There are moments in the history of a republic when the deepest questions are not questions of policy, party, or personalities, but questions of first principles. Such moments arise when a government claims a power that the people never granted it, when an institution entrusted with enforcing a constitution begins to behave as though it were empowered to rewrite one, or when generations become so accustomed to a particular constitutional arrangement that they cease to ask the most elementary question of all:

Was it ever lawfully established in the first place? 

As I recently thought of just how sorely our so-called “leaders” have abused our Constitution and thereby America Herself and Her people over the past 160 years or so, nothing stuck out so much, since the Marbury v. Madison decision, as the passage of the horrendously flawed 14th Amendment and the manner in which it has been used to prop up, support and pass every far left item on their wish list imaginable, and from all indications, it appears this feckless Supreme Court has little or no real inclination or desire to stick to actual constitutional righteous law and clip its wings a bit.

It’s a disgrace to free people, free government and what we have long referred to as “rule of law”, which was thrown out the window with the bathwater and the baby, too, with the passage of this amendment.

They essentially used the military to prevent the South from having its say in this matter, even though President Johnson has pardoned everybody. And in later years, the U.S. and its people would profess to hate and abhor such actions against a free people, but that is exactly what our own federal government did, in 1866 and 1867 and all throughout the Reconstruction Era.

And it went on down the line in similar tone and tenor as each Southern State blocked from seating their representatives and senators and casting their votes as was their right as duly elected officials vehemently and fiercely voiced their objections and displeasure.

It’s taken us 160 years to get to so miserable a point in our country’s history, and I don’t see it being undone very quickly, not unless the mother of all economic collapses that everyone has been predicting for years finally arrives, and not without a whole hell of a lot of bloodshed over the next decade or two and a hot full-blown civil war. This is a situation we aren’t voting our way out of to see better days ahead.

The Alabama Legislature protested against being deprived of representation in the Senate of the U.S. Congress. (4)

     The Texas Legislature, by Resolution on October 15, 1866, protested as follows:

     The Amendment to the Constitution proposed by this joint resolution as Article XIV is presented to the Legislature of Texas for its action thereon, under Article V of that Constitution. This Article V, providing the mode of making amendments to that instrument, contemplates the participation by all the States through their representatives in Congress, in proposing amendments. As representatives from nearly one third of the States were excluded from the Congress proposing the amendments, the constitutional requirement was not complied with; it was violated in letter and in spirit; and the proposing of these amendments to States which were excluded from all participation in their initiation in Congress, is a nullity. (5)

     The Arkansas Legislature, by Resolution on December 17, 1866, protested as follows:

     The Constitution authorized two thirds of both houses of Congress to propose amendments; and, as eleven States were excluded from deliberation and decision upon the one now submitted, the conclusion is inevitable that it is not proposed by legal authority, but in palpable violation of the Constitution. (6)

     The Georgia Legislature, by Resolution on November 9, 1866, protested as follows:

     Since the reorganization of the State government, Georgia has elected Senators and Representatives. So has every other State. They have been arbitrarily refused admission to their seats, not on the ground that the qualifications of the members elected did not conform to the fourth paragraph, second section, first Article of the Constitution, but because their right of representation was denied by a portion of the States having equal but not greater rights than themselves. They have in fact been forcibly excluded; and, inasmuch as all legislative power granted by the States to the Congress is defined, and this power of exclusion is not among the powers expressly or by implication defined, the assemblage, at the capital, of representatives from a portion of the States, to the exclusion of the representatives of another portion, cannot be a constitutional Congress, when the representation of each State forms an integral part of the whole. ….. “

The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1868, belongs in that category of questions, no matter how momentous its passage has been portrayed to be in the annals of American history, especially once one notes the chicanery that was necessary to push it through the legislative process and how throughout the years it has been abused to support illegitimate “law” by way of mythical, imaginary, nonexistent text supposedly miraculously found. And yet nowhere are the actual words ever found, that so many Justices have used to make their illegal, unconstitutional rulings.

For more than a century and a half, Americans have been taught to regard the Fourteenth Amendment as one of the settled foundations of the constitutional order. It is invoked whenever courts address citizenship, equal protection, due process, voting rights, racial discrimination, incorporation of portions of the Bill of Rights against the states, abortion before Dobbs, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, administrative power, and an extraordinary range of controversies concerning the relationship between Washington and the several states. The amendment has become so deeply woven into American constitutional life that questioning its legal birth is frequently treated as little more than historical eccentricity.

But constitutional government is not supposed to rest upon familiarity.

It rests upon law.

And law, if it is to remain law rather than become the command of whoever happens to possess political power, must have a lawful source.

The passage of an amendment was made difficult on purpose, in order to ensure that any proposed amendment has widespread support. Article V tells us that an amendment must be proposed by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress, and for it to become law, it then must be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

The historical record is full of evidence that reveals the 14th Amendment was not properly passed in Congress or ratified by the states, and it represents one of the more egregious instances of abuse of power in American history. This amendment emerged after our people had just fought a bloody civil war in which hundreds of thousands of Americans were slaughtered; entire Southern States and millions of lives were destroyed, and out of the chaos – the fires, mud, ashes and blood – came the 14th Amendment which effectively dismantled the Constitution, even though its passage was and still is invalid.

Representatives and senators from the former Confederate states were excluded from Congress during the period in which the amendment was proposed. Contemporary Southern legislatures protested that a Congress excluding substantial portions of the states could not legitimately exercise the constitutional power to propose an amendment binding those very states. The New Jersey legislature, for example, argued that representatives from eleven states had been excluded and that the Senate’s treatment of New Jersey’s own Senator John P. Stockton further compromised the constitutional process.

How ironic to find that the U.S. government violated the very rights of entire states and approximately ten million Southerners by refusing to recognize their sovereign statehood until they ratified the 14th Amendment, which was in part created to defend and protect “the privileges or immunities of citizens”.

The Tennessee House, opposed to ratification, refused to attend the vote, thereby preventing a quorum. The Speaker reportedly declared that the House could not lawfully proceed, yet supporters of ratification proceeded regardless.

In a June 2023 article, Joel Wolverton II notes:

“In Oregon, proponents of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification held a razor-thin one-vote advantage in the state’s House of Representatives. The problem, though, was that the elections of two of those representatives supporting ratification were being challenged. Before the challenges could be heard and the merits thereof adjudicated, the Oregon House voted in favor of ratification. Later, however, the two seats were awarded to men who opposed ratification and the state’s notice of ratification was rescinded.

As for Ohio, that state’s government also violated its own state constitution by submitting the amendment to a popular referendum instead of obtaining approval through the state Legislature, required by the state constitution. Legally, this violation of the state’s constitution invalidates Ohio’s ratification, which, as with the gross irregularities in the two other states I’ve mentioned here, undermines the overall legality of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, California and Kentucky rescinded their ratifications. This reduced the number of states voting in favor of ratification down to nineteen, one vote short of the twenty votes that were required by the law under Article V. But the so-called “leaders” in Congress simply rejected their recissions, as if they had no say in the matter at all and rammed the amendment down America’s throat.

Please recall that in our Declaration of Independence, governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” and anything less arrived at by way ot threats, intimidation of coercion has another name – the very sort of tyranny our Founders initially rejected when they revolted against the British Empire.

In 1991, one of the most renown and accomplished American historians, Forrest McDonald, noted:

“Whatever else the Radicals had in mind in pushing through the Reconstruction Amendments — their motives were diverse and conflicting – it is clear that some of them, at least, intended that the Fourteenth should greatly increase the powers of Congress at the expense of the states. It is also clear that the process of adopting the Fourteenth Amendment was marred by repeated irregularities. President Andrew Johnson questioned the legitimacy of an amendment proposed by a Congress that represented only twenty-five of the thirty-six states. Three northern states that ratified the proposal later rescinded their votes. All the southern states except Tennessee at first voted against the amendment, despite an implied threat that they would not be readmitted to the Union; they changed their stands only after the threat was made explicit. And throughout the debates on the amendment, friends and foes alike disagreed as to whether approval of three-quarters of twenty-five states or of thirty-six would be necessary.”

