In Congress We Trust?: Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era

This book reveals how Congress quietly shaped American elections across more than a century of constitutional development. Far from a passive observer, Congress used its authority to influence key controversies – from the expansion of slavery in new territories to the reconstruction of the post-Civil War electorate. Congress exercised power under the Elections Clause, the Guarantee Clause, and later, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to combat voter suppression, reimagine representat...