Front cover image for The trial of democracy : black suffrage and northern Republicans, 1860-1910

The trial of democracy : black suffrage and northern Republicans, 1860-1910

Xi Wang
After the Civil War, Republicans teamed with activist African Americans to protect black voting rights through innovative constitutional reforms--a radical transformation of southern and national political structures. This book is a comprehensive analysis of both the forces and mechanisms that led to the implementation of black suffrage and the ultimate failure to maintain a stable northern constituency to support enforcement on a permanent basis. The reforms stirred fierce debates over the political and constitutional value of black suffrage, the legitimacy of racial equality, and the proper sharing of power between the state and federal governments. Unlike most studies of Reconstruction, this book follows these issues into the early twentieth century to examine the impact of the constitutional principles and the rise of Jim Crow
Print Book, English, ©1997
University of Georgia Press, Athens, ©1997
History
xxv, 411 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
9780820318370, 082031837X
33442896
The road to the fifteenth amendment, 1860-1870
The making of federal enforcement laws, 1870-1872
The anatomy of enforcement, 1870-1876
The Hayes administration and black suffrage, 1876-1880
The survival of a principle, 1880-1888
The rise and fall of reinforcement, 1888-1891
Equality deferred, 1892-1910