the 15th Amendment

Constitution of the United States, via FindLaw et al ^ | ratified on February 3, 1870 | The Framers et al

[SunkenCiv]

Section 1. 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.

[SunkenCiv]

FindLaw's commentary: The final decision of Congress not to include anything relating to the right to vote in the Fourteenth Amendment, aside from the provisions of Sec. 2, left the issue of African American suffrage solely with the States, and Northern States were generally as loath as Southern to grant the ballot to African Americans, both the newly-freed and those who had never been slaves. But in the second session of the 39th Congress, the right to vote was extended to African Americans by statute in the District of Columbia and the territories, and the seceded States as a condition of readmission had to guarantee African American suffrage. Following the election of President Grant, the ''lame duck'' third session of the Fortieth Congress sent the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the States for ratification. The struggle was intense because Congress was divided into roughly three factions: those who opposed any federal constitutional guarantee of African American suffrage, those who wanted to go beyond a limited guarantee and enact universal male suffrage, including abolition of all educational and property-holding tests, and those who wanted or who were willing to settle for an amendment merely proscribing racial qualifications in deter mining who could vote under any other standards the States wished to have. The later group ultimately prevailed.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[SunkenCiv]

from the keyword:

• Activists celebrate blows to Electoral College

  04/07/2009 8:21:38 AM PDT · by GoldStandard · 82 replies · 2,817+ views

  WorldNetDaily | 04/07/2009 | Drew Zahn

  Activists seeking to eliminate the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote to elect the president boast that their movement is almost one-fifth the way to its goal. Four states -- Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey -- which represent 50 of the 270 electoral votes needed to declare a presidential election winner, have committed to an agreement whereby they would grant their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, a move that -- if adopted by enough states -- would reduce the Electoral College to irrelevancy. With most of the nation's states considering similar bills...

• Interpretations: Rethinking Original Intent

  03/14/2009 9:18:11 AM PDT · by Pharmboy · 76 replies · 1,741+ views

  WSJonline | JESS BRAVIN

  The debate over the Constitution's meaning takes a surprising turn; a pivotal gun-rights case Art Resource, NYThe nation's founders in 'The Signing of the Constitution,' a 1940 painting by Howard Chandler Christy. A debate is building over how to interpret the document. After the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban last June, gun-rights advocates trained their sights on similar restrictions in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. Last month, the National Rifle Association received ammunition from an unlikely source: the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal litigation shop. In a brief filed with the federal appeals court in...

• Revisiting the Fifteenth Amendment

  06/29/2006 9:46:59 AM PDT · by AZRepublican · 15 replies · 698+ views

  The Federalist Blog | 6/28/06 | P.A. Madison

  "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." It's time I clear up a major misconception over what the fifteenth amendment really is all about. When we speak of the fifteenth amendment we usually do so under the assumption that the amendment is an outright constitutional mandate granting citizens the right to vote. The fifteenth amendment is not a constitutional right to vote. This is because the right of suffrage was left with the...