When Was the 14th Amendment Passed? The Congressional Timeline and Ratification Fight

The 14th Amendment was passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, when the Senate approved the conference committee report resolving differences with the House, which had concurred the previous day, 120–32. The amendment then went to the states and was declared ratified on July 28, 1868, when Secretary of State William Seward issued a certificate of proclamation after 28 of 37 states had ratified it.

From Joint Resolution to Two-Thirds Majority

The 14th Amendment began as Joint Resolution 127 in the House of Representatives, not as a finished constitutional text. The House passed it on May 10, 1866, by a vote of 128–37, with 32 members not voting. That margin cleared the two-thirds threshold required for proposing constitutional amendments. The Senate then took up the measure and passed it on June 8, 1866, by a vote of 33–11. The two chambers had to reconcile slightly different versions, which is why the formal "passage" date most historians cite is June 13, 1866 — the day the Senate adopted the conference report and the amendment's text was locked.

This distinction matters because "passed" is ambiguous. A bill passes each chamber separately. A constitutional amendment is proposed when two-thirds of both houses agree to identical text. The 14th Amendment's proposal date is therefore June 13, 1866, not the earlier chamber votes. The amendment then entered the ratification phase, where three-fourths of the states had to approve it.

The mechanism here is Article V of the Constitution. Congress proposes an amendment by a two-thirds vote in each house, or a convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures proposes it. Ratification then requires approval by three-fourths of the states, either through their legislatures or through state conventions, as Congress directs. For the 14th Amendment, Congress chose the legislature route. That choice shaped the political fight because state legislatures were easier to pressure and easier to flip than specially elected conventions.

Why did the framers route it this way? The Reconstruction Congress wanted speed and control. State legislatures in the former Confederacy were already being reconstructed under presidential plans, and Congress wanted the amendment's terms — citizenship, due process, equal protection, and disqualification of former rebels — to bind those states before readmission. The procedural choice was itself a political weapon.

Quantified Context: 28 of 37 States and a Contested Count

The 14th Amendment's ratification arithmetic is the clearest window into how contested it was. Of 37 states then in the Union, 28 needed to ratify for the three-fourths threshold. Secretary Seward's July 28, 1868, proclamation counted 28 ratifying states, including two — Ohio and New Jersey — that had voted to rescind their ratifications. That rescission question was the central dispute.

Look at the timeline of state action. Connecticut ratified on June 25, 1866. New Hampshire followed on July 6, 1866. Tennessee ratified on July 19, 1866, and was readmitted to the Union days later. By early 1867, roughly 20 states had ratified. Then the process stalled as Southern states refused and Northern states began rescinding. Congress responded with the Reconstruction Acts of March 1867, which required the former Confederate states to ratify the 14th Amendment as a condition of readmission. Seven Southern states ratified in 1868 under that pressure: Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia.

The counterintuitive detail: Ohio and New Jersey had ratified in 1867 but voted to withdraw in 1868. Seward counted them anyway, reasoning that once a state ratifies, it cannot rescind. Congress reinforced that view with a concurrent resolution on July 21, 1868, declaring the amendment ratified when three-fourths of the states had approved it, treating rescissions as invalid. The legal question of whether a state can rescind an amendment ratification has never been definitively settled by the Supreme Court. In 1939, the Court in Coleman v. Miller held that Congress decides questions about ratification validity, effectively punting the issue to the political branches.

So the honest answer to "when was the 14th Amendment passed" has two layers. Congressional passage: June 13, 1866. Ratification: July 28, 1868. Between those dates sits a two-year political war over who counted.

Timeline of Passage and Ratification

This table reconciles the two competing dates that dominate search results. The June 13 date is congressional passage. The July 28 date is ratification. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions. If you need one date for a citation, use June 13, 1866, for passage and July 28, 1868, for ratification, and say which you mean.

Edge Cases: Rescission, Readmission, and the Missing States

Three edge cases muddy the record and deserve separate treatment.

The first is rescission. Ohio ratified on January 11, 1867, then passed a resolution to withdraw on January 15, 1868. New Jersey ratified on September 11, 1866, then voted to rescind on March 24, 1868. Seward's proclamation explicitly noted both rescissions and counted both states anyway. Congress's July 21, 1868, resolution supported that reading. The practical effect was to give the amendment its 28th state without waiting for substitutes. The legal question of rescission remains unresolved, which is why later amendment fights — including the Equal Rights Amendment — have wrestled with the same problem.