The undisputed record, attested by official journals and the unanimous writings of historians, reveal the facts surrounding the events that unfolded in 1867 and 1868:

Aside from the Southern States, six states – Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio, California and Kentucky – failed to ratify the proposed 14th Amendment. Ten Southern States – Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas and Texas – rejected it outright through the normal processes of civil law and formal action of their legislatures. A total of sixteen legislatures out of thirty-seven failed to legally ratify the 14th Amendment, and Congress, which had deprived the Southern States of their seats in the Senate, did not lawfully pass the resolution of submission in the first instance.

The advocates and authors of the 14th Amendment purely and simply acted illegally, when they prevented twenty-three Senators and eighty Representatives from the Southern States from voting on the amendment, for the purpose of securing the assent of the requisite majority, essentially manipulating the vote through a massive fraud, upon the pretense that there were no such states in the Union. And even then, still failing to acquire the necessary majority of the remainder of Congress to pass the amendment, they deliberately formed and carried out the design of mutilating the integrity of the United States Senate, and without any legal justification, other than possession of the power, and in obvious violation of the Constitution, they ejected the newly elected John P. Stockton of New Jersey – denying New Jersey its equal suffrage in the Senate – and thereby illegitimately and nominally secured the necessary two-thirds vote, documented in ‘New Jersy Acts on March 27th 1868.

Article V provides:

“No State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

The Southern States which had rejected the 14th Amendment were coerced by a federal statute passed in 1867 that took away the right to vote or hold office from all citizens who had served in the Confederate Army. Military governors were appointed and instructed to prepare the roll of voters. And all of this transpired in direct contravention of President Andrew Johnson’s proclamation of amnesty for these Confederate soldiers and states; new legislatures were illegitimately chosen to “ratify” – read “rubber stamp” – under penalty of continued exile from the Union. In Louisiana, a General sent down from the North presided over its state legislature.

Reconstruction added humiliation to suffering – Eight years of crime, fraud, and corruption followed, and it was State legislatures composed of Negroes, carpetbaggers and scalawags who obeyed the order of the generals and ratified the amendment.

In May of 1865, President Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty to former rebels. Then he established provisional governments in all the Southern States. They were instructed to call Constitutional Conventions. They did, and new State governments were elected. White men were the only people with the right to vote at the time, since the 15th Amendment establishing equal voting rights had not yet been passed. Senators and Representatives were chosen, but when they went to participate at the opening of the new session of Congress, they were refused admission. The State governments, however, continued to function during 1866.

President Andrew Johnson publicly denounced the 1867 “law” as unconstitutional and vetoed it. But Congress overcame the veto and moved forward with its implementation.

In his veto message, President Johnson stated:

“I submit to Congress whether this measure is not in its whole character, scope and object without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and utterly destructive of those great principles of liberty and humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure.”

If the votes of these States were necessary to a valid ratification of the 14th Amendment, they should have been equally as important in the formation of such an amendment and the decision of whether or not to advance the legislation in Congress and ultimately to propose it to all the States of the Union at the time. It is illogical that any so-called men of intelligence could arrive at any other conclusion.

And yet, the Southern States’ political existence was basically suspended, even though Abraham Lincoln’s unnecessary War of Northern Aggression was fit to be tied and bound and determined to force these states to remain within “the Union”, no matter how willingly or unwillingly, even though these Southern States had done nothing wrong in seeking secession of their own free will, just as they had initially entered the Union. They were essentially forced to stay in the Union, while simultaneously being deprived of their constitutional rights and protections; if they were in fact States of the Union again, their constitutional rights and existence had to have been recognized and respected, and their participation in the vote for or against the 14th Amendment was paramount to its legitimacy or illegitimacy.

Coercion in place of consent as the basis for “government” is contrary to the founding principles that were used to justify the secession of the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, as set forth in our Declaration of Independence. States which suffered being forced to ratify the 14th Amendment in order to end an armed occupation of their towns is far and away from everything the Founders believed and defended and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.

By passing the 1867 illegitimate, unconstitutional “law” that declared Southern States could not take their seats in either the House or the Senate in the next session unless they ratified the 14th Amendment, Congress, such as it was, took an unprecedented step. There is no such “right” found anywhere within the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the authority to compel a State by act of Congress to ratify a constitutional amendment. And it is also important to note that this procedure has never been sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

And, if ratification of the 14th Amendment was required before the state could regain representation, how could that same state possess the constitutional authority necessary to ratify the amendment whose ratification was supposedly necessary to restore its status?

There is absolutely no doubt that the 14th Amendment was never lawfully adopted and passed, and no matter its supposedly admirable purposes, those purposes cannot create constitutional authority retroactively.

The end does not sanctify the means.

This is where the issue becomes far more consequential than a dispute about 1868.

The Fourteenth Amendment became the principal constitutional gateway through which federal judicial power expanded into areas traditionally associated with the states.

Its Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause became foundations for vast bodies of constitutional doctrine. The Supreme Court eventually used the Fourteenth Amendment to apply portions of the Bill of Rights against the states and to invalidate state laws on an extraordinary variety of subjects, regarding segregation, abortion and same-sex marriage, among many others, as it is also currently being manipulated to support “birthright citizenship”; however, in as much as this 14th Amendment was illegally passed, everything that emerged from it through Supreme Court rulings must be held to be null and void and no longer “law” to be upheld by any citizen or any appointed or elected government official.

Americans have a constitutional problem on their hands of an extraordinary magnitude – one that cannot be cured by pretending that enough years have passed to make the 14th Amendment’s continued existence something acceptable or even desirable at this point. It has been manipulated to the point that it is nothing less than a tool for America’s enemies-from-within to use against America, representing powers that the Constitution never granted.

We can, should and must pass another amendment that rescinds the 14th Amendment and clarifies the premises and principles of its original intent as framed by the original authors and creators of the amendment. ~ J.O.S.

We can reframe it properly and limit it, so it cannot ever again be used as a catch-all mechanism for that which was and never has been stated in order to prop up new, miserable unconstitutional “laws” under the pretense of “equality under the law” when in essence it has regularly been misused to grant privilege of certain special interest groups and minorities over and above the regular constitutional rights of every regular man and woman in America.

However, if Americans really understood the Constitution, they would understand that they actually are truly not bound by the illegal 14th Amendment, and it should not require any further citations to further prove that neither the Joint Resolution proposing the 14th Amendment nor its ratification by the required three-fourths of the States in the Union were in compliance as requires by Article V of the Constitution. When the mandatory provisions of the Constitution are violated, the Constitution itself strikes with nullity the Act that did violate its provisions, and any such law contrary to those provisions are themselves repugnant to the Constitution. Thus, the 14th Amendment is repugnant to the Constitution and the text of the Constitution itself nullifies the 14th Amendment.

Our judges swear to discharge their duties according to the letter of the Constitution, because supposedly, according to most constitutional scholars and average citizens alike, it forms the rules for our government. It becomes a mockery and a crime, when we witness judges regularly violate both their oath and the Constitution, because they are much more interested in activism than in actually upholding the rule of law. Every aspect of our government is supposed to be bound by the Constitution, even the Supreme Court, which makes the fact that federal courts absolutely refuse to hear arguments regarding the unconstitutional nature of the 14th Amendment all the more egregious and angering.

Only an extremely serious, strong-willed, angry concerned American populace, intent on preserving freedom and individual liberty for America’s children and their children’s children and generations beyond and some semblance of a secure future, will be able to eventually break the political barrier which currently seems to prevent judicial consideration of the unconstitutionality of the 14th Amendment.

Some people may say that regardless of these problems, it is too late to do anything about it. The Fourteenth Amendment is part of the Constitution and that is the end of it, because it has now become “set law” and somehow surviving unchallenged for 150 years gives it added legitimacy, which is sheer idiocy. This is an attitude that would seemingly submit and surrender to numerous ongoing federal overreach and abuses under this illegal, illegitimate amendment and allowing for our freedom and individual liberty to be further violated. Free born Americans have always favored getting to the root of the matter and that should be our view of the illegally ratified Fourteenth Amendment.

Not one single American should allow themselves to be controlled or governed by anything that has emerged from this deeply flawed “law”. We must deny, refuse and cast off every unconstitutional edict that found its way into our legal code by way of this unconstitutional 14th Amendment, sooner rather than later, in order that it can no longer be used by activist Supreme Court Justices to erode and trample upon our individual liberty.

It is never too late to correct an injustice done against the American people.

There is only one supreme tribunal – other than the judgement of God Almighty Himself – and it is the American people themselves!

August 25, 2026

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.