The actual content of the Fifteenth Amendment - Research Proposal Example

The Right to Vote for All: The Fifteenth Amendment Where the Constitution is the backbone of the United s, the Declaration of Independence is properly the arms and legs: the means by which the nation as a whole moves and sustains itself. This is because Thomas Jefferson’s relatively short document on the necessity of a new free nation states the founding ideals of what would inevitably become the greatest nation on Earth—the ideals which have moved it forward through times of sporadic international stagnation and decline. And those ideals are of individual rights. Everything which America became—heroic, noble, just, and the greatest in human history—is based upon that one principle, above all else. And that principle is the individual’s freedom from obligation and coercion by a governing body. It was from such a principle that America derived a system of capitalism which ensured each citizen could achieve—by his own hands—the so-called “American Dream”. Nevertheless, America has not always lived up to this standard; at times in history, it has seen the political philosophy of Jefferson’s magnum opus assaulted and tarnished with hypocrisy. The assault on individual rights—and the natural equality of man—took the form of rampant racism in Jim Crow laws for nearly a full century. But it was the Fifteenth Amendment which helped restore some loyalty to the principle of individual rights. Indeed, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution secures a legal framework that is ultimately most consistent with the principles upon which the United States declared itself a free and sovereign nation. What, in detail, was the philosophical imperative for the Fifteenth Amendment? Such a question will receive its due attention later on; now, however, it would be useful to critically examine the history of the Amendment, and its practical necessity in the context of the political climate of its time. To examine its history, we must try to immerse ourselves in the type of culture which made it indispensable: a climate of racism and political instability. Indeed for much of the 19th century, the historiography for the period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) in America was dominated by a traditional interpretation which held that the Radical Republicans enforced black supremacy in the defeated Rebel states, and that the Reconstruction period was an orgy of corruption instituted by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and freedmen. Nevertheless, by the end of the middle 20th century, this interpretation had been almost completely toppled: instead, the freedmen were the heroes, Redeemers the villains, and the Reconstruction itself a period of great progress and opportunity. However, the optimism of these voices seems implausible: recent studies of social structure, political philosophy, and principles have been united by the conclusion that “[Reconstruction was] essentially nonrevolutionary and conservative” (Foner, 1982). This present day view of Reconstruction casts a light of honesty upon race relations of that period. Instead of being “radical” or “progressive” in terms of that part of the country’s reforms, terms like “nonrevolutionary” and “conservative” portray Reconstruction as a period of minor change in how the majority of Whites treated and acted toward their new freedmen neighbors. Although relatively “radical” with respect to politics—where African-Americans quickly gained representation in both the Senate and House of Representatives—equality and justice in this post-war period were severely destabilized by racism. In the manner of an earthquake, the legislation of Reconstruction shook the South’s political foundations, but then eventually subsided into nonexistence. Nevertheless, the long-term effects of Reconstruction had been planted: a larger subsistence on one cash crop—cotton—the result of which came increasing numbers of poor Southerners in tenant farming, a monopolization of political power by the Democratic party, and the further embedment of racism into the fabric of American society (Mintz). However, if we are to cite any positive outcomes of Reconstruction, the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution deserve mention. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in 1865; the Fourteenth guaranteed full citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States in 1868; and the Fifteenth Amendment granted full suffrage to all males, regardless of race. And of course, there was immediate resistance to enfranchising Black males in the South. The racism of the time was fueled by the workings of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan, led by former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest—an organization that began indiscriminately threatening, whipping, and murdering African-Americans, Northern Whites, and even Southern Whites who dared resist them. The Klan no less utilized the ominous burning cross symbolism as a tool of intimidation to threaten victims with future violence. All this meant widespread Klan efforts to terrorize Black voters and White Republicans, efforts which were eventually successful during the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, who, in an attempt to pacify Southerners after a close election with Samuel Jones Tilden, promised to stop federal military engagements that ensured fair democratic elections. From that time onward, until well into the 20th century, Southern racism continued beyond the time of Reconstruction—through the poll taxes and literacy tests of the 1890s. Racism persisted, undermining the “radical” visions of the post-Civil War Republicans who tried to secure the sustained victory which over 360,000 Union soldiers had died in order to achieve. The actual content of the Fifteenth Amendment reads as follows: “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.” These edicts were ratified by the United States Congress on February 3, 1970, almost five years into