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Should African Americans Be Allowed To Vote Essay

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A citizen of the United States is a person who was born in the U.S. Citizenship would come with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Citizenship can be lost if one tries to take away an inalienable right from another citizen. Slavery is a prime example of this when southerners take away black people's liberties by using them for labor. Before being readmitted into the Union, a state must abolish slavery. Blacks and newly freed slaves should not be allowed to vote as they are uneducated and are not capable of casting an intelligent vote. However, former Confederate soldiers and southerners should be allowed to vote. Although these people are technically traitors as they had just participated in a rebellion against the Union, they should be allowed to vote if they take a loyalty oath. They should be allowed a second chance. Highly ranking …show more content…

This is because if blacks were counted as whole persons, the South would receive too much representation in Congress. The South should not be receiving such a large representation in Congress, especially not after fighting a war against a country it is trying to receive readmission from. Blacks counting as 3/5ths of a person seems best for the time being, but as time passes on and the nation eventually recovers completely from the war, Congress should work on blacks having more of a representation in government. A voting should be held to determine who should represent the South, and this should exclude highly ranking Confederate leaders and former Confederate officers. Confederate leaders and officers should not be allowed to participate in local government as the decisions they may make would be influenced by the idea of slavery, the system they were fighting for in the war. With prohibitions being put on the South on suffrage and representation, the South should be able to appoint their own

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Some black Southerners aided the Confederacy. Most of these were forced to accompany their masters or were forced to toil behind the lines. Black men were not legally allowed to serve as combat soldiers in the Confederate Army--they were cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers. There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier This is not to say that no black man ever fired a gun for the Confederacy.

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