Compelling Policy Question: Should enfranchisement be restricted or expanded?

Case Study: S.J.R. 8 "Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution"

Article XV: 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.

Historic Context:

In 1619 the first enslaved Africans arrived in America. These Americans were obviously denied many human rights, such as the basic right of liberty. Yet even Black Americans who were not enslaved were denied many rights, and this was justified by the Dred Scott case in 1857 which essentially ruled that African Americans were not citizens and therefore, they had no rights.

Following the Civil War, Radical Republicans in Congress introduced a series of laws and constitutional amendments to try to secure civil and political rights for black people. These included the 14th Amendment which declared all people born in America are citizens. This made all of the freedmen citizens, which should have granted them equal rights.

In 1867, Congress passed a law requiring the former Confederate states to include black male suffrage in their new state constitutions. Ironically, the majority of Northern states did not enfranchise the black men.

In 1869, the Republicans in Congress introduced a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the black man’s right to vote.

During that same year, 150 black men from 17 states met in Washington D.C. for the first national meeting of black Americans in the history of the United States. Many of those men would meet with members of Congress, encouraging them to support extending suffrage to black males.

Section One - Guiding Question, Why do people believe enfranchisement should be expanded?

In 1865, Frederick Douglass delivered a Speech at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, during which he said...

(Excerpts, Original Document)

Douglass' biography Douglass had been born into slavery, but after escaping he became a leader in the Abolitionist Movement, even advising President Lincoln

I am for the "immediate, unconditional, and universal" enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery... He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.

It may be asked, "Why do you want it? Some men have got along very well without it. Women have not this right." Shall we justify one wrong by another?.... I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of men can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights.

We want it again, as a means for educating our race. If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation. By depriving us of suffrage... you... lead us to undervalue ourselves...

Again, I want the elective franchise, for one, as a colored man, because ours is a peculiar government, based upon a peculiar idea, and that idea is universal suffrage.

I know that we are inferior to you in some things... I utterly deny, that we are originally, or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

Joshua McCarter Simpson, “The Fifteenth Amendment”, 1869

Born free in Ohio, Joshua McCarter Simpson was an African American abolitionist, herbal doctor, Underground Railroad conductor, and songwriter. Simpson studied at Oberlin College and published his songs in a collection titled The Emancipation Car: Being an Original Composition of Anti-Slavery Ballads, Composed Exclusively for the Underground Railroad

Alfred R. Waud's cartoon “The First Vote” was published by Harper’s Weekly in 1867.

Library of Congress Summary: Print shows African American men, in dress indicative of their professions, in a queue waiting their turn to vote.

In 1870 the lithograph company Metcalf & Clark published “The Result of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Rise and Progress of the African Race in America and its final Accomplishment, and Celebration on May 19th A.D. 1870."

Library of Congress Summary of the print

link to larger image

Section Two - Guiding Question, Why do people believe enfranchisement should be restricted?

In 1869, Maryland's Democratic Senator George Vickers (D)Maryland, said in a speech to Senate during debate over H.R.402, 1869...

(Excerpts, link to original document)

H.R. 402 was another proposed Constitutional Amendment related to suffrage. Vicker's Biography

[The Constitution] recognizes the absolute right of the States to regulate the qualifications of electors… There is no power given to Congress to regulate those qualifications...

If we introduce these votes which are to be cast... from a class of persons who are uneducated, illiterate, who cannot read your Constitution, who know nothing about its checks and its balances, about its relations to the State governments, it is an injury... to those who have the right to vote.

The idea of making a constitutional amendment for the purpose of continuing party ascendancy by securing negro votes in certain localities, is a proposition of such a monstrous character…

Will the introduction of the negro into our political affairs add to the intelligence, statesmanship, wisdom, and judgment of the country?

If you had a house to build would you procure ignorant and unskillful hands to erect it?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Speech during American Equal Rights Association Meeting in New York, 1867 (Excerpts, link to Original Document)

All history proves that despotisms, whether of one man or millions, can not stand...

We do not take the right step for this hour in demanding suffrage for any class; as a matter of principle I claim it for all.

But in a narrow view of the question as a matter of feeling between classes, when Mr. Downing puts the question to me, are you willing to have the colored man enfranchised before the woman, I say, no; I would not trust him with all my rights; degraded, oppressed himself, he would be more despotic with the governing power than even our Saxon rulers are.

I desire that we go into the kingdom together, for individual and national safety demand that not another man be enfranchised without the woman by his side.

“Republicans! Democrats! A Word with you about Negro Suffrage.” 1869

Link to larger image

This broadside is signed Oliver Ellsworth. Ellsworth (1745 to 1807) was a “founding father” who helped to draft the US Constitution, served as a senator from Connecticut, and was the third Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The creator of this broadside likely used Ellsworth’s name as a pseudonym.

HON. GARRETT DAVIS, OF KENTUCKY, Speech to the Senate regarding an amendment to the Constitution. , 1869. (Excerpts, Link to Full Document)

(document still being excerpted)

Harper's Weekly published a cartoon by Thomas Nast titled "The Georgetown Election-The Negro at the Ballot Box" in 1867.

Library of Congress Summary of Nast's cartoon: Illustration showing at top of page, several men at a polling place where an African American man places his ballot in the box for "Republican Mayor Welch" which is next to the empty ballot box for "The White Mans Ticket for Mayor H. Addison".

President Andrew Johnson is standing on the left, holding his "Suffrage Veto", additional "Veto[s]" are stuffed into his coat pocket, a man labeled "Ex. C.S.A." stands next to him. On the bottom, a woman is holding a child on top of her head, with four vignette views of "new" hairstyles.

Results of the debate over S.J.R. 8:

Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.

Source: Library of Congress

It should also be noted, that at this time only men were given the right to vote by the 15th Amendment. It would not be until the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that women would be given the right to vote.

2020 is the 150 year anniversary of the passing of the 15th Amendment.