The Right to Vote Read online

  Perhaps the most eloquent expression of protest emanating from the voteless themselves was the “Memorial of the Non-Freeholders of the City of Richmond,” presented on October 13, 1829, to the Virginia Constitutional Convention. Chief Justice John Marshall, who was far from sympathetic with the nonfreeholders, delivered the memorial to the convention, without comment. More angry than pleading in tone, the memorial charged that Virginia’s freehold requirement was an unjust usurpation of power that violated the commonwealth’s celebrated Declaration of Rights:[It] creates an odious distinction between members of the same community; robs of all share, in the enactment of the laws, a large portion of the citizens, bound by them, and whose blood and treasure are pledged to maintain them, and vests in a favoured class, not in consideration of their public services, but of their private possessions, the highest of all privileges.

  The nonfreeholders, “comprising a very large part, probably a majority of male citizens of mature age,” ridiculed the notion that the possession of land established that a man was “wiser or better.” “Virtue” and “intelligence” were “not among the products of the soil.” The memorial also pointed out that landless men were not considered too “ignorant” or “depraved” to serve in the militia:In the hour of danger, they have drawn no invidious distinctions between the sons of Virginia. The muster rolls have undergone no scrutiny, no comparison with the land books, with a view to expunge those who have been struck from the ranks of freemen. If the landless citizens have been ignominiously driven from the polls, in time of peace, they have at least been generously summoned, in war, to the battle-field.

  The nonfreeholders conceded that the right of suffrage was a “social right” rather than a “natural right,” and that “it must of necessity be regulated by society. For obvious reasons, by almost universal consent, women and children, aliens and slaves, are excluded.” Yet those exclusions were “no argument for excluding others” along indefensible economic lines. “We have been taught by our fathers, that all power is vested in, and derived from, the people, not the freeholders,” the memorial claimed, echoing the Declaration of Rights. “They alone deserve to be called free, or have a guarantee for their rights, who participate in the formation of their political institutions.”43

  Powerful as their words may have been, the nonfreeholders of Richmond had little success: the Virginia convention of 1829-1830, despite the presence of an extraordinary group of political notables, produced a muddled and confusing suffrage law that effectively retained a freehold requirement. “No one can understand it,” concluded one contemporary.44 (For the incomprehensible text, see Table A.2.) This disappointing yet illustrative outcome reflected a stalemate in the deeply contentious political life of the commonwealth. For nearly three decades, residents of the rapidly growing western counties had been clamoring for a new constitution: foremost among the changes they (and their scattered eastern allies) sought were the abolition of the freehold requirement for voting and a redistribution of seats in the lower house of the legislature, based on each county’s white population alone. Virginia’s most revered founding father, Thomas Jefferson, had joined this cry for reform. In 1816, he wrote a letter to one of the leaders of the reform movement endorsing suffrage for all free white males. In 1824, shortly before his death, he criticized the state’s government as violating “the principle of equal political rights.”45

  Yet the eastern slaveowners who dominated the commonwealth’s government had fiercely resisted such changes; the “odious landed aristocracy” (as they were called by reformers) was deeply reluctant to even hold a constitutional convention, fearing both the immediate loss of political power and setting in motion a democratizing dynamic that might eventually undermine slavery itself. When a convention finally was forced on them by a popular referendum, Virginia’s conservatives fought tooth and nail against every major proposal for change. Thanks to a delegate selection system that favored the eastern counties, they prevailed.46

  Virginia’s convention of 1829-1830 was a vivid demonstration of the ways in which the issue of suffrage was interlaced with other questions of political power and representation. The convention also demonstrated the difficulties faced by men who lacked the franchise as they sought political power. The nonfreeholders of Richmond, as well as their numerous nonvoting allies in the west, could not generate constitutional reform simply by signing petitions and holding meetings. As was true throughout the nation, the disfranchised were unable to precipitate change by themselves. When the right to vote was enlarged, it happened because some men who were already enfranchised actively supported the cause of suffrage expansion.

  Why did voting members of the community sometimes elect to share their political power with others? In numerous cases, it was because they saw themselves as having a direct interest in enlarging the electorate. One such interest was military preparedness and the defense of the republic. In the wake of the Revolutionary War and again after the War of 1812, many middle-class citizens concluded that extending the franchise to the “lower orders” would enhance their own security and help to preserve their way of life, by assuring that such men would continue to serve in the army and the militias. The nation’s experience during the War of 1812 underscored this concern: the federal government had great difficulty recruiting and retaining soldiers and eventually had to call on militia forces to bolster the army.47

  In nearly every subsequent debate over the suffrage, from New York to Illinois to Massachusetts to Alabama, the issue of soldiers was invoked—not simply as a question of fairness (how unjust to withhold the ballot from “the poor and hardy soldier who spills his blood in defence of his country”) but also as a matter of security.48 In Connecticut, worried leaders expressed the view that the state’s militias had not performed well during the war because the men who served were unenthusiastic about protecting a government they played no role in choosing; in 1820, Massachusetts convention delegate Reverend Joseph Richardson feared that the “ardor” of the disfranchised “would be chilled . . . when called upon to defend their country.” Between 1817 and 1820, three states—Connecticut, New York, and Mississippi—exempted militia members from property or taxpaying requirements. Thirty years later, North Carolina gubernatorial candidate David S. Reid declared that he “would like to see the brave men who periled their lives in the War against Mexico, received at the ballot-box upon terms of equality.”49

