for breaking and entering a pool
hall in Bay Harbor, Florida, in June 1961. At the beginning
of his trial in August, Gideon requested that the judge
appoint a lawyer to defend him, but the judge refused
because Florida law provided for free lawyers only in capital
cases. At that time, 37 of the 50 States provided lawyers for
poor defendants in all felony cases, and 8 others usually
provided lawyers in felony cases. Only five provided lawyers
only in capital cases, and Florida was one of them. During
his trial, Gideon unsuccessfully defended himself, was
convicted and was sent to the Florida state prison.
Although Gideon had only an eighth grade education,
he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on
the argument that he was being held illegally because his
right to a lawyer had been denied when one was not
provided for him at the time of his trial. The petition was
rejected by the Florida courts. His subsequent petition to the
Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari was returned because
he did not use the required form. His request was returned,
however, with a Supreme Court style manual. Writing on
prison stationery and following the samples in the booklet,

Petition for a Writ of Certiorari from Clarence Gideon to the
Supreme Court of the United States, June 5, 1962. Gideon v.
Wainright, 1/8/1962 - 4/12/1963. Appellate Jurisdiction
Case Files, 1792 - 2006. Records of the Supreme Court of the
United States, 1772 - 2007
National Archives Identifier: 597554
93
Gideon resubmitted his request on January 5, 1962. Gideon
also filed a petition in forma pauperis, a request that the
Supreme Court appoint a lawyer to present his case because
he was a pauper.
The Court appointed the respected Washington
attorney Abe Fortas to represent Gideon. (Fortas was soon to
become a Supreme Court Justice.) Fortas argued that a
defendant could not get a fair trial in the United States
without a lawyer and that conviction without a fair trial
violated due process of law. In other words, those who could
not afford a lawyer were being denied equal protection under
the law. Fortas's arguments convinced the Court to reverse
Betts. Justice Hugo Black, a dissenter in Betts, wrote the
opinion. The unanimous Gideon decision required states to
provide counsel for indigent felony defendants. Gideon was
retried in Bay Harbor, his case presented by a lawyer, and he
was found innocent, as he had steadfastly claimed he was all
along.
Gideon v. Wainwright did not answer all questions about
the right to counsel. For example, unanswered was the
question of the stage in the legal process at which the
accused's right to counsel began. It was not until the Miranda
decision in 1966 that the sixth amendment right to counsel
was extended to apply to a suspect from the moment of
arrest.
Article Adapted From:
Mueller, Jean West and Wynell Burroughs Schamel. “The
Bill of Rights: Due Process and Rights of the Accused
Clarence Earl Gideon's Petition in forma pauperis.”
Social Education (November/December 1990): 421-423.

