15th amendment essay
The 15th amendment had a contentious approval process and since then has had a rocky history. Republicans largely supported the measure for political reasons, assuming black male voters would back their party and keep it in power. The House of Representatives voted to 44 in favor of the Amendment, with 35 abstentions and no member of the Democratic Party in support. It passed in the Senate by 39 to 13, with 14 abstentions, and zero Democratic votes. Even if the freedman were recognized as citizens by the 14th Amendment, citizenship did not automatically include the franchise. Adult women still could not vote.
15th amendment opinions essay
The Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth , Fourteenth , and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution , [1] adopted between and , the five years immediately following the Civil War. The last time the Constitution had been amended was with the Twelfth Amendment more than 60 years earlier in The Reconstruction amendments were important in implementing the Reconstruction of the American South after the war. Their proponents saw them as transforming the United States from a country that was in Abraham Lincoln 's words "half slave and half free" to one in which the constitutionally guaranteed "blessings of liberty" would be extended to the entire populace, including the former slaves and their descendants.
The Thirteenth Amendment proposed in and ratified in abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime. The Fifteenth Amendment proposed in and ratified in prohibits discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
These amendments were intended to guarantee freedom to former slaves and to establish and prevent discrimination in certain civil rights to former slaves and all citizens of the United States. The promise of these amendments was eroded by state laws and federal court decisions throughout the late 19th century. In and beyond, some states passed Jim Crow laws that limited the rights of African-Americans. Important Supreme Court decisions that undermined these amendments were the Slaughter-House Cases in , which prevented rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause from being extended to rights under state law; and Plessy v.
Ferguson in which originated the phrase " separate but equal " and gave federal approval to Jim Crow laws. The full benefits of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were not recognized until the Supreme Court decision in Brown v.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude , except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the U. Senate on April 8, , and, after one unsuccessful vote and extensive legislative maneuvering by the Lincoln administration, the House followed suit on January 31, The measure was swiftly ratified by all but three Union states the exceptions were Delaware, New Jersey, and Kentucky , and by a sufficient number of border and "reconstructed" Southern states, to be ratified by December 6, Seward proclaimed it to have been incorporated into the federal Constitution.
It became part of the Constitution 61 years after the Twelfth Amendment , the longest interval between constitutional amendments to date. Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the original Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the Three-Fifths Compromise , which detailed how each state's total slave population would be factored into its total population count for the purposes of apportioning seats in the United States House of Representatives and direct taxes among the states.
Although many slaves had been declared free by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation , their legal status after the Civil War was uncertain. By July 9, , it had received ratification by the legislatures of the required number of states in order to officially become the Fourteenth Amendment. On July 20, , Secretary of State William Seward certified that it had been ratified and added to the federal Constitution.
The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to treatment of freedmen following the war. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order to return their delegations to Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark decisions such as Roe v.
Wade , regarding abortion, and Bush v. Gore , regarding the presidential election. The second, third, and fourth sections of the amendment are seldom, if ever, litigated.
The fifth section gives Congress enforcement power. The Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v.
Sandford , which had held that Americans descended from Africans could not be citizens of the United States. The Privileges or Immunities Clause has been interpreted in such a way that it does very little. While "Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment reduces congressional representation for states that deny suffrage on racial grounds," it was not enforced after southern states disfranchised blacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries see below, at Fifteenth Amendment.
The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local government officials from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without legislative authorization. This clause has also been used by the federal judiciary to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states , as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy.
The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. Board of Education , that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, and its prohibition of laws against interracial marriage, in its ruling in Loving v. Virginia This amendment was the foundation of elements of the Civil Rights Act of and the Voting Rights Act of this also relied on the 15th Amendment , legislation to end legal segregation in the states and to provide for oversight and enforcement by the federal government of citizens' rights to vote without discrimination.
It has also been referred to for many other court decisions rejecting unnecessary discrimination against people belonging to various groups. The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's " race , color , or previous condition of servitude".
It was ratified on February 3, , as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. By , amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the narrow election of Ulysses S.
Grant to the presidency in convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black voters was important for the party's future. After rejecting broader versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude on February 26, The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, After blacks gained the vote, the Ku Klux Klan directed some of their attacks to disrupt their political meetings and intimidate them at the polls, to suppress black participation.
In the mids, there was a rise in new insurgent groups, such as the Red Shirts and White League , who acted on behalf of the Democratic Party to violently suppress black voting. While white Democrats regained power in southern state legislatures, through the s and early s, numerous blacks continued to be elected to local offices in many states, as well as to Congress as late as From to , all the states of the former Confederacy passed new constitutions and other laws that incorporated methods to disfranchise blacks , such as poll taxes , residency rules, and literacy tests administered by white staff, sometimes with exemptions for whites via grandfather clauses.
When challenges reached the Supreme Court , it interpreted the amendment narrowly, ruling based on the stated intent of the laws rather than their practical effect.
The results in voter suppression were dramatic, as voter rolls fell: nearly all blacks, as well as tens of thousands of poor whites in Alabama and other states, [7] were forced off the voter registration rolls and out of the political system, effectively excluding millions of people from representation.
