414 Chapter 15 Reconstruction and the South
The Reconstruction acts and the ratification of
the Fourteenth Amendment achieved the purpose
of enabling black Southerners to vote. The
Radicals, however, were not satisfied; despite the
unpopularity of the idea in the North, they wished
to guarantee the right of blacks to vote in every
state. Another amendment seemed the only way to
accomplish this objective, but passage of such an
amendment appeared impossible. The Republican
platform in the 1868 election had smugly distin-
guished between blacks voting in the South
(“demanded by every consideration of public
safety, of gratitude, and of justice”) and in the
North (where the question “properly belongs to
the people”).
However, after the election had demonstrated
how important the black vote could be, Republican
strategy shifted. Grant had carried Indiana by fewer
than 10,000 votes and lost New York by a similar
number. If blacks in these and other closely divided
states had voted, Republican strength would have
been greatly enhanced.
Suddenly Congress blossomed with suffrage
amendments. After considerable bickering over
details, the Fifteenth Amendmentwas sent to the
states for ratification in February 1869. It forbade
all the states to deny the vote to anyone “on
account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.” Once again nothing was said about
denial of the vote on the basis of sex, which caused
feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to be
even more outraged than they had been by the
Fourteenth Amendment.
Most southern states, still under federal pres-
sure, ratified the amendment swiftly. The same was
true in most of New England and in some western
states. Bitter battles were waged in Connecticut,
New York, Pennsylvania, and the states immediately
north of the Ohio River, but by March 1870 most of
them had ratified the amendment and it became part
of the Constitution.
The debates occasioned by these conventions
show that partisan advantage was not the only reason
why voters approved black suffrage at last. The
unfairness of a double standard of voting in North
and South, the contribution of black soldiers during
the war, and the hope that by passing the amend-
ment the strife of Reconstruction could finally be
ended all played a part.
When the Fifteenth Amendment went into
effect, President Grant called it “the greatest civil
change and... the most important event that has
occurred since the nation came to life.” The
American Anti-Slavery Society formally dissolved
itself, its work apparently completed. “The Fifteenth
Amendment confers upon the African race the care
of its own destiny,” Radical Congressman James A.
Garfield wrote proudly after the amendment was rat-
ified. “It places their fortunes in their own hands.”
Many of the celebrants lived to see the amend-
ment subverted in the South. That it could be
evaded by literacy tests and other restrictions was
apparent at the time and may even have influenced
some persons who voted for it. But a stronger
amendment—one, for instance, that positively
granted the right to vote to all men and put the
supervision of elections under national control—
could not have been ratified.“Black Republican” Reconstruction:
Scalawags and Carpetbaggers
The Radicals had at last succeeded in imposing their
will on the South. Throughout the region former
slaves had real political influence; they voted, held
office, and exercised the “privileges” and enjoyed the
“immunities” guaranteed them by the Fourteenth
Amendment. Nearly all voted Republican.
The spectacle of blacks not five years removed
from slavery in positions of power and responsibility
attracted much attention. But the real rulers of the
“black Republican” governments were white: the
scalawags—Southerners willing to cooperate with
the Republicans because they accepted the results of
the war and wished to advance their own interests—
and the carpetbaggers—Northerners who went to
the South as idealists to help the freed slaves as
employees of the federal government, or more com-
monly as settlers hoping to improve themselves.
The scalawags were by far the more numerous. A
few were prewar politicians or well-to-do planters,
men such as the Mississippi planter John L. Alcorn
and Joseph E. Brown, the Confederate governor of
Georgia. General James Longstreet, one of Lee’s
most important lieutenants, was another prominent
Southerner who cooperated with the Republicans.
But most were people who had supported the Whig
party before the secession crisis and who saw the
Republicans as the logical successors of the Whigs.
The carpetbaggers were a particularly varied lot.
Most had mixed motives for coming south and per-
sonal gain was certainly among them. But so were
opposition to slavery and the belief that blacks