What was the primary goal of the Civil War Amendments?

Answer 1

The primary goal of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution was to resolve the issue that had caused the Civil War in the first place- slavery.

The 13th Amendment was finally ratified about eight months after the war ended. It fully abolished chattel slavery in the United States.

The 14th Amendment was ratified a couple years later. With all the slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, there was the question of what were these people now? Are they citizens? Do they have constitutional rights? How do they fit in society? The 14th Amendment attempted to clarify this. It established basic rules for who is a citizen, and that all citizens are supposed to have the same rights, which cannot be taken away by the government. It also did some more minor house-cleaning, like banning Confederate politicians from serving in post-war governments and getting rid of the infamous Three-Fifths Clause.

The 15th Amendment makes it illegal to deny people the right to vote based on a person's race or color, or if they had been a slave. It was mainly aimed at the Southern states which had been passing laws to prevent newly freed blacks from voting. However, these states were able to find other ways to prevent blacks from voting, such as poll taxes (since freed slaves were usually poor and could not afford the fee) or literacy tests (since freed slaves usually were uneducated and could not read). Poll taxes were not abolished until the Constitution was amended again almost 100 years later.