Maybe what you're reading is the revisionist mumbo jumbo Doc?
Hi by the way! How are ya?
Hey Kev, doing great. Hope all is well with you.
Now, that is a fair comment, and one that needs to be proved.
Kev, do you deny any of the following, and if so, why?
Let's see, they voted on this amendment in 1865, after the War of Northern Aggression. The Southern states rejected it, along with the border states, and as you SHOULD know, it wasn't ratified. The Party at the time in charge, the Republican Party, put the entire South under military rule under the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The reason that law was passed according to the Republicans in the North was to to compel by force the South to vote for the amendment "at the point of a bayonet." Some freedom there huh? In which, President Andrew Johnson said that this act was "absolute despotism." You in favor of despotism Clete?
The South eventually voted to ratify this amendment, not under their free will, but under coercion. And soon after that Clete, two Northern states-Ohio and New Jersey, withdrew their vote because of the disgusting UnConstitutional actions of Republicans who dominated the Federal Government at the time. Of course, those slimeballs, again not under the Constitution, ignored this and declared the amendment ratified.