The Fifteenth Amendment is the third of the Reconstruction Amendments.

It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and final of the Reconstruction Amendments.

Still, there is something missing in this filtering off of the three Reconstruction Amendments and calling them a separate constitution.

The passage of the Reconstruction Amendments was still fresh in the minds of everyone.

If the Reconstruction Amendments had really been an entirely new constitution, the courts could have ignored the concept of state citizenship altogether.

But if that was the only purpose of the Reconstruction Amendments, the Thirteenth had already done the job.

The Thirteenth Amendment is the first of the Reconstruction Amendments.

The argument, then, is that the three Reconstruction Amendments enacted a second American constitution.

Above all, I am not making an argument about the "original intent" that lay behind the Reconstruction Amendments.

The intention of those who framed the Reconstruction Amendments should, therefore, not control their interpretation today.