The amendment that some Americans criticized as not going far enough to make suffrage universal was A. the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted the vote to African-American men. Around the period of the Civil War, campaigns for women's suffrage had begun to take hold. Many argued that the 15th Amendment should have expanded its scope and included women; however, the men responsible for the 15th Amendment feared that adding women to the mix could doom the amendment to failure. They argued that women were excluded in order to guarantee that at least African-American men be given the right to vote.