The convention method has never been used in
proposing amendments to this Constitution.
Amendments may also be ratified in two ways: by the legislatures in
three-fourths of the several States; or by conventions in three-fourths
thereof. Congress has always selected the first of these methods.
Amending the Constitution Difficult.--That it is difficult to amend
the Constitution may be seen when we consider that some two thousand
amendments have been proposed in an official way. During a single
session of the Fifty-seventh Congress, fifty amendments, on twenty
different phases of government, were proposed in one or other of the
houses of Congress.
Amendment XIII.--The purpose of the first ten amendments has
already been noted on p. 112.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were the results of
negro slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation granted freedom to all of
the slaves in the States then in rebellion. There were some States,
however, as Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, where slavery might still
exist legally.
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