Amendments 13, 14 and 15 and why they are important.

Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen followed the end of the Civil War in 1865. Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. Fourteenth Amendment gave black people the same rights as the white people. The Fifteenth Amendment gave blacks the right to vote. The Civil War was the war in The United States between the “North” and the “South”. One of the many reasons of the Civil War was the abolitionist movement that started in the “North”. “Abolitionist ideas became increasingly prominent in Northern churches and politics beginning in the 1830s, which contributed to the regional animosity between North and South leading up to the Civil War.” (The History Channel website, 2013). The “South” was against abolition. Since the north won the civil war the government quickly had to make an Amendment that would make slavery illegal and after a couple of years the other two amendments gave black people the same rights as whites. This had to be done because of the support from the “North” of the abolitionist movement. If slavery would not of been banned after the win of the war it would cause a lot of distress amongst the states and would defeat the whole purpose of the war. Even though it took a while for the Amendments to fully take affect it was still a necessary step. Article V of the Fourteenth Amendment states that “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” (Patterson, "Appendixes, Article V," 2009). This gives the power to the federal government to enforce these laws. However none of the other articles of this Amendment stated that the local policies within the states could not discriminate against the blacks. This still created segregation of the two races which did not get fully resolved until the Civil Rights Movement which “most