Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Fifteenth Amendment consists of two very brief sections. The first provides that “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.” The second specifies that “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The scope of the Fifteenth Amendment is limited to U.S. citizens. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment had established that all persons “born or naturalized in the United States” were citizens, but Congress had not yet extended such citizenship to Native Americans, and there was widespread opposition to naturalizing Chinese in the American West as well as to naturalizing Irish and other immigrants in other parts of the county. Whereas the Fourteenth Amendment extended some civil rights to all “persons,” the Fifteenth Amendment intends to guard only “citizens” against deprivation of their votes.

In a continuation of federal principles, Section 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment does not positively confer the right to vote on anyone; it simply prohibits denying or abridging such rights based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In contrast to this negative wording, Section 2 more positively vests Congress with enforcement powers, using language almost identical to that employed in Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Given its brevity, the Fifteenth Amendment is best understood in the context of possible alternatives. The Republican representative Boutwell initially sought simultaneously to introduce both a bill and an amendment to enfranchise northern Blacks, but rights secured by a bill were less secure than those achieved by an amendment, and the fact that Boutwell thought an amendment might be desirable suggested that legislation might exceed existing federal powers. The version of the amendment that Boutwell introduced in the House of Representatives was close to the final version. Ohio's Republican representative Shellabarger had proposed a more detailed and radical version, while fellow Ohio Republican John A. Bingham had offered a similar proposal, which allowed states to establish a one-year residency requirement.

In the Senate, Nevada Republican William M. Stewart introduced an amendment on January 28, 1869, that would also have protected the rights of African Americans to hold office. Republican Representative Jacob Howard of Michigan proposed a similar amendment, which the Senate defeated on February 8, that would have made it permissible to exclude naturalized Chinese or Irish from balloting. The next day the Senate also rejected a proposal by Henry Wilson that would have abolished restrictions on voting or office holding based on factors including race, color, property, and education and that would thus presumably have precluded literacy tests and poll taxes. Initially defeated, the Senate subsequently accepted a modified version of Wilson's amendment and an additional proposal by Indiana Senator Oliver P. Morton to reform the Electoral College.

The House considered the Senate amendment on February 15 but rejected it and requested a conference committee to resolve differences between the two proposals. The longtime abolitionist Wendell Phillips was among those who feared that the Senate's more utopian proposal stood little chance of ratification. Debate continued in both houses until they finally agreed to a conference committee consisting of House members Bingham, Boutwell, and John A. Logan (Republican from Illinois) and Senate members Steward, Roscoe Conkling (Republican from New York), and George Edmunds (Republican from Vermont). This committee adopted the current version of the amendment. The House accepted this version by the necessary two-thirds vote on February 25, 1869, and the Senate agreed to it the next day. William Gillette, in his book on the subject, observes that the amendment sought two limited goals: “to enfranchise the northern Negro” and “to protect the southern Negro against disenfranchisement” (p. 77). He further attributed its passage largely to congressional moderates.

Nevada was the first state to ratify the amendment on March 1, 1869. During this process New York initially approved the amendment and then attempted to rescind its ratification, while Ohio first rejected it and then approved it. (Today's precedents, while still ambiguous, are more favorable to Ohio's actions than to New York's actions.) Congress required some southern states to approve it as a condition of resuming their place in Congress, and Secretary of State Hamilton Fish declared the amendment ratified on March 30, 1870. Southern states, dominated by Reconstruction governments, were most supportive of the amendment, which faced strong opposition in border states, tepid endorsement in the Middle Atlantic states, and considerable conflict in the Midwest. Kentucky, Delaware, California, Tennessee, Maryland, and Oregon all rejected ratification, although some later approved it.

Advocates of women's suffrage, who had called for women's suffrage at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and who were already chaffing over the use of the word male to describe voters in Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, were very disappointed by the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were among those who refused to endorse an amendment that extended suffrage to Black men but not to women. When the American Equal Rights Association met in New York City in May 1869, it split into the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Anthony and Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone. These organizations continued to work apart until they were united in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association.