information:extraction, structural:scholar_edition
Proposal by Congress

More than seventy proposals for an amendment were drafted. In an extensive appendix to his dissenting opinion in Adamson v. California (1947), Justice Hugo Black detailed statements made by "those who framed, advocated, and adopted the Amendment." In late 1865, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction proposed an amendment where states would only receive representation for their citizens with voting rights. This amendment passed the House, but it was blocked in the Senate by a coalition of Radical Republicans led by Charles Sumner, who considered the proposal a "compromise with wrong," and Democrats opposed to black rights. Consideration turned to an amendment by Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, enabling Congress to safeguard "equal protection of life, liberty, and property" of all citizens, but this proposal failed in the House.