But it didn’t have to be. There was an alternative vision that would have created a far more expansive right to suffrage — an alternative that almost became law. Yes, there would still have been a backlash. And yes, none of the debated visions gave suffrage to women. But they still created a broader right to vote, which, because of its scope, would have been a more secure right to vote. The 15th Amendment, in short, could have been much more than it was.

The version we have says 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” and that “the Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

This was close to the original language, introduced by Representative George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, a Radical Republican and staunch proponent of civil rights for black Americans. But other Radicals thought the federal government could go further than enfranchising black men. Just a few weeks after Boutwell introduced his resolution, Representative Samuel Shellabarger offered an alternative, which went beyond race-based discrimination to essentially guarantee the franchise to all men:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall deny or abridge to any male citizen of the United States of the age of twenty-one years or over, and who is of sound mind, an equal vote at all elections in the State in which he shall have such actual residence as shall be prescribed by law, except to such as have engaged or may hereafter engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, and to such as shall be duly convicted of treason, felony, or other infamous crime.

This is still a negative conception of rights — restrictions on what the state can do versus entitlements for the people themselves. And yet, as the historian Alexander Keyssar notes in “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States,” Shellabarger’s amendment would essentially have ended “property, tax, nativity and literacy requirements” in addition to racial discrimination. This was the whole point. As Shellabarger noted, the Boutwell proposal still “leaves to the States the power to make discriminations as to who shall vote,” which could be turned against the formerly enslaved. “The body of this race, made ignorant and destitute by our wrong, may substantially all be now excluded from the elective franchise under a qualification of intelligence or property,” he continued. “Let it remain possible, under our amendment, to still disfranchise the body of the colored race in the late rebel States and I tell you it will be done.”

Shellabarger’s plea fell on deaf ears. Most Republicans favored black male suffrage, but still wanted restrictions on other groups, including European immigrants and Chinese laborers. A sweeping amendment for the “elective franchise” would have opened the door to a truly universal suffrage. It was too much. The House killed his amendment in favor of Boutwell’s.

Debate continued in the Senate, where Republicans split along the same lines. Senator William Stewart, a conservative Republican from Nevada, introduced a narrow amendment similar to Boutwell’s and urged immediate adoption. “This question can never rest until it is firmly disposed of,” he said. “It must be done. It is the only measure that will really abolish slavery. It is the only guarantee against peon laws and against oppression.”