Democratic state legislatures passed racial segregation laws for public facilities and other types of Jim Crow restrictions. During this period of political struggle, the rate of lynchings in the South reached an all-time high. In the twentieth century, the Court interpreted the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in Guinn v.
United States It took a quarter century to finally dismantle the white primary system in the "Texas primary cases" — With the South having become a one-party region after the disfranchisement of blacks, Democratic Party primaries were the only competitive contests in those states.
But Southern states reacted rapidly to Supreme Court decisions, often devising new ways to continue to exclude blacks from voter rolls and voting; most blacks in the South did not gain the ability to vote until after passage of the mids federal civil rights legislation and beginning of federal oversight of voter registration and district boundaries. The Twenty-fourth Amendment forbade the requirement for poll taxes in federal elections; by this time five of the eleven southern states continued to require such taxes.
Together with the U. Supreme Court ruling in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections , which forbade requiring poll taxes in state elections, blacks regained the opportunity to participate in the U.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The two pages of the Fourteenth Amendment in the National Archives. Retrieved January 3, National Archives. National Archives and Records Administration. January 25, Archived from the original on September 26, Retrieved November 25, United States National Archives.
Archived from the original on June 11, Retrieved February 24, The New York Times. December 21, October 2, University of Chicago Press. Archived from the original on April 29, Retrieved October 31, University of Georgia Press. Constitution of the United States. Amendment proposals in Congress Convention to propose amendments State ratifying conventions. History of the United States. Prehistory Pre-Columbian Colonial — — — — — — — — — —present.
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Added to the Constitution in , the Fifteenth Amendment was the final of the three constitutional amendments enacted during Reconstruction in the aftermath. The 15th Amendment, passed after the Civil War in , prohibits the government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that.
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Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, and the United States was in the process of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. The amendment ensured the freedom of enslaved African Americans, though they still lacked many rights and protections.
Slavery continued until , when abolitionists argued against its conditions as violating Christian principals and rights to equality. While the US was founded on principles of representation, due process and universal rights, slavery remained one of the most persistent and visible exceptions to these ideals. Slavery, including chattel slavery, was a legal institution in the US from the colonial period until the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment
The 15th Amendment granting African-American men the right to vote was adopted into the U. Constitution in Despite the amendment, by the late s discriminatory practices were used to prevent blacks from exercising their right to vote, especially in the South. In , following the American Civil War and the abolishment of slavery , the Republican-dominated U. The act divided the South into five military districts and outlined how new governments based on universal manhood suffrage were to be established. With the adoption of the 15th Amendment in , a politically mobilized African-American community joined with white allies in the Southern states to elect the Republican Party to power, which brought about radical changes across the South.
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the 15th Amendment
The Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth , Fourteenth , and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution , [1] adopted between and , the five years immediately following the Civil War. The last time the Constitution had been amended was with the Twelfth Amendment more than 60 years earlier in The Reconstruction amendments were important in implementing the Reconstruction of the American South after the war. Their proponents saw them as transforming the United States from a country that was in Abraham Lincoln 's words "half slave and half free" to one in which the constitutionally guaranteed "blessings of liberty" would be extended to the entire populace, including the former slaves and their descendants. The Thirteenth Amendment proposed in and ratified in abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime. The Fifteenth Amendment proposed in and ratified in prohibits discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". These amendments were intended to guarantee freedom to former slaves and to establish and prevent discrimination in certain civil rights to former slaves and all citizens of the United States. The promise of these amendments was eroded by state laws and federal court decisions throughout the late 19th century.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was the third of the three so-called Reconstruction amendments to settle constitutional questions that the Civil War had created. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in , abolished slavery forever in all of the United States.
Shelby County. These Amendments were known as reconstruction amendments, including the 13th amendment in the Unites States.
15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified on February 3, , says that the right to vote cannot be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of servitude. In effect, the Fifteenth Amendment secured the right to vote for African American men. As many as one million African American men registered to vote throughout the South, where in many districts African Americans constituted the majority or near-majority of the population. This expansion of political power also resulted in a dramatic increase in political representation as African American men were elected to local, state, and federal offices throughout the North and South. Many of the gains provided by the Fifteenth Amendment proved to be only temporary, however, because many white Americans strongly opposed black political power. Following the end of Reconstruction, many southern states quickly enacted laws that limited the voting power of black citizens in order to restore white supremacy. In some places, African Americans faced additional taxes or the threat of losing their jobs, homes, or even their lives if they tried to vote. By the s, most black communities in the South were effectively disenfranchised by these state and local policies, despite the Fifteenth Amendment. During the s, securing equal voting rights became one of the central issues of the civil rights movement, culminating in the Voting Rights Act of The documents, images, photographs and articles in this set explore the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, responses to it across the United States, and its long-term impact on the struggle for equal voting rights. To give feedback, contact us at education dp. You can also suggest a primary source set topic or view resources for National History Day. Primary Source Sets. The Fifteenth Amendment. Show full overview.
Reconstruction Amendments
The Fifteenth Amendment of the U. Constitution allowed blacks to vote. But more importantly it meant blacks were people and were to be counted as citizens. There were some problems with the Fifteenth Amendment. It had left out some specifics dealing with the issue. Henry Adams said, "It is more remarkable for what it does not than for what it does contain. Many states, both Northern and Southern, made it tough for blacks to vote.
