Ben Shapiro on the 14th Amendment: 'One or Two Weeks After the Civil War'

Ben Shapiro said the Fourteenth Amendment came "one week or two weeks after the Civil War ended." Congress proposed it fourteen months after Appomattox and it was ratified more than three years later.

Verdict: false. Truth score 0.15, confidence 0.95.

On August 7, 2026, at 13:03 in Episode 2481 of The Ben Shapiro Show ("FINALLY: Trump ENDS Birth Tourism!"), Shapiro delivered a historical premise in support of two executive orders Trump signed the day before: the Fourteenth Amendment "was meant for the babies of slaves" and was adopted "one week or two weeks after the Civil War ended."

The dates: Lee surrendered at Appomattox April 9, 1865. The Senate passed the amendment June 8, 1866; the House June 13, 1866. Ratification completed July 9, 1868 — more than three years and three months after the fighting ended.

The steelman, stated fairly: the Citizenship Clause was written primarily to overturn Dred Scott (1857) and secure citizenship for roughly four million formerly enslaved people. That is true, and it is the dominant historical motive. But primarily is not only. Sponsor Jacob Howard said on May 23, 1866 that the clause excluded only the families of ambassadors and foreign ministers and "will include every other class of persons." Senator Edgar Cowan objected that it would reach "children begotten of Chinese parents in California"; Senator John Conness replied, "I am in favor of doing so." The 1866 Senate understood the reach and voted for it. Wong Kim Ark (1898) held 6–2 that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese non-citizen parents was a citizen at birth, and Trump v. Barbara affirmed 6–3 on June 30, 2026.

There is a serious restrictionist argument — Thomas and Gorsuch dissented in Barbara on a domicile theory, and the Claremont Institute's American Mind series argues a narrower original meaning drawing on Schuck and Smith's 1985 consent theory. That argument lost, but it is respectable. It is also not this claim: no restrictionist scholar dates the amendment to weeks after Appomattox.

On the accompanying numbers, we take no firm position. Trump said "hundreds of thousands" of birth-tourism births; the Solicitor General could supply no figure at oral argument. CDC recorded about 9,500 births to non-U.S. residents in 2024. The restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies estimates 33,000 births to tourist-visa holders and about 72,000 to all temporary visitors annually; the Niskanen Center argues even that is inflated. The estimates differ by roughly a factor of six and neither side has a clean instrument. The "56 children" and "98 children" anecdotes have no documented source we could locate — absence of a record is not proof of fabrication.