Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – Encyclopedia Virginia
Of the three Reconstruction Amendments, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dealt most directly with the outcome of the Civil War and the condition of the freed people. It contains five sections. The first defined as American citizens all persons who were native-born residents of the United States, which made freed people citizens for the first time. That in effect overturned the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that stated that no descendants of people imported into the country as slaves could ever be American citizens. The first section also denied st...
Source: encyclopediavirginia.org