The second is readmission leverage. Congress did not merely invite Southern ratification; it conditioned readmission on it. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 required the former Confederate states (except Tennessee, which had already ratified) to adopt new constitutions and ratify the 14th Amendment before their senators and representatives would be seated. That is coercion by any plain reading, and it is a key reason the amendment's legitimacy was contested for decades. The Supreme Court never struck it down.

The third is the missing states. The 14th Amendment was proposed by a Congress that refused to seat representatives from the former Confederacy. That exclusion is why the two-thirds vote was achievable. If those states had been seated, the vote count would have looked very different, and the amendment might have failed or been softened. The composition of the proposing Congress is part of the amendment's story, not a footnote.

Red-flag warnings for anyone researching this: Do not cite "June 13, 1866" as the ratification date; it is the congressional passage date. Do not treat the July 28, 1868, proclamation as uncontested; Ohio and New Jersey had rescinded. Do not assume rescission is settled law; the Supreme Court has avoided a definitive ruling. Do not ignore that Southern ratification was a condition of readmission under the Reconstruction Acts.

Misconceptions and the Equal Protection Gap

The most common misconception is that the 14th Amendment was passed to grant equal rights immediately and that it did so. In fact, its immediate purpose was to secure citizenship for formerly enslaved people, overturn the Dred Scott decision, and prevent former Confederates from holding office. The Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause were broad language whose reach was not settled at passage.

Another misconception: the amendment applied to everyone at once. It did not. Its protections were enforced unevenly for nearly a century. The Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson endorsed racial segregation under "separate but equal," which gutted the Equal Protection Clause until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The Due Process Clause's incorporation of the Bill of Rights against the states proceeded case by case through the 20th century, and some provisions still are not incorporated.

A professional caveat worth knowing: the 14th Amendment's Section 3 — the disqualification clause barring insurrectionists from office — lay dormant for over 150 years before litigation after January 6, 2021, tested its meaning. In 2024, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson held that Congress, not individual states, must enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders. That ruling is a reminder that amendment text and amendment meaning are different things; the passage date tells you when the words were fixed, not when their application was settled.

The plain-language version: the 14th Amendment was passed in 1866, ratified in 1868, but its most famous promises took decades, and in some cases generations, to mean what they say.

Practical Actions for Researchers and Students

If you are writing about the 14th Amendment's passage, take these concrete steps to avoid the common errors.

State both dates explicitly: "passed by Congress on June 13, 1866, and ratified on July 28, 1868." If your source gives only one date, ask which event it describes. Use the Congressional Globe, the predecessor to the Congressional Record, for the May and June 1866 votes if you need primary sourcing. Check the House vote of 128–37 and the Senate vote of 33–11 against that record. For ratification counts, cite Seward's July 28, 1868, proclamation and Congress's July 21, 1868, concurrent resolution, and note the Ohio and New Jersey rescissions. If your topic is the amendment's application rather than its passage, distinguish the 1866 proposal, the 1868 ratification, and the subsequent enforcement cases — Plessy (1896), Brown (1954), and Trump v. Anderson (2024) — because they sit at different points on the timeline. Finally, confirm whether you are describing the amendment as proposed, as ratified, or as interpreted; each has a different date and a different evidence base.

Limits of What the Record Settles

The passage and ratification dates are well documented in primary sources: the Congressional Globe, state ratification records, and Seward's proclamation. What the record does not settle is the legal effect of Ohio and New Jersey's rescissions, and whether Congress's readmission conditions rendered Southern ratification involuntary in a way that mattered constitutionally. The Supreme Court has declined to resolve the rescission question directly, and the political-question doctrine in Coleman v. Miller leaves it with Congress. Historians continue to debate the degree to which the amendment's legitimacy rested on coercion.

This article is general educational information about a historical and legal topic. It is not a legal opinion or a substitute for advice from a qualified attorney about any specific constitutional dispute. If you face a legal question involving constitutional interpretation, consult a licensed lawyer in your jurisdiction.