Government Expansion Through Universal Suffrage

There are numerous ways that the US Government has expanded its authority during the period from the start of the Civil war through the Civil Rights era. This paper will focus on a couple of examples of the government expansion and the effects that these particular examples had in influencing the country's political, social and economic structures.

Government Expansion through Universal Suffrage

There are many ways in which the government has expanded its authority throughout the history of our nation. The ability for our government to guarantee universal suffrage by providing that not only can a man not be denied the right to vote due to his race and that a woman cannot be denied the right to vote due to race or sex represent huge steps toward equality. The ramifications of universal suffrage are huge. It changed the country's entire social structure by giving voice to people who were, until then, repressed. It also changed the political structure because giving all adult citizens the right to vote results in a larger audience of people to help in the decision-making process of an election.

The Civil War Reconstruction era necessitated an extraordinary expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the central government. The Civil War resulted in the implementation of Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen of the Constitution (Editorial Board, 2012). These amendments created a new federal aspect of citizenship for all and sought to guarantee universal male suffrage (Editorial Board, 2012). The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery for the entire nation (which, until then had been a state issue) (America and the World). The Fourteenth Amendment reversed the decision that black people could not be citizens by declaring that any person born on United States soil is a citizen (America and the World). The Fifteenth Amendment added to the Fourteenth by providing that a male citizen can't be denied voting rights on the grounds of race or having once been a slave (Editorial Board, 2012).

Once the constitution had been amended, the United States had to make sure that the new laws were protected and enforced, supporting the new powers of the national government (Editorial Board, 2012). This was a daunting task because of the enormity of the changes to our social, political and economic structures. Abolishing slavery and granting citizenship to all freed men meant that land owners in the crop-producing southern states had no one to work their fields unless they paid for the labor. This drastically cut into the wealth of the southern aristocracy. Also, giving the newly freed men the right to vote was very hard to accept, especially in the south, and was upsetting to the country's women, who did not gain their right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment