Republicans had to choose between the approaches outlined by Cragin and Kelley at the outset—an amendment establishing a uniform national standard that enfranchised virtually all adult male citizens, or a “negative” one barring the use of race or other criteria to limit the right to vote but otherwise leaving qualifications in the hands of the states. The first possibility represents a road not taken that would have barred the methods used by southern states in the late nineteenth century to disenfranchise their black populations as well as most state voter suppresion measures today.