the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. The Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment, ratified two years earlier in 1868, afforded basic civil rights to all citizens. Its intention was to assuage states in the South to give voting rights to African-Americas by threatening a reduction of those states congressional influence. Advancing the Black voting rights, the Radical Republicans in Congress, having tossed aside the Southern governments formed in Reconstruction, forced ex-Rebel states to create new state constitutional documents allowing African-American voting rights before Congressmen from said states would be allowed to return to Congress. The United States was thus faced with a situation in which all the ex-Rebel states granted African-Americans suffrage, while sixteen of the loyal Northern states still refused to grant suffrage to African-Americans. To fix the inequity and help improve the Southern Radical Republican Reconstruction regimes, Congressmen proposed a Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1869, declaring very simply the text which reads today in the Constitution. There arose much of a debate among Congressmen about what exactly shall be brought into the Constitutional Amendment. Hence, Wisconsin Representative Henry Adams famously said of the 15th Amendment: “[it is] more remarkable for what it does not than for what it does contain” (Foner, p. 446). To elaborate on Adams comment, for one thing it did not grant African-Americans the right to hold office, which many in the debate saw as necessary. Early drafts of the Amendment in both houses of Congress spoke explicitly of a right to vote and a right to hold office. However, by the time the bill came out committees in the Senate, all mentions of any right to hold office had been extracted. Surprisingly, members had expressly consented, before the committee’s conclusion, to incorporate the right (Amar, 1996). Throughout history, commentators have interpreted this to be a narrowing of the Amendment: that, perhaps, the Amendment was always only about voting, and not about holding office. However, such a proposition seems unlikely. The fact is that an addition of “right to hold office” would be simply redundant. That is, there is no need to specify a “right to hold office” above and beyond a suffrage with the entailment between those two having already been established in the United States Constitution as ratified in 1788. As one Congressman phrased it, “that the right to elect someone to office carries with it the inalienable and indissoluble and indefeasible right to be elected to office” (Amar, 1996). Following the institutionalization of the Fifteenth Amendment, the state of Georgia—in the midst of its bids to be readmitted into the Union—exploited the wording of the legislation. Georgia, having returned with a newly restructured state legislature, admitted to excluding African-American voters from holding office; contrary to Georgia’s agreement to not discriminate voters based on race, Georgia’s actions were seemingly noncompliant with the contingency of the plan of their readmission—an agreement to abide by the condition. Georgia responded by claiming that they were living up to the condition that they let African-Americans vote; however, “voting” is not equivalent, according to them, “the right to be voted for”. The response from Congress was indignation; needless to say, they kept Georgia from returning to Congress until they reshaped their state policy. So, the question inevitably becomes “What does this imply about the nature of the Reconstruction Amendments, in particular?” It suggests a popular dichotomy drawn on by these 19th century politicians between political and civil rights. Is there properly such a dichotomy? Up until the mid-20th century (a time period which includes the philosophical context of Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers), it seems, there was. However, such a distinction became, unsurprisingly, unstable insofar as it attempted—on a conceptual level—to group citizens into different categories of being. It formed an ideology which rated women below men in terms of entitlements to certain rights. But when such a philosophy broke down, the consequence was the destruction of the entire civil-political distinction. Nevertheless, I recommend now that we refrain from doing away with the distinction in its entirety; we may still wish to use it as a means of sorting rights as opposed to sorting citizens (Altman). And as difficult as it may seem to develop principles for how such “sorting” may be done, the task is far less intimidating as trying to find an analytic conception of what constitutes a “civil right”. Thus, even though the Fifteenth Amendment is predicated upon the outmoded distinction between civil and political rights, such an artificial distinction can be maintained in service of organizing rights. And this in no way damages the claim of this paper that the Fifteenth Amendment is a political regress toward the principle of individual rights upon which the American nation was founded. But what in this principle of individual rights makes the intent of the Fifteenth Amendment a so-called “philosophical imperative”, as previously indicated? Recalling that although the Declaration of Independence has no legal bearing on the affairs of the United States (Dana), it is the philosophical foundation which has allowed the nation to build itself, maintain itself, and thrive when others have failed. Arguably, if the United States were to give up on its philosophical foundation of individual rights, it would trip, fall, and never be able to return to its feet. From Jefferson’s Declaration, we read famously: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (emphasis added). The implications of this statement are known far and wide, and Jefferson’s treatment of individual men as entitled to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” marks within this piece of political philosophy the underpinnings of a nation-state founded upon the ideal that men have the right to seek peace and protection