94
 Chapter 19

REQUEST FOR A COPY

OF THE DECISION IN
WEEKS V. THE UNITED
STATES
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants
shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to
be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
~Amendment IV of the United States Constitution
On December 21, 1911, Fremont Weeks, an
employee of the Adams Express Company, was arrested
while on the job at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri.
Police suspected that Weeks was selling and “transmitting
chances” in a lottery, which at the time was considered
gambling, an illegal action in Missouri. He was promptly
taken to Police Station No. 4 and searched. Police officers
found paper, a lead pencil, and lottery tickets. While Weeks
was being held at the police station, Officers William Toohey
and John Owens drove to his residence, a boarding house
located at 1834 Penn Street. Thanks to a helpful neighbor
who showed them the location of a key, the officers entered
the room and found a leather suitcase that contained mining
stocks, a memorandum book, receipts, a wallet, and a tin
box. They seized these items, without a search warrant, and
turned over the evidence to United States Marshal A. J.
Martin. Officer Toohey returned to the residence that day
with the Martin and Officer Joseph Wolf in hopes that they
would find more evidence. After knocking on the front door,
they were admitted by a boarder and searched Weeks’s room
once again, finding incriminating letters written by customers
from across Missouri placing orders for lottery tickets. Those
items were also seized because the law enforcement officials
believed they proved that Weeks had violated federal law by
using the U.S. mail to distribute lottery tickets.
Based on the evidence taken by the law enforcement
officials, Weeks was indicted on charges of gambling and
using the U.S. Postal Service to distribute chances in a lottery.
96
His trial was held at the U.S. Court for the Western District
of Missouri. His attorney, Martin J. O’Donnell, filed a
motion requesting that all evidence seized by law
enforcement be returned to Weeks. He argued that the police
officers and the U.S. Marshal had unlawfully, and without a
search warrant, entered Weeks’s home and seized property in
violation of sections 11 and 23 of the Missouri Constitution
and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States
Constitution. Based on that argument, O’Donnell concluded
that the property should immediately be returned to Weeks
and that it should not be admissible during the trial. The
judge disagreed, ordering that only the evidence that was not
a part of the prosecution’s case against Weeks be returned,
but that all incriminating evidence should stay in the custody
of the District Attorney’s Office. As a result of the evidence
used during the trial, Weeks was found guilty by the jury of
illegal gambling, ordered to pay a $100 fine, and sentenced
to six months in jail. Immediately following sentencing,
O’Donnell appealed the decision to the United States
Supreme Court.
Weeks v. The United States was argued before the Supreme
Court on December 2-3, 1913. The question of interest to
the Court was whether or not the evidence seized from
Weeks’s residence without a search warrant was a violation
of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment
provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers and effects against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but
upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.
Weeks’s attorney, Martin J. O’Donnell, argued that the
search was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. However,
Solicitor General John W. Davis countered by arguing that
law enforcement officers behaved logically during the
investigation based upon the amount of incriminating
evidence against Weeks. The Court decided to overturn
Weeks’s conviction by a unanimous vote, not because he was
innocent of the charges but because the evidence that had
been used to convict him had been obtained without a search
warrant and was thus a violation of the Fourth Amendment
protecting him against unreasonable searches and seizures. In
the Court’s opinion, delivered on February 24, 1914, Justice
William Day further explained,
If letters and private documents can thus be seized and held
and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense,
the protection of the Fourth Amendment, declaring his right
to be secure against such searches and seizures, is of no
value, and so far as those thus placed are concerned, might as Letter from Elmer Grisley to Clerk of the Supreme Court
well be stricken from the Constitution. Regarding a Decision Wherein They Held That Evidence
Taken from the Person Illegally without a Search Warrant is
After the decision in Weeks v. The United States, attorneys Not Admissible, May 20, 1914. Case File for Weeks v. United
from across the country wrote letters to the Clerk of the States, Record Group 267: Records of the Supreme Court of the
Supreme Court requesting copies of the decision. In a United States, 1772-2007.
single-page request, featured in this article, Elmer Grisely, National Archives Identifier: 5720444
from the law offices of Cogan, Williams and Ragland in

97
Cincinnati, Ohio, indicated that he had heard about the interpretations of the principle of privacy and its relationship
decision but wanted a copy for himself. Prior to the decision, to the Fourth Amendment.
courts operated on the premise that the need for justice was
of greater importance than the defendant’s protection under
the Fourth Amendment, and thus evidence obtained without Article Adapted From:
a warrant was commonplace. But, as a result of the Weeks Jones, Megan. “Request for a Copy of
decision the exclusionary rule was created by the Court. It
the Decision in Weeks v. The United States.” Social Education
forbids the use of illegally obtained evidence in federal court.
Law enforcement officials began to fear that the new rule (March/April 2011): 56-59.
would make criminal prosecutions more difficult and allow
the guilty to go unpunished.
The response to Mr. Grisely’s inquiry was more
complicated than it first appeared to be in 1914. For
instance, according to the Supreme Court, the exclusionary
rule applied only to federal courts, which meant that illegally
obtained evidence was still admissible in state courts. Also, if
state or local police turned over illegally obtained evidence to
a federal prosecutor, the evidence could be used in federal
court. This rule became known as the “silver platter”
exception, and this practice continued until 1961 with the
Supreme Court decision Mapp v. Ohio, which extended the
exclusionary rule to the states. Writing for the majority in this
case, Justice Tom Clark noted that “allowing states to
continue to use illegally obtained evidence in criminal
proceedings,. . .serves to encourage disobedience of the
Federal Constitution which it is bound to uphold.”
For 47 years, the exclusionary rule was applied
inconsistently in criminal prosecutions due to differing

