The importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is such that some have called it the amendment that "completed the Constitution." When it was ratified on July 9, 1868, the amendment became one of the legislative cornerstones of the Reconstruction Era, an era in which radical Republicans, led by John A. Bingham and Thaddeus Stevens, enacted a legislative program focused on ensuring racial equality before the law. Of the laws passed in the Reconstruction era, the Fourteenth Amendment was one of the most controversial, with one Republican lawmaker, Representative A. J. Rogers of New Jersey, stating that it was "...but another attempt to... consolidate in the federal government, by the action of Congress, all the powers claimed by the Czar of Russia or the Emperor of the French.” The Fourteenth Amendment indeed constituted the greatest expansion of federal power since the ratification of the Constitution did not arise in a vacuum; the reason for this expansion of power, and the amendment as a whole, lies in the broader context of the mid-19th century South and the pervasive oppression of the free black population that resides there of Southern race relations, both before and after the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment came to believe that nothing less than a radical expansion of the federal government's powers over the states would allow them to "promote the general welfare" and "secure the blessings of freedom" to the African-American population of the United States. To properly understand the original intent of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is necessary to understand its historical context. .... middle of paper ......tution.org/ussc/032-243a.htm. This website was my source for the text of the opinion in Barron v. Baltimore, a case that John Bingham took into account when drafting the Fourteenth Amendment.Tenbroek, Jacobus. The antislavery origins of the Fourteenth Amendment. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951. This source contains a detailed overview of the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also discusses the scope of the powers that the authors of the amendment intended to create. Zuckert, Michael, P. "Completing the Constitution: The Fourteenth Amendment and Constitutional Rights." Publius 22, n. 2 (1992): 69-91. This source provides an analysis of the Fourteenth Amendment as the culmination of the efforts of the radical Republican caucus. Places the amendment in the context of the Thirteenth, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866.