bolstered southern power by scrapping the rule that had once counted an African American as only three-fifths of a person for electoral purposes. Despite suppressing the vote of blacks, white southerners could now count them fully for election purposes, giving the "solid South" forty extra votes in the Electoral College and disproportionate influence in American politics. "They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of reconstruction."46
( Ron Chernow )
[ Grant ]
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