
Over the years, Americans have proposed some unusual constitutional amendments, many of which never made it past Congress. In 1810, the Titles of Nobility Amendment would have stripped U.S. citizenship from anyone who accepted a foreign title. In 1861, the Corwin Amendment tried to make slavery permanently legal, a last-ditch effort to prevent the Civil War. Others were more eccentric: an 1878 proposal sought to replace the presidency with an “Executive Council of Three,” while in 1893 another would have renamed the country the United States of Earth. In 1933, one amendment aimed to cap personal wealth at $1 million; another in 1938 sought to ban drunkenness nationwide. Some came close to reality, like the 1924 Child Labor Amendment or the still-pending Equal Rights Amendment. Which ones should have passed?
