The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

ON FEBRUARY 25, 1869, the House of Representatives did pass legislation that would become the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing that the right to vote not be denied or abridged by any state “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In the Senate, even Peter Van Winkle voted for it, as did Fessenden and Trumbull. Edmund Ross, James Grimes, and John Henderson were absent, though Henderson had introduced the resolution. Sumner abstained: true to himself, he contended that the amendment didn’t go far enough—it did not prevent the states from disqualifying voters on the basis, say, of not owning property; it said nothing about the right of a black man to hold office; it said nothing about how the amendment would be enforced. —