NO. 45 (Senate Resolution No. 39)
(A Joint Resolution)
A memorial to Congress of the United States of America urging them to enact such legislation as they may
deem fit to declare that the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States were never
validly adopted and that they are null and void and of no effect.
Whereas, the State of Georgia together with the ten other Southern States declared to have been lately in
rebellion against the United States, following the termination of hostilities in 1865, met all the conditions laid
down by the President of the United States, in exercise of his Constitutional powers to recognize the
governments of states, domestic as well as foreign, for the resumption of practical relations with the
government of the United States, as a State and States in proper Constitutional relation to the United States;
and
Whereas, when duly elected Senators and Representatives appeared in the Capitol of the United States to
take their seats at the time for the opening of the 39th Congress, and again at the time for the openings of
the 40th and the 41st Congresses, hostile majorities in both Houses refused to admit them to their seats in
manifest violation of Articles I and V of the United States Constitution; and
Whereas, the said Congresses, not being constituted of Senators and Representatives from each State as
required by the Supreme Law of the Land, were not, in Constitutional contemplation, anything more than
private assemblages unlawfully attempting to exercise the Legislative Power of the United States; and
Whereas, the so-called 39th Congress, which proposed to the Legislatures of several States an amendment
to the Constitution of the United States, known as the 14th Amendment, and the so-called 40th Congress,
which proposed an amendment known as the 15th Amendment, were without lawful power to propose any
amendment whatsoever to the Constitution; and
Whereas, two-thirds of the Members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate, as they should
have been constituted, failed to vote for the submission of these amendments; and
Whereas, all proceedings subsequently flowing from these invalid proposals, purporting to establish the
so-called 14th and 15th Amendments as valid parts of the Constitution, were null and void and of no effect
from the beginning; and
Whereas, furthermore, when these invalid proposals were rejected by the General Assembly of the State of
Georgia and twelve other Southern States, as well as of sundry Northern States, the so-called 39th and 40th
Congresses, in flagrant disregard of the United States Constitution, by the use of military force, dissolved
the duly recognized State Governments in Georgia and nine of the other Southern States and set up military
occupation or puppet State governments, which compliantly ratified the invalid proposals, thereby making (at
the point of the bayonet) a mockery of Section 4, Article IV of the Constitution, guaranteeing protection to
"each of them against invasion"; and
Whereas, further, the pretended ratification of the so-called 14th and 15th Amendments by Georgia and other
States whose sovereign powers had been unlawfully seized by force of arms against the peace and dignity of
the people of those States, were necessary to give color to the claim of the so-called 40th and 41st
Congresses that these so-called amendments had been ratified by three-fourths of the States; and
Whereas, it is a well-established principle of law that the mere lapse of time does not confirm by common
acquiescence an invalidly-enacted provision of law just as it does not repeal by general desuetude a
provision validly enacted; and
Whereas, the continued recognition of the 14th and 15th Amendments as valid parts of the Constitution of
the United States is incompatible with the present day position of the United States as the World’s champion
of Constitutional governments resting upon the consent of the people given through their lawful
representatives;
Now, therefore, be it resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Georgia:
The Congress of the United States is hereby memorialized and respectfully urged to declare that the
exclusions of the of the Southern Senators and Representatives from the 39th, 40th and 41st Congresses
were malignant acts of arbitrary power and rendered those Congresses invalidly constituted; that the forms
of law with which those invalid Congresses attempted to clothe the submission of the 14th and 15th
Amendments and to clothe the subsequent acts to compel unwilling States to ratify these invalidly proposed
amendments, imparted no validity to these acts and amendments; and that the so-called 14th and 15th
Amendments to the Constitution of the United States are null and void and of no effect.
Be it further resolved that copies of this memorial be transmitted forthwith by the Clerk of the House and the
Secretary of the Senate of the State of Georgia to the President of the United States, the Chief Justice of
the United States, the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives of Congress of
the United States, and the Senators and Representatives in Congress from the State of Georgia.
Approved March 8, 1957