15th Amendment guaranteeing African American men the vote is passed
- When
- 1870
- Where
- Washington, D.C.
- Episodes
- 1
The Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting vote denial based on race, was proposed in February 1869 and ratified on February 3, 1870. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish certified it on March 30, 1870, after a difficult struggle involving attempted rescissions. The amendment was the third Reconstruction Amendment, following earlier laws abolishing slavery and granting citizenship.
Episodes
Background and detail
Background. By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws. The Fifteenth Amendment was proposed in late February 1869, following the rejection of more sweeping versions. It decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," serving as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Certification. New York attempted to revoke its ratification on January 5, 1870. However, in February 1870, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas ratified the amendment, bringing the total to twenty-nine states, one more than required. This forestalled any court challenge to New York's resolution. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish certified the amendment on March 30, 1870.
People involved
- Hamilton Fish · Secretary of State
Sources
- Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-04
- Reconstruction era Wikipedia
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.