The possible disqualification of former President Trump from the 2024 presidential election has kindled interest in the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Unfortunately, Maryland’s consideration of the amendment in the aftermath of the Civil War cannot serve as a national proxy for its original meaning. As a border state caught geographically and politically between North and South, Maryland might have served as a proxy for the median position among all states, including those in the defeated Confederacy whose representatives had not yet been re-seated in Congress (and whose views presumably did not contribute to the original public meaning). But by the time the proposed amendment came to Maryland, the state’s leadership had tilted decidedly conservative...