A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

Southern Republicans, joined by many Northern Radicals, feared that a blanket guarantee of the right to vote would void the disenfranchisement of “rebels.” Equally important, Northern states wished to retain their own suffrage qualifications. In the West, the Chinese could not vote; if the Fifteenth Amendment altered this situation, noted Californias Republican Sen. Cornelius Cole, it would “kill our party as dead as a stone.”