98
 Chapter 20

PLESSY V. FERGUSON
MANDATE

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law

and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws
of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall
be made, under their Authority.
~Article III, Section 2 of the United States
Constitution
During the era of Reconstruction, black Americans’
political rights were affirmed by three constitutional
amendments and numerous laws passed by Congress. Racial
discrimination was attacked on a particularly broad front by
the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This legislation made it a crime
for an individual to deny “the full and equal enjoyment of
any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and
privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water,
theaters and other places of public amusement; subject only
to the conditions and limitations established by law, and
applicable alike to citizens of every race and color.”
In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 act,
ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give Congress
authority to prevent discrimination by private individuals.
Victims of racial discrimination were told to seek relief not
from the federal government, but from the states.
Unfortunately, state governments were passing legislation
that codified inequality between the races. Laws requiring the
establishment of separate schools for children of each race
were most common; however, segregation was soon extended
to encompass most public and semipublic facilities.
Beginning with passage of an 1887 Florida law, states
began to require that railroads furnish separate
accommodations for each race. These measures were
unpopular with the railway companies that bore the expense
of adding Jim Crow cars. Segregation of the railroads was
even more objectionable to black citizens who saw it as a
further step towards total repudiation of three constitutional
100
amendments. When such a bill was proposed before the
Louisiana legislature in 1890, the articulate black community
of New Orleans protested vigorously. Nonetheless, despite
the presence of 16 black legislators in the state assembly, the
law was passed. It required either separate passenger coaches
or partitioned coaches to provide segregated
accommodations for each race. Passengers were required to
sit in the appropriate areas or face a $25 fine or a 20-day jail
sentence. Black nurses attending white children were
permitted to ride in white compartments, however.
In 1891, a group of concerned young black men of
New Orleans formed the “Citizens’ Committee to Test the
Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” They raised
money and engaged Albion W. Tourgée, a prominent
Radical Republican author and politician, as their lawyer.
On May 15, 1892, the Louisiana State Supreme Court
decided to press a test case on intrastate travel. With the
cooperation of the East Louisiana Railroad, on June 7, 1892,
Homer Plessy, a mulatto (7/8 white), seated himself in a
white compartment, was challenged by the conductor, and
was arrested and charged with violating the state law. In the
Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourgée
argued that the law requiring “separate but equal
accommodations” was unconstitutional. When Judge John H.
Ferguson ruled against him, Plessy applied to the State
Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition and certiorari.
Although the court upheld the state law, it granted Plessy’s
petition for a writ of error that would enable him to appeal
the case to the Supreme Court.
 In 1896, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Plessy
v. Ferguson. Justice Henry Brown of Michigan delivered the
majority opinion, which sustained the constitutionality of
Louisiana’s Jim Crow law. In part, he said:
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff ’s
argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced
separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a
badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of
anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race
chooses to put that construction upon it…The argument also
assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by
legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured except by
an enforced commingling of the two races…If the civil and
political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior
to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the
other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot
put them upon the same plane.

In a powerful dissent, conservative Kentuckian John

Judgement in Plessy v. Ferguson. Case File for Plessy v. Ferguson,
Record Group 267: Records of the Supreme Court of the United
States, 1772-2007.
National Archives Identifier: 1685178
Marshall Harlan wrote:
I am of the opinion that the statute of Louisiana is
inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and
black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and the
letter of the Constitution of the United States. If laws of like
character should be enacted in the several States of the
Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous.
Slavery as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true,
have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a

101
power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with
the blessings of freedom; to regulate civil rights common to
all citizens, upon the basis of race; and to place in a
condition of legal inferiority a large body of American
citizens, now constituting a part of the political community,
called the people of the United States, for whom and by
whom, through representatives, our government is
administered. Such a system is inconsistent with the
guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a
republican form of government, and may be stricken down
by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of
their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land,
anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the
contrary notwithstanding.
Indeed, it was through the Supreme Court’s decision in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and
congressional civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s that
systemic segregation under state law was ended. In the wake
of those federal actions, many states amended or rewrote
their state constitutions to conform with the spirit of the
Fourteenth Amendment. But for Homer Plessy, the remedies
came too late.

