was this fact—the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted by a "rump" Congress—that permitted the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment by Congress and subsequently proposed to the states. The ratification of the amendment by the former Confederate states was imposed as a condition of their acceptance back into the Union. Ratification With the return to originalist interpretations of the Constitution, many wonder what was intended by the framers of the reconstruction amendments at the time of their ratification. The 13th amendment abolished slavery but to what extent it protected other rights was unclear. After the 13th amendment the South began to institute Black Codes which were restrictive laws seeking to keep black Americans in a position of inferiority. The 14th amendment was ratified by nervous Republicans in response to the rise of Black Codes. This ratification was irregular in many ways. First, there were multiple states that rejected the 14th amendment, but when their new governments were created due to reconstruction, these new governments accepted the amendment. There were also two states, Ohio and New Jersey, that accepted the amendment and then later passed resolutions rescinding that acceptance. The nullification of the two states' acceptance was considered illegitimate and both Ohio and New Jersey were included in those counted as ratifying the amendment. Many historians have argued that 14th amendment was not originally intended to grant sweeping political and social rights to the citizens but instead to solidify the constitutionality of the 1866 Civil rights Act. While it is widely agreed that this was a key reason for the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, many historians adopt a much wider view. It is a popular interpretation that the Fourteenth Amendment was always meant to ensure equal rights for all those in the United States. This argument was used by Charles Sumner when he used the 14th amendment as the basis for his arguments to expand the protections afforded to black Americans. Although the equal protection clause is one of the most cited ideas in legal theory, it received little attention during the ratification of the 14th amendment. Instead the key tenet of the Fourteenth Amendment at the time of its ratification was the Privileges or Immunities Clause. This clause sought to protect the privileges and immunities of all citizens which now included black men. The scope of this clause was substantially narrowed following the Slaughterhouse Cases in which it