Succinct, straightforward, and to the point, the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on this day, February 3, 1870.
The last of what are known as the Reconstruction Amendments, the Fifteenth Amendment would prove to have its limitations in truly giving black Americans full suffrage, yet remains a significant pillar of American political rights.
The Fifteenth Amendment is one of the shortest amendments. Section 1 simply and elegantly states that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
Section 2 declares that "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for an amendment originating in Congress, the Fifteenth Amendment was borne of compromise and political considerations.
Many congressional Republicans, eager to boost the thin majority that Ulysses S. Grant won in the popular vote of the 1868 presidential election, sought the help of black voters to boost Republican control while solidifying voter eligibility in southern states.
Grant urged ratification in his first inaugural address:
"The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution."
Rep. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts had taken charge of the language in the House, while Sen. William M. Stewart of Nevada shepherded the amendment across the Rotunda.
Three proposals emerged. One version would have prevented states from using devices such as literacy tests and poll taxes, another self-evidently exclusionary version flatly stated that all male citizens over 21 years of age would have voting rights.
After the requisite haggling in several committees, the language that would become the Fifteenth Amendment passed the House on February 25, 1869. The Senate approved it the next day.
Debate in the states over the amendment was strictly along partisan lines that reflected the division that still existed following the Civil War, with Republicans overwhelmingly favoring the amendment and Democrats almost unanimously opposed.
When ratification seemed to be in peril, Congress passed a remarkable act in April 1869 that required Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment as a condition of readmission to the United States.
The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870.
Despite ratification and the passage of the Enforcement Act of 1870, many southern states and localities blocked suffrage for black citizens via legislation and other means.
The ill-fated James A. Garfield delivered perhaps the most eloquent history and defense of the Fifteenth Amendment and the other Reconstruction Amendments ever made by a U.S. president during his inaugural address in 1881:
“...the elevation of the Negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution in 1787…Those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the Negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disenfranchised peasantry in the United States.”
Garfield vowed that his administration would see that all American citizens would enjoy the full guarantees of the Constitution, and addressed the states and localities that would deny the vote in defiance of the Constitution:
"The free enjoyment of equal suffrage is still in question, and a frank statement of the issue may aid its solution. It is alleged that in many communities negro citizens are practically denied the freedom of the ballot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil. It is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice."
An assassin's bullet stilled Garfield's voice, and his immediate successors were not remotely as committed as he to putting the full force of executive power behind the Fifteenth Amendment. Indignities such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and property qualifications persisted as black Americans were continually denied the vote.
As Garfield had no doubt observed, the Supreme Court had been of little help following ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Cases such as United States v. Reese and United States v. Cruikshank -- both decided in 1876 -- significantly restricted the ability of Congress to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment in state elections.
It would not be until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress that such practices as literacy tests were explicitly prohibited, enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment. The legislation came on the heels of the ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which explicitly prohibited "any poll tax or other tax" in order to vote in federal elections.
While the Fifteenth Amendment was seen by many as the last piece of Reconstruction, it was subject to abuse and the reluctance of many Congresses, the Supreme Court, and presidential administrations to enforce its plain language and live up to Garfield's demand that there be "no permanent disenfranchised peasantry" in the United States.
Still, the Fifteenth Amendment remains a significant and instructive milestone in the constant struggle to make a more perfect union.
