They insisted that Black men’s enfranchisement was right in principle, but they also pointed out that if Congress did nothing to ensure that Black men could vote, the rebel states would eventually return to the Union stronger than ever. While slavery persisted, enslaved people had counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of deciding how many congressmen and electoral votes each state was entitled to. Now that all were free, each African American would count fully in the population. If southern state governments did not permit Black men to vote, southern whites—many of them of dubious
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