I’ve made a mistake in attributing the 14th Amendment to the 40th Congress, which ran from 1867 to 1869. It, along with the 13th and 15th Amendments, was passed out of Congress in 1866 among the acts of the 39th Congress from which nearly all former Confederate states’ representatives were yet excluded:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/39th_United_States_Congress
As you have stated, former Confederate states began rejecting the Amendment in 1866, prompting the Reconstruction Acts to pressure them to ratify. Saying the federal government was exerting pressure on certain states no more amounts to compulsion, though, than the withholding of federal highway funds to states which didn’t raise their drinking ages or lower their speed limits. The Confederate states didn’t like the state of military occupation which had resulted from their acts of war against the federal government and so were forced to swallow bitter pills, but they did in fact choose to swallow them.
It’s no use going back now and saying that their ratifications weren’t binding because they had their fingers crossed.
This has indeed been an informative exchange; thanks very much.
Gadzooks. Wrong again.
The 13th Amendment was passed out of the 38th Congress—again without southern Representatives—and the 15th was passed out of the 40th.
But, as regards the 13th and 14th, in neither case were Southern representatives seated for the vote which passed the Amendments out of the Congress to the states for ratification. The former Confederate states were therefore presented with Amendments for ratification on which their representatives had not voted in Congress.
That the legislatures indeed ultimately did ratify them is sufficient evidence that they admitted the validity of the process by which the Amendments were presented to them, although they may not have much liked the circumstances under which they considered them.