A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

Pennsylvania demanded the payment of state taxes to vote; Rhode Island required foreignborn citizens to own $134 worth of real estate; Massachusetts and Connecticut insisted on literacy. Indeed, the Northern states during Reconstruction actually abridged the right to vote more extensively than did the Southern. Ironically, it was not a limited commitment to blacks’ rights, but the desire to retain inequalities affecting whites, that produced a Fifteenth Amendment that opened the door to poll taxes, literacy tests, and