Article Adapted From:

Mueller, Jean West and Wynell Burroughs Schamel. “Plessy v.
Ferguson Mandate.” Social Education (February 1989):
120-122.

102
 Chapter 21

THE FIRST AMENDMENT:

THE FINISHED MYSTERY
AND WORLD WAR I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
~Amendment I of the United States Constitution
Our most personal liberties--freedom of religion,
freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to
peaceful assembly, and the right to petition the Government--
are protected by the first amendment. The first
amendment is the first ratified addition to the Constitution
and the first of the amendments to be made binding upon
the States by the due process clause of the 14th
amendment. It also enjoys a primacy belonging to no other
amendment. Indeed, Justice Wiley Rutledge in Thomas v.
Collins, 323 U.S. 516 (1945), conferred on the first
amendment a "preferred position" in the hierarchy of rights.
Yet, as favored as the first amendment is and as absolute as
its language is, there are limits to the freedoms guaranteed
therein. The rights of the individual are balanced against the
common good.
Particularly in wartime, conflict has arisen between
individual liberties and the general welfare. Usually when
conflict occurs, national interest is accorded precedence over
individual conscience. Neither free exercise of religion nor
free expression has ever been perceived as absolute. Time
after time, during periods of national emergency, the
threshold for what constitutes seditious language has been
lowered.
During World War I, Federal espionage and sedition
acts were adopted that resulted in nearly 1,000 convictions.
The Espionage Act of June 15, 1917, accorded the
Government broad powers to censor or confiscate materials
that were considered unpatriotic, critical, or treasonous and
104
provided for the imprisonment of persons distributing
seditious materials. Many publications were scrutinized,
including those published by religious groups (see the 1917
Espionage Act in Chapter 10: Rights in Times of Crisis:
American Citizens and Internment).
Shortly before his death in 1916, Pastor Charles T.
Russell, the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, requested
posthumous publication of The Finished Mystery, the final
volume in his religious textbook series called Studies in the
Scriptures: Helping Hands to Bible Study. Its purpose, like that of
the society's periodicals, Kingdom News and The Watch Tower,
was "to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the oral
message and by the printed page." The volume was
published in mid-July 1917 and the society's International
Bible Students Association (IBSA) sold 30,000 copies the first
week it was available.
Later that year, according to contemporary reports in
Kingdom News, the Censor Committee of the Intelligence
Section of the War Department suggested the removal of six
pages; the society complied with the request. The
Government later denied that any such request had been
made; however, in early spring 1918, The Finished Mystery was
named a proscribed book on the grounds that it was antiwar
propaganda in violation of section 3, title I, of the Espionage
Act. John Lord O'Brian, special assistant to the Attorney
General for war work, asserted that the book "treated
participation in war as irreligious, unChristian, a violation of
the word of God and an adherence to the purposes and

