It was the law of recostruction, passed on March 2, 1867, which envisaged the vote of black people in the election of the delegates drafting the new state constitutions in the southern United States. To restore political autonomy, such states should extend the "privilege" of voting to black men over twenty-one. If indeed in that context the vow was thought of as a privilege, and not exactly as a right, the data to be observed was that such privilege, for the first time, was recorded in a law referring to the ex-slave states, as an independent exercise of race, color or condition.
The political climate following the first Reconstruction Law stimulated discussions about black citizenship rights. In 1868, Congress ratified Amendment XIV, taking the issue of black citizenship to the center of national political discussion. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution established citizenship as an attribute of persons born in the United States, or naturalized therein, thus independent of the origin or the previous condition of the subject. It was thus indicated that both blacks and former slaves enjoyed general political rights in the nation and in their states of residence. Such states, moreover, should be punished with the diminution of representation in the Federal Congress if they did not respect the voting rights of the blacks.
