How did the Reconstruction Republicans secure ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment?

0:04Here's the text of the 15th Amendment. 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. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. It didn't make a statement about a substantive right to vote. It didn't demand that everyone be given a right to vote.

0:33It said, if you're going to give anyone the right to vote on dogcatcher or whatever it's going to be. If you're going to give someone the right to vote, you cannot deny them the right to participate in that vote on the basis of race. Obviously, Republican governments in every state of the Union, all of them allowing their local citizens to vote. That meant they could no longer deny that vote on the basis of race. But it was a radically transformative idea that the race which only a decade before had been subject to enslavement, had been denied an education. Had been denied the ability to develop themselves as equal participants in American society. Now they were going to be brought out of slavery and given the levers of political power. Not only did you have a broadly racialist country that still viewed each other on the basis of race, whether they're Black or they're Irish or immigrants from China.

1:33Racism was still a part of our understanding of who we were, even though the country was beginning to overcome a background history of racism that allowed for slavery. We're moving in the direction of freedom. But are we really ready to move so far and so fast that now we're going to let Black Americans hold political power in terms of the vote and hold political power in terms of office holding? For many white Americans, North and South, that was too far too quick, and so they were proposing things along the lines. We don't want to ratify this amendment until a decade of education. They've just come out of enslavement in the South, and so let's have a period of time where they become instructed in American institutions and instructed in how to inform themselves on political projects, things like that. Other Republicans are saying, no.

2:25They know very well what the politics are. They know very well what the issues are. Although, yes, we need to create new educational institutions, they are as informed as any white American right now, and they deserve as citizens to have the right to vote. If they were able to carry the bullet box as soldiers in the Union army, then they should have access to the ballot box now that they've helped win that war and preserve the Union.

2:51Others continued to argue that it was too soon. We should wait until the union is completely brought back together again before we argue about any particular amendments. It was a close race. It was further in terms of equality than the nation had ever gone before. Once again, you're dealing with a situation where no one was sure whether or not there was going to be sufficient support to ratify this particular amendment. You had a lot of Southern governments, which now had Black Americans participating, they favored. They had already voted on the 14th Amendment. They were ready to move and ratify the 15th Amendment. But not every Southern state did, and there was even resistance in the Northern states. Democrats continued to have a deeply racist view of Black Americans and had resisted the 14th Amendment, and now they continued to resist the 15th Amendment.

3:46You also had women's rights organizations, which just astonishingly opposed giving the vote to Black Americans. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony, were in favor of giving everyone the vote. But if not everyone can have the vote, then educated white women should get the vote before who they called uneducated Black Americans. They actually came out in opposition to the 15th Amendment as part of their Northern Women's Rights Conventions. Sometimes they would appear on the same stage as Frederick Douglas. Frederick Douglas would say, I want everyone to have the right to vote. But if we start with Black Americans, that's a good place to start. Elizabeth Cady Stanton would stand up and say just very racist things about Black Americans. Frederick Douglas would simply sit there silently till it was time for him to speak,

4:43and then he would stand and he said over and over again, I do not deny that women should have the right to vote. I support their right to vote. But for women, it is a policy issue and an influence issue. For Black Americans, it's a matter of life and death. If we have to take one step forward, we should take the step forward and get rid of the color bar for Black Americans in the South.

5:11In the end, Frederick Douglas prevailed and convinced a majority and the people working with Frederick Douglas. Including some women's rights advocates like Lucy Stone, who also agreed there was nothing wrong with taking this step in hopes that then the next step would be to bring women the rights of suffrage. It was an extraordinary debate. At the end of the day, Congress passed additional legislation saying, for the last remaining Southern states, you're not going to come back into the Union unless your people embrace the 15th Amendment and included the people of Georgia. Finally, the final Southern states agreed to ratify the 15th Amendment. That was enough for it to finally become a part of the Constitution in 1870.