In 1870, African American men in Circleville attempted to vote in municipal elections, but despite the recent ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, pollsters refused their votes on the basis that state law forbade them from receiving the ballots. At Second Baptist Church, 147 African American men met to seek redress, and together with Republican leaders they produced petitions sent to the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Those petitions gave the Republican Party grounds to introduce bills to enforce the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and passage of the Enforcement Act of 1870 imposed criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote while also helping shift power and authority from individual state legislatures to the centralized Federal government.