Letter from Hooper Alexander, U.S. Attorney, to the Attorney
General, March 15, 1918. File Unit 9-19-1700-11. Class 9
(European War Matters) Litigation Case Files, compiled 1914 -
1959. Record Group 60: General Records of the Department of
Justice, 1790 - 2002.
National Archives Identifier: 6120950
105
designs of Satan." On March 14, 1918, the Attorney General
telegraphed Hooper Alexander, the U.S. Attorney for
Atlanta, GA, to enforce the book ban. The featured
document is the reply Alexander made the next day.
The April 15, 1918, edition of Kingdom News protested
the Government's censorship, arguing, “The Society has
never published anything with a view to hindering the
progress of the war at all, for the reason that they recognize
it as of Divine permission, and could not oppose its progress
without opposing the very foundation of their belief.” They
suggested that rival Protestant clergy had labeled their
publications as “Hun Propaganda” to unleash Government
persecution.
O'Brian clarified his opposition to the piece in a May 15
letter to U.S. Attorney Alexander saying that there was no
problem with distribution of the book to regular recognized
members of the society and IBSA. Rather, it was distribution
of the materials to outsiders that constituted “antiwar
propaganda.” Shortly after, J.F. Rutherford and seven other
members of the IBSA were arrested for distributing the
proscribed materials. They were convicted on the charges of
conspiracy to cause insubordination and disloyalty in the
military and naval forces of the United States and
obstruction of recruitment and enlistment (for organizing
exemption claims on religious grounds). They were confined
in the Atlanta Penitentiary, and their convictions were
sustained upon appeal. In spite of a letter writing campaign
and request by Representative Riley J. Wilson, they received
no clemency.
Following the war, six cases came before the Supreme
Court challenging the constitutionality of the wartime
measures restraining free expression. In each instance the
Supreme Court sustained the Federal acts. The first case to
be decided, Schenck v. United States (1919), provided Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes the opportunity to enunciate the
“clear and present danger” doctrine:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not
protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing
a panic....The question in every case is whether the words
used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature
as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring
about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to
prevent.
These decisions are the standing precedent for the Supreme
Court, since they have never been overruled.

Article Adapted From:

Mueller, Jean West and Wynell Burroughs Schamel. “The
First Amendment: The Finished Mystery Case and
World War I.” Social Education (October 1990): 366-368.

106
 Chapter 22

ABINGTON V. SCHEMPP

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment

of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
~Amendment I of the United States Constitution
In 1963, in his concurring opinion in Abington
School District v. Schempp, United States Supreme Court Justice
William J. Brennan declared that “the Court's historic duty to
expound the meaning of the Constitution has encountered
few issues more intricate or more demanding than that of the
relationship between religion and the public schools.”
Nevertheless, a succession of cases affecting religion and
public schools have been appealed to the Court, heard by the
justices, and decided year after year.
Beginning with Everson v. Board of Education, the first
major case involving the establishment clause of the
First Amendment brought before the Supreme Court in
1947, the justices have used a broad construction of the
clause. Justice Hugo Black's opinion in that case clearly
describes this construction:
The “establishment of religion” clause of the First
Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the
Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass
laws, which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one
religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a
person to go to or to remain away from church against his
will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any
religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or
professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance
or nonattendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can
be levied to support any religious activities or institutions,
whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may
adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the
108
Federal Government can, openly or secretly participate in the
affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice
versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against
establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall
of separation between church and State.”
In the Everson case, the Court nevertheless upheld the state of
New Jersey parochial school busing plan on the basis that
the assistance was to the child, not to a religion.
In 1948 and 1952, the Court heard two cases involving
released time for religious instruction. In the first case,
McCollum v. Board of Education, the Illinois program was
declared unconstitutional because the instruction was given
within the school building. On the other hand, in the second
case, Zorach v. Clauson, the New York program was upheld as
constitutional because the instruction was outside the state-
owned school facility Thus the Court established a test to
determine the extent to which the public school may
accommodate religious education during the school day, a
distinction used by the Court later in the Schempp decision.
A cluster of Bible-reading and prayer cases was decided
in the early 1960s. The New York Regents' prayer written for
that state's public schools was ruled in violation of the First
Amendment in Engle v. Vitale in June, 1962. In 1963, in
Abington School District v. Schempp, the Court struck down a
Pennsylvania law requiring the daily reading without
comment of ten verses from the Bible followed by a
recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Justice Tom C. Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court for both this case and its
 companion case in Maryland, Murray v. Curlett. The Court's
conclusion, as enunciated by Justice Clark, was based on the
facts that the exercises were required, the students recited the
exercises in unison, the exercises were held in public
buildings, and the exercises were supervised by state-paid
teachers.
In none of these cases, however, did the Supreme Court
rule voluntary prayer unconstitutional. Furthermore, the
Court did not rule against teaching about religion in public
schools. Concerning this, Justice Clark wrote, “it might well
be said that one's education is not complete without a study
of comparative religion or the history of religion and its
relationship to the advancement of civilization.”

