July 9, 1868: The day the 14th Amendment was ratified in the United States

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on 9 July 1868, after Louisiana and South Carolina cast the final votes needed to reach the required three-fourths majority of states. The amendment, part of Congress’s post-Civil War Reconstruction programme, granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” including formerly enslaved people, and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection under the laws.”

The amendment also barred any state from depriving a person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” provisions that would later become central to numerous civil rights rulings in American legal history. Congress had passed the amendment on 13 June 1866, but ratification by the required number of states took two more years.

Separately, 9 July holds another place in early American history: in 1776, General George Washington, while massing troops in New York City, ordered the newly adopted Declaration of Independence to be read aloud to his soldiers, days after it was adopted in Philadelphia on 4 July.

The date carries significance well beyond the United States. Argentina’s independence day falls on 9 July, marking the Congress of Tucumán’s 1816 declaration of independence from Spain, while South Sudan marks 9 July 2011 as its independence day, having separated from Sudan after a long civil war.

In Canada, 9 July is also observed as Nunavut Day, commemorating the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement that paved the way for the creation of the Inuit territory in 1999.