The 15th Amendment
Voting Rights for All Men
What Happened
- During this time people became increasingly aware of the rights of slaves
- This led to the division of the nation between the North and the South
- The Southern states allowed slavery and gave few rights to African Americans and the opposite was true for the North
- This tension between the two regions led to the Civil War
The Civil War
- Eventually led to the freedom of all slaves
- Started soon after Abraham Lincoln was elected President
- First battle was at Fort Sumter
- The Emancipation Proclamation resulted from this war and so did the Fifteenth Amendment
- The Fifteenth Amendment gave all men regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude the right to vote.
What People DId and Obstacles Faced
- The main obstacle faced was bias and tradition: the South only knew slavery and that was how their parents before lived so how were they supposed to live differently
- Politics passed acts to limit the expansion of slavery
- Some newspapers printed news regarding slaves and their rights
- A war was fought to free slaves