History of the United States II / Unit 6 USH2 0756 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Four Amendments
The idea
Progressive pressure produced four constitutional amendments in seven years. The Sixteenth, ratified February third, nineteen thirteen, gave Congress power to tax incomes without apportionment among the states. The Seventeenth, ratified that April, made senators elected by the people of each state. The Eighteenth, ratified January sixteenth, nineteen nineteen, prohibited the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating liquors. The Nineteenth, ratified August eighteenth, nineteen twenty, barred denying the vote on account of sex.
In practice
Two Populist planks from the Omaha Platform written into the Constitution within a single year.
Where people slip
The Populists of unit five lost their elections and won their argument: the income tax and the direct election of senators both arrived in nineteen thirteen. The Eighteenth was later repealed, by the Twenty-first, in unit eleven. These are the National Archives' ratification dates, which can differ from the years textbooks give for passage.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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