stylistic:style_transfer, stylistic:tone, information:extraction
Background

Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment punished, by reduced representation in the House of Representatives, any state that disenfranchised any male citizens over 21 years of age. By failing to adopt a harsher penalty, this signaled to the states that they still possessed the right to deny ballot access based on race. Northern states were generally as averse to granting voting rights to blacks as Southern states. In the year of its ratification, only eight Northern states allowed blacks to vote. In the South, blacks were able to vote in many areas, but only through the intervention of the occupying Union Army. Before Congress had granted suffrage to blacks in the territories by passing the Territorial Suffrage Act on January 10, 1867 (Source: Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 381-82), blacks were granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia on January 8, 1867.