Going into the fall elections of 1868 it became immediately apparent that although the 14th Amendment had guaranteed that freed slaves were citizens that did not mean they had the right to vote. As noted previously, State governments had complete control over election processes and not all citizens had been granted suffrage at that time (notably women and Native Americans). Yet another constitutional amendment was required.

The 15th Amendment stated that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Passed by Congress in February 1869 it took more than a year to get the required 3/4 of states to ratify this last Reconstruction Amendment. It was opposed by most of the women's suffragette movement because of its failure to protect the voting rights of women. It also did not preclude the use of any number of potential methods to suppress or deny voting rights to freed slaves including poll taxes and "literacy" tests.

As difficult as it had been to get the three Reconstruction Amendments passed it seemed in 1870 that the rights of former slaves had been secured. In the mid-term elections many blacks cast votes and by 1872 over 300 African Americans had been elected to State and Federal office with many more elected as local officials. Sadly, this represented the highest participation rate for blacks in the U.S. political system for many generations.

Efforts to restart the Southern economy quickly revealed the lack of any plan for the post-war livelihood of freed slaves. Largely to avoid 5th Amendment challenges all of the Southern Plantations were returned to their owners once they had pledged allegiance to the Union. This sadly included St. Catherine's Island off the coast of Georgia where Black Preacher Tunis Campbell had established a successful enclave of former slaves. In one of the more shameful deployments of Union soldiers during Reconstruction, an African American contingent was dispatched to dismantle the community.

Former slaves were free, but they were also landless, poorly educated, and without any financial resources to support their new station in life. At the same time the cotton, tobacco, and sugar crops still needed to be planted and harvested. White Southerners saw an opportunity to return African Americans to something very much like their former state of enslavement.

Through the passage of draconian vagrancy laws Southern State Assemblies expedited the arrest and conviction of thousands of former slaves. Once convicted they could be leased out to plantation owners without compensation because of the 13th Amendment "Loophole". The alternative, which many former slaves had to accept, was to become sharecroppers whereby they worked the land to earn a portion of the crop. Of course, they did not own the buildings they lived in or the equipment they used in their work and could be charged rent which reduced them to subsistence living.

On the political front laws were passed to require poll taxes or literacy tests that dramatically reduced the participation rate of former slaves in elections. In 1868, thirty-three legislators were expelled from the Georgia General Assembly simply because they were black.

But White Supremacists were not content with these measures. The idea that any blacks could vote or assume political office was unacceptable to them and consequently they formed organizations such as the Klu Klux Klan to terrorize and intimidate black voters and elected officials. The level of violence against all blacks in the South, whether former slaves or freedman from the North, was appalling. It is estimated that some 6,000 African Americans were lynched between 1865 and the end of Reconstruction in 1876.

Throughout the Reconstruction Era the Federal government struggled to intervene on behalf of former slaves. Once military occupation of the South ended, the responsibility for providing police and enforcing Civil Rights reverted to Southern States. Led in large part by former Confederate soldiers, there was little motivation on their part to curtail the violence that was helping to maintain the status quo.

In 1871 Congress passed the Klu Klux Klan Act that authorized the use of Federal troops to maintain the peace. But the violence in Southern States was so widespread and so deeply embedded in the communities of the South that there was no realistic option to control it without another military occupation. Citizens and politicians of the North were weary of the whole affair and had no appetite for further military adventures of that sort.

The decision rendered in the Slaughterhouse case in 1873 by the United States Supreme Court further reduced the ability of the Federal government to protect the Civil Rights of black citizens. It affirmed that States had the primary authority in that regard and in doing so the Court also severely constrained the applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Finally, in order to resolve the contested Presidential election of 1876, Northern Politicians accepted an offer by Southern Democrats to concede the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in return for a pledge to let the South deal with black citizens without further Federal interference.

The Reconstruction Era, with all its hope for the full integration of former slaves into the fabric of American society was dead.

Having won the Civil War at great cost the North now watched as the South completed its winning of the peace. Through the "Black Codes" of the Reconstruction Era, and later the "Jim Crow" laws of the early 20th Century, and many legislative measures since, African Americans have been segregated, isolated, and starved of economic opportunity through explicit legislation; legislation passed by governments that were pledged to serve all American citizens.