How did the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteenth amendments bring forth a consitiutional revolution?

Answer 1

These were the "Civil War Amendments", or the "Reconstruction Amendments".

Amendment XIII was a codification of the resolution of a central issue deriving out of the Civil War: the institution of slavery.

U.S. Const., Amend. XIII:

"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

Although slavery had been de jure abolished under the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln's Executive Order of January 1, 1863, the elevation of this regime to Constitutional textuality placed this edict as far beyond question as is possible in American law. Section 1 of the Amendment defines that which was to be thereafter abolished, and created the exception for the nature of the consequences of judicial punishment through due process. Section 2 made it clear that the Constitution textually was to be far from the total and final word on the issue, and that the Congress would thereafter continue to legislate against the persistence of slavery or involuntary servitude; that is, against what the Court would later come to refer to as "the badges and incidents of slavery".

U.S. Const., Amend. XIV:

"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

Suffice it to say that Amendment XIV is huge in American Constitutional Law in so many ways. Probably no Amendment is more expansive in its importance, because of the breadth of what it covers.