Article Adapted From:

Mueller, Jean West and Wynell Burroughs Schamel. “
Abington v. Schempp: A Study in the Establishment
Clause.” Social Education (January 1989): 61-66.

The opinion of the Court in Abington School District v. Schempp,

June 17, 1963. Appellate Jurisdiction Case Files. Record Group
267: Records of the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States.

109
ABOLITIONIST
An individual either formally or informally working towards the end of slavery.

ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS

Laws signed by President John Adams that limited rights for immigrants and placed made it a crime to publish “false,
scandalous, and malicious writing” about the United States government.

APPEAL
The process for requesting a change to a court decision

ARTICLE I, SECTION 1
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

ARTICLE I, SECTION 9
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be
prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on
such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the
public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed
to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another;
nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement
and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them,
shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from
any King, Prince, or foreign State.

ARTICLE III, SECTION 1

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress
may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices
during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished
during their Continuance in Office.

ARTICLE III, SECTION 3

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving
them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same
overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption
of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
The Articles of Confederation established the United States as a confederation made up of the original 13 founding states.
The Articles greatly limited the economic and political power of the national government, leading the United States to adopt
a federal form of government, with a stronger national government, under the United States Constitution of 1787.
BICAMERAL
Having two legislative or parliamentary chambers. Bicameralism is reflected in the United States by the division between the
Senate and the House of Representatives in the legislative process.

BROWN V. THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA, KANSAS

Viewed as a landmark Supreme Court case, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision declared “the
separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which
had upheld the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation.

CARPETBAGGER
A derogatory term for a Northerner who moved to the South during the Reconstruction Era, especially from 1865 and
1875.

CHECKS AND BALANCES

A system of overlapping powers of separate branches permitting each branch to limit, restrain, or inform the actions of the
other branches.

DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY
The political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in1791, primarily in opposition to the Federalist
Party.

DEPOSITION
Oral testimony of a witness not physically present in a court.

DUE PROCESS
The government must not infringe on an individual’s legal rights.
EIGHTH AMENDMENT
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

EMBARGO
A government sanctioned restriction on the movement of commerce shipments.

ESPIONAGE AND SEDITION ACTS

Acts designed to limit public and press interference with military operations and military recruitment. The Espionage Act
(1917) also made it a crime to support the enemy during wartime. These Acts were originally passed during World War I
and have been amended multiple times.

EXECUTIVE BRANCH
One of the three branches of the United States government. Article II of the United States Constitution created the
executive branch, led by the President. This branch of government is responsible for enforcing the legislation passed by
Congress.

FACSIMILE
A copy or reproduction of for a book, manuscript, map, artwork, etc.

FEDERALISM
A form of government where there is a constitutional division of power between a central government and regional
governments.
FEDERALIST PARTY
The Federalist Party was the first political party formed by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s. The
Federalist Party remained in power until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson (a member of the Democratic-Republican Party)
was elected.

FIFTH AMENDMENT
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a
Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or
public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

FIRST AMENDMENT
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Section 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.

Section 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 participation 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.

Section 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 Constitution 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.

Section 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 assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or
any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

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

FOURTH AMENDMENT
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

IMPEACHMENT
In the United States, impeachment is the legal statement of charges against a government official, not the actual trial. Article
I of the United States Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power of impeachment and the Senate the power
to try impeachments.
IMPORT
To bring in commodities or goods from a foreign country for sale, use, or processing.

INDICTMENT
An official accusation of criminal acts by an individual.

INTERSTATE COMMERCE
Trade, business, or transportation across state lines. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) regulates interstate
commerce in the United States.

JIM CROW LAWS

Laws enacted by states after the Civil War to enforce segregation, under the mantra of “separate but equal.”

JUDICIAL BRANCH
One of the three branches of the United States government. The Supreme Court holds the highest level of authority in this
branch. The judicial branch is found in Article III of the United States Constitution and is the only branch not elected by
the American people. Instead, the President (Executive Branch) appoints members of the judicial branch, who are then
confirmed by the Senate (Legislative Branch).

