The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are the amendments adopted to the United States Constitution after the Civil War. Subsequently, these amendments were adopted to the Constitution. Thirteenth Amendment The Thirteenth Amendment was adopted quickly in the aftermath of the Civil War, with the simple direct purpose of banning slavery everywhere in the United States. The 13th Amendment took away authority from the states, so that no state could institute slavery, and attempted to constitutionally guarantee the natural right to liberty. Thinking that this amendment would be sufficient, congressional Republicans pushed the amendment through. To counteract the amendment, a series of laws called Black Codes were enacted by the former Confederate states, which just because the amendments were in effect and the government had the provisions to enforce them, the government did not. One could also argue that just because a political party forced the amendments on Congress, does not mean that states must enforce and protect the rights of all citizens. There is also the argument that citizens effectively took power away from the government because they did not agree with the new amendments. After all, there is no government if citizens choose to ignore the laws. In any case, for a long period of time, states, government and citizens were able to get away with treating minorities as they wanted to treat them, which of course meant holding them back. Because of the 13th and 14th amendments which freed slaves and gave them equal protection under the law it grants Jon the same rights to ride the train as any other citizen. County of Santa Clara v. Southern Public Railroad, although the case did not involve the 14th Amendment, Judge Morrison Remick Waite did so by holding that corporations must comply with the 14th Amendment. County of Santa Clara v. Southern Public Railroad, 118 US 394 (1886). Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Plessy sat in a whites-only train car, was asked to move to the blacks-only train car, because state law mandated segregation. The court held that segregation is not necessarily illegal discrimination as long as the races are treated equally. Plessy's impact was to relegate blacks to second-class citizenship. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896). However, this is not the same