In the wake of the war, the Congress submitted, and the States ratified, the Thirteenth. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, irrevocably abolished slavery throughout the United States.Four years of civil war and the near dissolution of the nation brought an end to slavery and the enactment of a new constitutional regime. The fundamental right that the Court eliminated resided in the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was the result of local struggles and national debates on the political status of AfricanAmericans in the wake of slavery and the Civil War. See FONER, supra note 121, at 316–32; JOSEPH A. RANNEY, IN THE WAKE. In the wake of those Federal actions, many states amended or rewrote their state constitutions to conform with the spirit of the 14th Amendment. Part III notes a few cases to explain how the Reconstruction Amendment's jurisprudence has developed in the wake of Dred Scott v. Today, the Fourteenth Amendment is just as integral to the protection of our multiracial democracy as it was in the wake of the Civil War. The amendment prohibited former Confederate states from repaying war debts and compensating former slave owners for the emancipation of their enslaved people.