The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870.
The last of the “Reconstruction Amendments,” the Fifteenth Amendment banned the denial or abridgment of suffrage based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It effectively gave African-American men the right to vote.
The immediate effects of the Fifteenth Amendment were dramatic. Throughout the South, thousands of African Americans registered to vote. The majority in many areas, they gained substantial political power and soon thereafter began serving as local, state, and federal representatives.
Sadly, this right of suffrage would not remain protected. As federal troops pulled out of the southern U.S. in the late 1870s, many former Confederates found ways to prevent black men from voting. African Americans faced poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright voter intimidation from white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
The Fifteenth Amendment, though a landmark in our constitutional history, wouldn’t be enforced again in the South for years to come when additional laws were passed during the civil rights movement.
A collection of resources recognizing this important piece of American law.
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.
Free speech and slavery
As the country grew more divided over the question of slavery in the early 19th century and as the threat of secession by the slave states in the South loomed larger over the political landscape, efforts were made in both the South and the North to suppress the slavery issue.
Many southern states radically regulated the press, preventing the dissemination of anti-slavery literature. Since at this time, the Bill of Rights was understood to apply only to the federal government, there was no constitutional question about such measures. However, much of the anti-slavery literature in slave states was being introduced by northern abolitionists through the federal postal system. In response, southern states mandated that their post-masters refrain from delivering anti-slavery materials. Many northern states tolerated these measures either out of support for slavery or out of fear of secession.
Congress eventually supported the effort to quarantine the South from anti-slavery agitation with the Post Office Act of 1836, which permitted post-masters to respect local censorship laws. Though this was a federal law and therefore was subject to the First Amendment, it was never brought to the Supreme Court.
ANTI-SLAVERY COLLECTION AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES ANTI-SLAVERY COLLECTION AMERICAN ABOLITIONISTS WEBSITE
Black history and African American political thought
African Americans have made a lasting impact on the United States and our nation’s history. Figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. are well remembered today for their insights and political thought. In honor of black history and the contributions that African Americans have made to our country, JMC presents a collection of fellows’ articles and other resources on African-American history and political thought.
Learn more about black history and African American political thought from JMC Scholars and Founding Civic Initiative Faculty Diana Schaub, Lucas Morel, and Nicholas Buccola.
Schaub on MLK Jr. and Malcolm X Buccola on Frederick Douglass and Libertarianism Schaub and Morel on Douglass’s View of Emancipation and Lincoln
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. In the aftermath of the Civil War, this amendment banned slavery in the United States, ending a barbaric system that had been legal in America for well over a hundred years. Four million people, an entire eighth of the U.S. population, were freed as a result. Though the Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the United States, it did not give citizenship to African Americans, nor did it give African American men the right to vote. These gains were not accomplished until the passage of the other Reconstruction amendments, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, in 1868 and 1870, respectively.
Read the Thirteenth Amendment on ContextUS Learn more about the thirteenth amendmentThe Fourteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified a few years after the Thirteenth, on July 9, 1868. The amendment granted citizenship to those born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed freedom, due process, and equal protection under the law to all Americans. In doing so, it expanded the scope of the Constitution’s protection of individual liberty; now the Constitution protected rights not only from infringement by the federal government but from infringement by state and local governments as well.
Read the Fourteenth Amendment on ContextUS Learn more about the fourteenth amendmentFrederick Douglass and 19th-Century Political Thought
Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in February 1818. Born a slave, Douglass only saw his mother a handful of times and never knew his father, who was white. At the age of 8, Douglass was hired out as a servant in Baltimore. While there, he taught himself to read and studied natural rights, debate, and historical speeches.
Douglass was one of America’s foremost intellectuals and greatest figures in the American antislavery movement. Douglass told the story of his escape from slavery and his arguments against that “hateful thing” were some of the most persuasive of the time. Douglass’s impressive oratory skills sent him to the national stage, where he influenced other American contemporaries such as Abraham Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, and John Brown.
He believed the Founding principles if applied as intended, would uphold freedom for every person: “In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing [slavery]; but interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.”
In his famous “Self-Made Men” lecture, Douglass emphasized the significance of self-dependence. Douglass’s faith in self-sufficiency was underscored by his belief in the American tradition of liberty through self-government.
Self-Made Man – Full text Visit the Frederick Douglass PapersSlavery, political philosophy, and constitutional law
Eliga Gould, “The Laws of War and Peace: Legitimating Slavery in the Age of the American Revolution.” (State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States, University of Virginia Press, 2013)
Edited by Alan Levine, Thomas Merril, and James Stoner; The Political Thought of the Civil War. (University Press of Kansas, 2018)
Keith Whittington, “Slavery and the U.S. Supreme Court.” (The Political Thought of the Civil War, University Press of Kansas, 2018)
Commentary and articles from JMC Scholars
Reconstruction
Michael Zuckert, “Natural Rights and the Post Civil War Amendments.” (Witherspoon Institute’s Natural Law, Natural Rights and American Constitutionalism, Online Resource Center, 2009)
Voting Rights
Justin Wert (co-author), The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act. (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)
