Jill Lepore

So, like, it's just a league.

We are a confederacy.

We are not a union.

Right?

Like, you already have that.

So, I'm just musing now, like, over, like, when does...

But like as a historian, it's clear that why Article 5 is kind of a dead letter before the Civil War is the only thing that really matters that people really care about constitutionally is slavery.

And that cannot be addressed by Article 5.

Not because the slave trade thing that is prohibited from Article 5 revision until 1808, but because there's just no way for three quarters of the states to agree on slavery.

Like they barely agreed on it in 1787.

So it's like you can't get the engine to turn over because the key, like it's all about slavery.

Yeah.

So the 13th Amendment, which is 1865, the 14th Amendment is 1868, and the 15th is 1870.

Those are the dates of their ratification.

So what the South said at the time, and what many Southerners, certainly Southern segregationists, said for decades was,

is that, in fact, those are unconstitutional constitutional amendments because the South was not in Congress.

So the 39th Congress that comes up with the 14th Amendment...

it's only the union states that are there, or then there are elected delegates, representatives from the South.

But since anyone who served in the Confederate military is disqualified from holding office, like the South would say those were carpetbaggers.

And then in order to get back into the union and recognized as a state in the union country,