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The majority of Americans take this naturally, however, voting rights were the result of a lengthy and tough fight. When US citizens go to vote on election day, they owe a lot to the antecedent generations who gave a fight for choosing the person they will be ruled by. They might not love each governor selected, however, leastways they would have an option to send them out of the office in a couple of years. This book review observes the groundbreaking developments for democracy in the US in a more detailed way and describes how people and organizations defied the authorities and obtained voting rights for everyone including people who are needy, female, or minority. In this book review, we will go through the reasons John Adams did not prop democracy up as is known; how the voting rights of black people were rejected after the Civil War; and the reasons for today’s threats to our democracy. Chapter 1 - Even though American democracy was started with the signature of the Constitution, the rights to vote were only given to a chosen few. The American Revolutionary War was fought to draw power from the British who later ruled the Thirteen Colonies on the east coast of North America. Before the historic clash in the 1770s, the three million colonists who lived in what would be the United States had narrow democratic rights, and just men who had a particular amount of commodity could vote. However, the argument for the right to vote was not completely defined. In fact, on the road to the preparation of the United States Constitution in 1787, there were two counter sides in the argument on the right to vote, one represented by Benjamin Franklin and the other by John Adams. These two men were impactful characters in the clash for independence and constituted the Founding Fathers of the US. Franklin’s opinion was to broaden voting rights to all free men, no matter what their race was. He had previously battled for and obtained this transformation in the preparation of the Pennsylvania Constitution in 1776. At that time, John Adams, Franklin’s eternal opponent, was objecting to the broadening of the rights to vote. On the subject of voting rights, Adams even perfectly stated that if the property requirement for men is lifted "there will be no end to it" and will finally cause demand for the right to vote from women and the working poor. As you can understand, these two opinions were completely different, and advocates of each discussed at substantial length as the constitution was being developed. Ultimately, they ended up with an agreement: voting rights will not be mentioned in the constitution. Rather, this contentious topic would remain not closed for individual states to address. In conclusion, for almost 100 years, voting rights were in majority reserved for the white males who were paying taxes and owning commodities. The constitution though allowed the federal government to interfere if the states misused their power. Although only white men somehow have the right to vote, they were just let to choose members of the House of Representatives. They are not allowed to vote for presidents nor for senators, which were assigned by the Electoral College and state governments respectively. Chapter 2 - In the first half of the nineteenth century, global voting rights for white males experienced great benefits. There was a big desire developing in the people to enhance voting rights when the enfranchisement antipathetic Federalist Party of John Adam earned the first congressional poll in 1789. This enthusiasm was channeled by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1791 when they developed a new party called Democratic-Republicans. The pair achieved to gather a huge number of people under this challenging political purpose, which would in the end form the contemporary Democratic Party. They were addressing liberty, freedom of individuals, and innate rights, all the popular problems of the soaring class of farmers and small merchants. The party’s endeavors to the 1800 presidential election were so accomplished that although the Federalist gerrymandered, i.e. redefined the district boundaries so that the party will obtain a positive outcome, Jefferson earned the presidency with a regret that arose as the Revolution of 1800. In 1809, Madison take over Jefferson, and during his presidency, six new states developed into the Union were given voting rights for males, including free black men. Furthermore, four states that existed during the same period abolished all property requirements to vote. However, the pressure for global voting rights for white males was still under threat. John Adams was working to daunt the expansion of voting rights even in 1821 and accomplished to block the right to vote in Massachusetts during that year. However, the democratic repression was too powerful to be ceased. In 1828, the newly developed Democratic Party earned the presidency with Andrew Jackson being nominated. This win initiated what would later be called the Jacksonian period, a period in which public political participation rose to new levels. For example, the effort of the party caused voter participation to be doubled in the presidential election; from 27 percent in 1824 to 57 percent in 1828. This excellent feedback of 30 point increase resulted from community arrangements on behalf of local party chapters and mass distribution of party newspapers. The emerging instrument was possibly the first mass political party in the world, and it stimulated America's transformation to mass democracy. Chapter 3 - After much tumult, black men were given voting rights after the Civil War. As you learned, some states started to provide black men with voting rights early in the 19th century, but this trend would not continue. The white men who were in the working classes perceived providing black men with voting rights as a danger and many people started to strongly oppose it. In conclusion, when the Civil War blew out, the states that earlier provided black men with voting rights canceled the rights. At the end of the Civil war, black Americans were freed from slavery but still cried out for political representation. At that evolutionary time, Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist leader who helped Abraham Lincoln in gathering black soldiers to the Union’s war endeavor, was a pioneer. Without the undertaking of these black warriors, who constituted 10 percent of the Union army, the battle could last for years. Douglass, who grasped the significance of this undertaking completely, announced to the public that the abolition of slavery stands for nothing without full enfranchisement. At the same time, Lincoln was little by little getting engaged to the idea that black Americans should be given the right to vote, specifically for their crucial part during the war. The slow alteration of his heart would ultimately cause his assassination in April 1865 by the white supremacist John Wilkes Booth at the end of the Civil War. Together with the murder of 47 black men in Louisiana by white supremacist military forces, Lincoln’s assassination led to a swift change in the public opinion of suffrage. This change in minds led to the confirmation of every state in the Union in the next two years of the 14th Amendment that assures equal rights to everyone regardless of race and became law in 1868. This fantastic new law is strengthened more with the 15th Amendment, a constitutional modification made in the 1870s, that clearly remarks that voting rights cannot be defied because of race. In conclusion, with these changes coming into force, voting rights are officially guaranteed in the constitution. In the following lines, you will learn about the pernicious gap in the 15th Amendment that would bring grievous results. Chapter 4 - After the initial happiness, the wave turned against the political representation of blacks. In the 1870s, the percentage of African-Americans chosen for office increased impressively. Black voter participation was approximately 90 percent and about 15 percent of representatives in congress were African-American. This excellent change was well facilitated with the continuous occupation of the southern states by Union troops, in many situations guarding polling areas where black men vote. As a result, this political revolution was quickly inverted when the southern provinces rejoined the Union and northern troops were repatriated. In the following years, carnages of black men mounted up in the South. This was during the time that the Ku Klux Klan was developed, specifically as a retrograde arm of the Democratic Party, which during the time was antiabolitionist. The recently reunited southern states necessitating literacy tests, poll taxes, registration for voting, and lots of other things that caused the voting rights of black men and poor white men to drop. These evaluations in the end started to be mentioned as the Jim Crow laws. Just think about a state that the impact of these evaluations was harsh, such as Mississippi where black people constituted 50 percent of the population in the 1870s. From the 1870s to the early 20th century, total participation to vote decreased in this place from 70 percent to only 15 percent! By 1877, things got worse with the reinstatement of all the southern states in the Union with their complete political power reconditioned. Southern white supremacy was the victor of the war in clearing the developments of black suffrage. Thus, easily, with little or no dissent from black voters, the southern Democrats practically entered into an assertive position to form state laws that would strengthen their power forwards.