15th Amendment

The to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in July 1868, guaranteed basic civil rights to all citizens; it was intended to persuade Southern states to grant suffrage to blacks by threatening a reduction of their congressional representation.

To further the cause of black suffrage, the Radical Republican Congress, which had swept away the Southern regimes organized under presidential Reconstruction, required ex-Confederate states to adopt new state constitutions allowing black suffrage before senators and representatives from those states would be readmitted to Congress. The United States was thus faced with a situation in which all the ex-Confederate states granted blacks the right to vote, while 16 of the loyal Union states still denied black suffrage.

To remedy the inequity and to help shore up the Southern Radical Republican Reconstruction regimes, a to the Constitution was proposed in February 1869. It stated simply that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Many states, North and South, required payment of poll taxes, property ownership, or literacy as a condition of voting. The did not address any of those stipulations. Feminists, especially, fought against the amendment because women were not included in the guarantee of suffrage.