Right to Vote 15th Amendment Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Right to Vote 15th Amendment - Research Proposal Example And that principle is the individual’s freedom from obligation and coercion by a governing body. It was from such a principle that America derived a system of capitalism which ensured each citizen could achieve—by his own hands—the so-called â€Å"American Dream†. Nevertheless, America has not always lived up to this standard; at times in history, it has seen the political philosophy of Jefferson’s magnum opus assaulted and tarnished with hypocrisy. The assault on individual rights—and the natural equality of man—took the form of rampant racism in Jim Crow laws for nearly a full century. But it was the Fifteenth Amendment which helped restore some loyalty to the principle of individual rights. Indeed, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution secures a legal framework that is ultimately most consistent with the principles upon which the United States declared itself a free and sovereign nation. What, in detail, was the philosophical imperative for the Fifteenth Amendment? Such a question will receive its due attention later on; now, however, it would be useful to critically examine the history of the Amendment, and its practical necessity in the context of the political climate of its time. To examine its history, we must try to immerse ourselves in the type of culture which made it indispensable: a climate of racism and political instability. Indeed for much of the 19th century, the historiography for the period known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) in America was dominated by a traditional interpretation which held that the Radical Republicans enforced black supremacy in the defeated Rebel states, and that the Reconstruction period was an orgy of corruption instituted by carpetbaggers, scalawags, and freedmen. Nevertheless, by the end of the middle 20th century, this interpretation had been almost completely toppled: instead, the freedmen were