The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in July 1868, guaranteed basic civil rights to all citizens; it was intended to persuade Southern states to grant suffrage to blacks by threatening a reduction of their congressional representation. To further the cause of black suffrage, the Radical Republican Congress, which had swept away the Southern regimes organized under presidential Reconstruction, required Ex-Confederate States to adopt new state constitutions allowing black suffrage before senators and representatives from those states would be readmitted to Congress. The United States was thus faced with a situation in which all the Ex-Confederate States granted blacks the right to vote, while 16 of the loyal Uni

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