by contract—the social contract. Continuing, Jefferson indicates: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is this piece of the Declaration, proclaiming that governments are the products of contracts between individuals, which draws the greatest support for a philosophical imperative for the Fifteenth Amendment—that all men who are governed by a state must necessarily have a say in what system, and ultimately in how that system is implemented, forms the most ideal basis for governing the daily affairs of a nation. The American nation was founded upon that doctrine of representation in government—and the same problem would have afflicted the Southern freedmen had not the Republican controlled Congress of Reconstruction instituted these changes to the Constitution. But, unable to do anything about it, they would have been forced to live with the grim reality that the ideals of America could no longer help them: that individual rights—given by nature to all men and, by definition, inalienable—were superfluous and unnecessary. But as the events which culminated in the American Revolution clearly showed, the right of suffrage and to select one’s representatives is not simply a matter of choice as it is taken to be now; rather, the final check on a government in a democracy is the electorate. African-Americans in the post-War, Reconstruction period needed that right, perhaps as much as they needed the right of being regarded as citizens or even the basic civil rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, we now see that the Fifteenth Amendment, along with the other Reconstruction Amendments, was a philosophical imperative for the United States to append on its Constitution. Otherwise, it would have struggled with an internal consistency: a philosophic foundation of individual rights—inalienable, natural rights—but applied to only some men naturally endowed with them. The absurdity of such a view need not be discussed further; but the hypocrisy of those who held it during the time of Reconstruction in America needs a cursory glance. The Democratic party, which arose from the Democratic-Republican Party (founded by Jefferson himself, along with other opponents of Federalism such as Madison), historically favored central philosophical tents of Jefferson, such as individual rights, classical liberalism, state rights, and bimetallism. However, it was these historical Democrats who, with large-scale constituencies and associations with the Southern political landscape, favored slavery and, after the Civil War, opposed equal rights and the civil rights granted by the Reconstruction Amendments. The confused premises of this position are not easily defended, unless the 1870s Democrat is prepared to make the argument that Jefferson’s claim that “all men are created equal” and that all are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” do not apply to the Black population because, presumably, they are not men; that is, they are not human. So, short of making an extremely ignorant scientific claim, the late 19th century Democrat, opposing the Reconstruction Amendments, and yet belonging to a party which traces its lineage to the creator of the United States’ philosophical foundation on individual rights, must inevitably face an irreversible contradiction and evident hypocrisy. The Fifteenth Amendment assures individuals—no matter of their skin color—the right to vote in elections, and consequently, the right to hold office at the state or federal level. So, to conclude this discussion, consider now the cause and effect of the Fifteenth Amendment. In terms of its cause, we paid attention to the racial climate which had been instituted by Reconstruction politics: the conservative nature of the entire decade, which contrasts with the common historical account of a time of liberal, if not entirely radical change, in the type of reforms going on at that time. And, in addition, the response of White Southerners—particularly Forrest and his Ku Klux Klan that attempted to make fear a matter of public policy and intimidate the enemies of the Democratic party to the point of not voting—and the moral cowardice of Presidents like Hayes and Garfield who refused to properly use federal resources to enforce the Amendment’s dictates. We analyzed the Amendment in the context of the period of Reconstruction and took a brief survey of modern accounts of the political climate of that time in order to establish, in order, what led to Republican insistence upon its passage. With respect to the legislation’s effects, we paid particularly close attention to the philosophical aspects of the Amendment’s passage and its consistency with the principles that define America, as well as what counterfactually might have happened had the Fifteenth Amendment—or other equivalent legislation—had not been properly instituted. And by contrasting this reality with the content of the classical liberal views America was founded upon, as well as the Democratic Party’s supposed commitment to these views, we discovered the contradiction in the political opposition to the Amendment. In sum, not only was the Fifteenth Amendment necessary to properly extend equal protection to America’s new freedmen population, but it was necessary in saving the United States from future criticism and the consequences of theoretical paradox. Works Cited Altman, A. (2007). Civil Rights. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , 467-482. Amar, A. R. (1996, May 17). Part I: Emancipation and the New Conception of Freedom. Cardozo Law Review , pp. 47-52. Dana, W. F. (1900). The Declaration of Independence. Harvard Law Review , 319-343. Foner, E. (1982). Reconstruction Revisited. Reviews in American History , 82-100. Foner, E. (2002). Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Jefferson, T. (1776, June). Declaration of Independence. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America. Mintz, S. (2007). The Significance of Reconstruction. Retrieved September 27, 2008, from Digital History: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=140 Read More