The franchise was withheld from "welfare or charity cases, those under guardianship, those convicted of major crimes and those who had voluntarily sheltered Confederate troops or spies during the Civil War", but there were no race-based restrictions, and thus it was the first law passed in the United States guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote in public elections.

His opposition to this measure lays waste to the notion that concerns for the strict construction of the Constitution or his ideas about the metes and bounds of federalism were Johnson's chief motivator.

[6] This law was part of the first major push of Congressional Reconstruction, in which the Radical Republicans took the initiative in reshaping the country in the wake of the American Civil War.

According to historian Eric Foner, "...A month later, the city held an election and, for the first time in living memory, Democrats chose not to parade with banners 'in regard to niggers, miscegenation and similar matters.'

Three points appeared 'fully settled' among Republican leaders, John Pool reported from Washington: existing Southern governments should be superseded, 'rebels' should hold no place in the new regimes, and 'the negroes should vote.