Matt Chan

Cause and Effect of The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments

The American Civil War started because of many different reasons and one of them was
slavery. The south needed slaves more than the north because the south was more about agriculture,
the north on the other hand was more industrialized and thus didnt really need slaves. If a slave
escaped and went north they could, under right circumstances, be free from slavery and live as a
regular person in society. Once the Civil war ended the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were
proposed. The 13th amendment states that all slavery is abolished, the 14th amendment states that all
have equal citizenship rights and equal protection from the law, finally the 15th amendment states
that the government cannot prevent a person from voting based of the color of their skin tone, race
or previous servitudes i.e. Slavery.
Slavery was brought about since the beginning of America, Americans once thought Natives
could be slaves but they knew the land well and got sick easily. Africa was the next idea as they would
stand out with the skin color and they did not know the land at all. The slave triangle was invented to
trade raw goods like tobacco and sugar from America to England and Africa and in return get slaves
and industrialized goods. Because most of agriculture came from the south, slaves were great for the
south. By making slaves do the hard work instead of paid workers, farmers gained profit. Abraham
Lincoln was not an abolitionist, he thought the best way to end slavery was to ratify colonization
which is to send them back to Africa or South America. Lincoln freed the slaves because half the
country was free of slaves while the other was not and so he wanted a country that agreed on the
same things. Abraham Lincoln had said, A house divided against itself cannot stand. America cannot
stand if one half is pro-slavery and the other half is anti-slavery.
The 14th and 15th amendment came after the civil war and it was then that it was official that
slaves were free. In a slaves perspective this would be great because they can finally be set free from
the shackles of slavery and can have almost the same amount of privileges that an ordinary white
person could have like vote. However, farmers on the other hand would disagree because there
source of cheap labor has just been freed and now a farmer would have to pay more for workers
maintaining his crops. Many from the south really hated the change that Abraham Lincoln brought.
Just like Martin Luther King jr. both got killed for their actions on trying to bring change to the
country. Since the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment was ratified, there has been no form of African
American slavery.
The 13th, 14th and 15th amendment took one big step into the future for social, political and
economic inequality, if it werent for the three amendments we would have taken a lot longer to have
a African American civil rights movement and even a black president.