The Challenge of Enforcement Summary and Analysis

Southern Democrats also adopted to the changing times during Reconstruction. One wing of the party called for accepting the fact that black citizens would retain their voting rights and to move on. These "New Departure" Democrats claimed a realistic perspective on the political situation and sought to restore voting rights to disenfranchised white confederates rather then return to the exclusion of blacks. There were still many Southern Democrats who looked forward to repealing black citizenship and voting rights, however. When the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870 guaranteeing the right to vote to all males regardless of race, southern areas under Democratic control adopted poll taxes which effectively prevented blacks from voting.

Democrats from across the spectrum agreed, however, that the key to their gaining power in the South was to portray the Republican governments as...