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Reconstructing America Ser.: Free Ballot and a Fair Count : The Department of Justice and the Enforcement of Voting Rights in the South , 1877-1893 by Robert Michael Goldman (2001, Trade Paperback)

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About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherFordham University Press

ISBN-100823220842

ISBN-139780823220847

eBay Product ID (ePID)1773240

Product Key Features

Number of Pages222 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameFree Ballot and a Fair Count : The Department of Justice and the Enforcement of Voting Rights in the South , 1877-1893

SubjectUnited States / 19th Century, United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), American Government / National, Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, African American

Publication Year2001

TypeTextbook

AuthorRobert Michael Goldman

Subject AreaPolitical Science, Social Science, History

SeriesReconstructing America Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight23.5 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN00-059295

Reviews"A classic account of the difficulty with which the United States made the transition to a truly national polity fully capable of enforcing its own laws....a heroic but ultimately failing effort to realize the nation's great decision to make African Americans full members of the American political community." -----Michael Les Benedict, The Ohio State University, "A classic account of the difficulty with which the United States made the transition to a truly national polity fully capable of enforcing its own laws....a heroic but ultimately failing effort to realize the nation's great decision to make African Americans full members of the American political community." --Michael Les Benedict, The Ohio State University, A classic account of the difficulty with which the United States made the transition to a truly national polity fully capable of enforcing its own laws....a heroic but ultimately failing effort to realize the nation's great decision to make African Americans full members of the American political community.

TitleLeadingA

IllustratedYes

Synopsis"A Free Ballot and a Fair Count" examines the efforts by the Department of Justice to implement the federal legislation passed by Congress in 1870-71 known as the Enforcement Acts. These laws were designed to enforce the voting rights guarantees for African-Americans under the recently ratified Fifteenth Amendment. The Enforcement Acts set forth a range of federally enforceable crimes aimed at combating white southerners' attempts to deny or restrict black suffrage. There are several aspects of this work that distinguish it from other, earlier works in this area. Contrary to older interpretative studies, Goldman's primary thesis is that, the federal government's attempts to protect black voting rights in the South did not cease with the Supreme Court's hostile rulings in U.S. v. Reese and U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875. Nor, it is argued, did enforcement efforts cease at the end of Reconstruction and the so-called Compromise of 1877. Rather, federal enforcement efforts after 1877 reflected the continued commitment of Republican Party leaders, for both humanitarian and partisan reasons, to what came to be called "the free ballot and a fair count." Another unique aspect of this book is its focus on the role of the federal Department of Justice and its officials in the South in the continued enforcement effort. Created as a cabinet-level executive department in 1870, the Justice Department proved ill-equipped to respond to the widespread legal and extra-legal resistance to black suffrage by white southern Democrats in the years during and after Reconstruction. The Department faced a variety of internal problems such as insufficient resources, poor communications, and local personnel often appointed more for their political acceptability than their prosecutorial or legal skills. By the early 1890s, when the election laws were finally repealed by Congress, enforcement efforts were sporadic at best and largely unsuccessful. The end of federal involvement, coupled with the wave of southern state constitution revisions, resulted in the disfranchisement of the vast majority of African-American voters in the South by the beginning of the Twentieth Century. It would not be until the 1960s and the "Second Reconstruction" that the federal government, and the Justice Department, would once again attempt to ensure the "free ballot and a fair count"., "A Free Ballot and a Fair Count" examines the efforts by the Department of Justice to implement the federal legislation passed by Congress in 1870-71 known as the Enforcement Acts.

LC Classification NumberJK1929.A2G65 2001