CHAPTERThe Fight for Black Suffrage in the War of the RebellionROBERT COOKOn April 11, 1865, at the end of a day of celebrations in Washington following the Confederate
surrender at Appomattox, President Abraham Lincoln appeared at a second-storey window of the White House and delivered a short speech on the thorny problem of restoring the southern states to their normal relations within the Union. Towards the end of his address (which was, in large measure, a vigorous defense of his wartime reconstruction
policy in Louisiana, Lincoln confessed that it was unfortunate that the
Unionist-controlled state government in New Orleans in which he had invested so many of his hopes had so far failed to give the vote to loyal blacks.
“I would he said, myself prefer that it were now conferred
on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”
1
Granted that this was an endorsement of partial rather than impartial or universal suffrage,
it was nonetheless a remarkable comment—the
first public avowal by aPresident of the United States that African-American men should, at least
under certain circumstances, enjoy the same fundamental political privileges as their white counterparts.
2
What is even more remarkable, in view of the
pervasive racism of the era, is that by the end of a brutal civil war black suffrage had become a major debating point for political elites and ordinary citizens alike. Fora growing number of Americans by the spring of 1865 the notion that black men should be given the ballot was no longer as preposterous as it had once seemed. Why was this the case and how optimistic were the supporters of this cause entitled to be as the process of post-war
Reconstruction began in earnest?
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