JUDICIAL REVIEW
A power of the judicial branch allows the judicial branch to check the power of the legislative and executive branches by
determining the constitutionality of legislation. Though the Constitution does not directly give the power of judicial review to
the judicial branch, the Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court case set the precedence for judicial review.
KKK
There have been three manifestations of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK); the most recent emerged in 1946. The 1946
manifestation of the Klan was primarily associated with opposing the civil rights movement and promoted anti-immigrant
policies. This version of the Klan was well-known for their extremely violent acts.

LAISSEZ-FAIRE THEORY
An economic theory suggesting transactions should be free from government involvement, except to protect property rights
and prevent theft.

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
One of the three branches of the United States government. The power of the legislative branch is vested in Congress,
which was established in Article I of the Constitution. Congress consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate and
is primarily responsible for creating federal legislation

LITERACY TESTS
Literacy tests are government sanctioned tests which judge an individual’s reading ability. Mainly used in 19th century
America, citizens were required to pass a literacy test in order to vote. Literacy tests were commonly used to deny African-
Americans and immigrants voting rights.

MONOPOLY
When only one person or business is the supplier of a good or service.

NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) emerged in 1909 as an African-American civil
rights organization.
NEW DEAL
A series of programs and social legislation introduced under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the severe
economic difficulties America faced during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

NINTH AMENDMENT
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
people.

NONPARTISAN
No formally declared political party.

NORTHWEST ORDINANCE
An act creating the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory in the United States. The area consisted of the area
south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River.

NULL
Invalid. The United State Supreme Court has rejected nullification.

PANIC OF 1873
A severe international depression due to a drop in international silver demand. The Panic of 1873 was the worst economic
depression experienced by the United States until the Great Depression in the 1930s.

PAROCHIAL
Relating to a church.
POLL TAX
A poll tax refers to a fixed tax levied on an individual, instead of a tax based on a percentage of an individual’s income.
Section 1 of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment forbids the use of a poll tax as a requirement for voting.

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment reads: The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election
for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress,
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
An era of political reform characterized by social activism from the 1890s to the 1920s. Many political ideals from the
Progressive movement focused on reforming government process, society, and the economy.

RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION
After the Civil War Congress and the President enacted plans to rebuild the southern government, society, and economy,
referred to as reconstruction. Initially, President Lincoln and his predecessor President Johnson dominated reconstruction
plans to the dismay of many members of Congress. Radical Reconstruction refers to Congress’ reconstruction plan after the
1866 election.

RESERVED POWERS
The powers referenced in the Tenth Amendment of the United States constitution. The Tenth Amendment reads: 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.

SCOTTSBORO TRIALS
A set of legal cases resulting from the accusation that nine black teenage boys raped two white women in Alabama in 1931.
SECEDE
To formally withdrawing from an alliance or federation. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in
1860.

SIXTH AMENDMENT
State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law,
and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have
compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

SOCIAL WELFARE LEGISLATION

Legislation designed to promote the common good primarily by providing assistance to members of a society. In the United
States, some of the groups assisted by social welfare legislation are the elderly, unemployed, disabled, poor, and children.
There are numerous programs which can be classified as social welfare legislation including: Social Security, the Food
Stamp Program, and Worker’s Compensation.

SUBSIDY
Assistance provided to a business or industry. Subsidies are usually provided by the government in order to prevent the
economic decline of a business or industry.

SUFFRAGE
The right to vote.

TARIFFS
A tax on imports or exports (though usually only imports). Tariffs are commonly used to limit competition for a domestic
producer because the tariff ultimately raises the price of foreign products.
TENTH AMENDMENT
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.

WHIG PARTY
A prominent political party from the 1830s through the 1850s. The Whig Party formed in opposition to Andrew Jackson’s
Democratic Party and supported the superiority of Congress over the President.

WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

The requirement that a person under arrest must be presented to a court or judge, this writ helps prevent unlawful
detainment. Article 1 Section 9 of the United States Constitution addresses habeas corpus; it reads “The privilege of the writ
of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it."