What Do the Rest of the Amendments Say?

In 1793, the Supreme Court ordered the state of Georgia to pay a debt to two people who lived in another state.

The decision was not popular -- especially with people concerned about reserving power for the states.

In answer, Congress passed and a majority of states approved the Eleventh Amendment.

Almost 100 years later, in 1890, another Supreme Court case decided that even citizens of a state could not sue that state in federal court.

The original Constitution said the person who received the most electoral votes became president. The person who received the second most electoral votes became vice president. But the situation caused problems.

In the election of 1796, two political rivals received the most electoral votes. John Adams became president and Thomas Jefferson became vice president. But the two men had very different political ideas.

The following election, in 1800, Thomas Jefferson became president. But he had to fight a close race with his own running mate.

Even though they belonged to the same political party, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr struggled over who would win the top position.

The struggle was one thing that led to the Twelfth Amendment. The amendment changes part of Article II of the original Constitution and permits each political party to nominate a candidate for president and a candidate for vice president as a team.

After the U.S. Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal everywhere in the country. The family pictured above had been slaves for five generations in South Carolina.

Less than a year after the Thirteenth Amendment was approved, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

The Act gave black people the same rights as white people in every state to make contracts; sue; inherit, buy, sell and transfer property; as well as other rights related to protecting themselves and their property.

The Fourteenth Amendment was part of the federal government's plan for Reconstruction after the Civil War -- the process of uniting the Northern and Southern states again. Southern states had to ratify the amendment in order to re-join the Union.

The amendment aimed, in part, to protect the rights of newly freed slaves. One way was to ensure that African Americans were legal citizens of both the nation and the states where they lived.

Harper's Magazine in 1867 shows African American men voting for the first time. The picture, called "The first vote," was drawn by A.R. Waud.

But some states still restricted many people's right to vote by requiring them to pay a tax at the polls or to pass a test.

Many of those restrictions were not made illegal until almost 100 years after the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited literacy tests, permitted federal officials to monitor voter registration, and required some states to get approval from the federal government before making changes to their election laws.

The 20th century brought many social changes and several legal changes to American life. One related to income taxes.

The Constitution said direct taxes had to be divided proportionally among the states. But during the Civil War, Congress had established an income tax on individuals.

The Supreme Court first upheld the income tax. Then, in 1895, it ruled in a case called Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co. that an income tax was a kind of direct tax.

Congress believed figuring out how to divide an income tax proportionally among the states would be too complicated. So, it passed the Sixteenth Amendment to permit taxes on individual's incomes and increase the amount of money the federal government took in. The amendment was ratified four years later.

Another change in the Progressive Era permitted the people to select U.S. senators. Under the Constitution, state legislatures chose senators.

People who supported the Seventeenth Amendment hoped to avoid corruption. They said too many senators were millionaires supported by corporations and political networks.

In the picture above, Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, who founded the League of Women Voters, lead about 20,000 supporters in a march for women's suffrage in New York in 1915.

People had been fighting for women's political and legal rights since Americans became independent and created a new set of laws. They held a women's right convention in 1848, fought to gain the right to vote along with African American men in the 1860s and 1870s, and filed lawsuits to extend the Fourteenth Amendment to include women's right to vote.

Even though some states permitted women to vote earlier, women did not achieve the right to vote nationwide until 1920.

In this picture, a duck swims in front of the U.S. Capitol building, where Congress meets. A "lame duck" is an expression that relates to officials who have not been re-elected but are still holding office until the next term begins.

Lame ducks usually are not able to be very effective in their jobs. So, the Twentieth Amendment tried to shorten the time lame ducks remain in office by reducing the time between elections and the beginning of a new term.

Reducing the time between elections was especially important during the economic crisis of the Great Depression.

The Twenty-first Amendment repealed -- or, canceled -- the Eighteenth Amendment.

Many Americans believed prohibiting alcohol caused too much lawbreaking and corruption. Some also believed that making and selling alcohol again would permit more people to have jobs during the economic crisis of the Great Depression.

The country's first president, George Washington, established the tradition that a president would seek only two terms in office.

But during the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times.

After he died shortly into his fourth term, Congress proposed a Constitutional limit on how long someone could be president. In most cases, the Twenty-second Amendment restricts a president to being elected to the office twice.

The Constitution established a federal district to be the nation's capital. But, it did not say whether residents of the district were permitted to vote.

For many years people debated the political rights of residents of Washington, DC. The Twenty-third Amendment permitted eligible voters in DC to vote for president; however, it does not permit them official representation in the House or Senate.

When the amendment was ratified in 1961, a majority of DC residents were African American. The arguments about and passage of the amendment raised racial justice and civil rights issues.

The district can have no more votes in the electoral college than the state with the smallest population has -- even though Washington, DC has a bigger population than many states.

At the time of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, only a few states still used a poll tax. The tax -- a charge to register to vote -- often served to prohibit some people from voting.

Congress aimed to eliminate the poll tax across the country by using a constitutional amendment.

The Constitution does not clearly say what happens if the president dies: whether the vice president becomes president or just acts as president.

After President John F. Kennedy was killed in office, the Twenty-fifth Amendment aimed to make questions about presidential succession clearer.

Historically, most states limited voting rights to people who were age 21 or older. But during World War II, the president lowered the age when people could be drafted to fight to 18. As a result, many people argued to lower the voting age as well.

During the Vietnam War era, when young people were again drafted to fight, the argument to lower the voting age intensified. Congress passed the Twenty-sixth Amendment extending the vote to people who were 18 or older. The states quickly ratified it.

Representative John Boehner holds a copy of the Constitution on May 7, 1992, as Senator Don Nickles looks on. The men are celebrating the ratification of the Twenty-seventh Amendment, which requires members of Congress to wait until the next election before they can receive a pay raise.

James Madison originally introduced the amendment to Congress in 1789. But two-thirds of the states did not ratify it for over 200 years.