Federal Elections Bill (Force Bill)

THE WITHDRAWAL OF federal troops from the south after the Compromise of 1877 encouraged the southern states to begin a systematic campaign to reverse African-American male voting rights as delivered by the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Slowly and steadily, through a series of obstructions such as literacy tests, poll taxes, good character references, criminal convictions, grandfather clauses, and stiff residency requirements, African Americans were systematically purged from the voting registers in the south. The Federal Elections Bill or Force Bill of 1890 was an attempt to reverse this drive towards disenfranchisement.

The national Democratic Party opposed the bill, however, Massachusetts Republicans, led by Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924) in the House, and George Frisbie Hoar (1826–1904) in the Senate, put forth this legislation as a way to guarantee federal supervision of national elections. Federal circuit courts would oversee election procedures and voting returns, therefore removing the power of state governors and local election boards to interfere. Although applied to the entire country, the primary cause for concern was in the south. The bill passed the Republican-dominated House, but resistance stiffened in the Senate when western Republicans put their primary emphasis on passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the Democrats simply opposed the legislation in its entirety. What followed was a period of lengthy Senate filibusters to kill the bill, even in the face of Republican majorities.

The Federal Elections Bill, although supported by President Harrison as well as by Republican majorities, became the first major piece of legislation to be defeated by filibuster, thus establishing a southern obstructive tradition. After the Republicans lost control of the House in the November 1890 elections, the bill had no hope of passage. The issue of African-American voting rights would not be addressed again until the 1950s and, in particular, not until the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Federal Elections Bill became a potent campaign issue for the Democrats, whose opposition was reflected in their national platform in 1892. They argued that such legislation was an infringement of states' rights. Republican focus also changed in order to gain support for passage of the McKinley Tariff Act and Silver [Page 238]Purchase Act. This legislative approach suggested that the Republican Party had sacrificed African-American justice for economic interests. For the African-American population, the bill's defeat meant their elimination from the political process in the south. What followed was the construction of the infamous Jim Crow system, which denied or restricted African-American participation in almost every area, in effect creating a two-tier society. Change would not come on a significant basis until the Civil Rights Acts beginning in the 1950s, and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964, which finally ended the poll tax.