  In the South, the issue had an added twist: enfranchising all white Southerners was a means of making sure that poor whites would serve in militia patrols guarding against slave rebellions. However much diehard reactionaries such as John Randolph of Virginia might have feared that broader suffrage would unravel the fabric of slave society, there were other political leaders who believed that it would contribute to white solidarity. A delegate to Virginia’s convention pointedly noted that “all slave-holding states are fast approaching a crisis truly alarming, a time when freemen will be needed—when every man must be at his post.” Was it not then “wise . . . to call together at least every free white human being and unite them in the same common interest and Government?”50

  Economic self-interest also played a role in the expansion of the franchise, particularly in the Midwest. As territories began to organize themselves into states, inhabitants of sparsely populated regions embraced white manhood suffrage, in part because they believed that a broad franchise would encourage settlement and in so doing raise land values, stimulate economic development, and generate tax revenues. After 1840, similar concerns helped to propel the alien suffrage laws, as new states of the old Northwest competed with one another for settlers. Granting full political rights to immigrants appeared to be economically advantageous as well as democratic; that this was so was testimony to the desirability—or at least perceived desirability—of the franchise.

  Nowhere was this case made more strenuously (though unsuccessfully) than in Illinois, where the 1847 constitutional convention unfolded against the backdrop of
a mountain of public debt. “Is it our policy, as a state burdened with debt and sparsely settled, to restrict the right of suffrage, and thus prevent immigration to our soil?” queried one convention delegate. “Should we not . . . hold out to the world the greatest inducement for men to come amongst us, to till our prairies, to work in our mines, and to develop the vast and inexhaustible resources of our state?” demanded a delegate from Joe Davies County. “We cannot obtain this class of population without holding out to them inducements equal to those of other states; and as we are burthened with a debt, we should have those inducements greater than elsewhere.”51

  Perhaps the most common way in which the fortunes of the already enfranchised were concretely linked to the cause of suffrage reform was through political parties and electoral competition. Early in the nineteenth century, the Federalist and Republican parties competed actively for votes in many states; in others (such as New York in the 1820s), contests between organized political factions were commonplace. By the 1830s, competition between Whigs and Democrats dominated political life, reflecting the creation of a strong and vibrant national party system: not only were elections systematically contested, but both party loyalty and party identification became prominent elements of public life. In this competitive political culture, the issue of suffrage reform inescapably attached itself to partisan rivalries.

  To some degree, particularly during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the involvement of political parties in debates over suffrage was a straightforward reflection of ideological differences, an outgrowth of beliefs and values. The Federalists, rooted among the northeastern elites and confident in their own leadership, tended to oppose any broadening of the franchise; the more egalitarian Jeffersonian Republicans viewed expansion more favorably. Decades later, the ideological gap between the Whig and Democratic parties was even more pronounced. The Democrats, heirs to the Jeffersonians, embraced an individualist, competitive vision of society, in which the pursuit of self-interest was altogether legitimate and in which all (white) citizens were entitled to political rights—in part to defend themselves against the encroachments of government. The Whigs, on the other hand, clung to a more organic and hierarchical social vision, believing both in a more active state and that it was best for public affairs to be conducted by society’s “natural” leaders. They consequently were inclined to resist efforts to enlarge the polity.52

  Yet the significance of political parties in the evolution of suffrage went beyond matters of ideology: the elementary dynamics of electoral competition created a stimulus for reform. Put simply, in a competitive electoral environment, parties were always alert to the potential advantage (or disadvantage) of enfranchising new voters and potential supporters. The outcomes of electoral campaigns could easily depend on the size and shape of the electorate; it was natural therefore for parties, at least in some circumstances, to try to broaden the franchise because they wanted to win elections, whatever their views about democratization.

  These dynamics probably did not play a significant role in the evolution of suffrage between 1790 and the mid-1820s. Although parties and factions did exist, the political arena was not acutely competitive, particularly once the Federalists started disintegrating in the face of the War of 1812. More important, popular participation in electoral politics was limited: turnout levels were low, and many offices were filled either by appointment or by legislative, rather than popular, vote. In some states, there was not even any popular balloting for the presidency. The institutions of politics changed dramatically by the late 1820s and the 1830s, however, with the spread of popular elections, the formation of the Democratic Party as the nation’s (and the Western world’s) first mass-based political organization, and the subsequent emergence of the second party system. Electoral politics became a form of public theater, parties themselves began to print written ballots (deemed acceptable by the courts), the mobilization of voters became a critical activity for both the Democrats and the Whigs, and electoral turnout rose dramatically, from 27 percent in 1824 to 56 percent in 1828 to 78 percent in 1840. It was in this more modern political universe that the partisan pursuit of new voters became clearly visible. The Democratic embrace of alien suffrage, for example, was unmistakably motivated in part by the party’s desire to enroll and win the support of immigrant voters.53

  The nature of partisan competition, moreover, was such that if any party or faction—out of conviction or political self-interest—actively promoted a broader franchise, its adversaries experienced pressure to capitulate.54 This dynamic was manifested most distinctly in circumstances where different suffrage restrictions applied to different offices. In both New York and North Carolina, for example, voters had to meet a stiff property requirement to participate in senatorial elections, while many more people were eligible to vote for state representatives. As a result, once any political organization began to support abolition of the senatorial property qualification, it became politically risky for others to endorse the status quo—because their parties (or factions, in the case of New York) could be punished at the polls by men who were already voting in some elections.55 A similar scenario could unfold if there were a sizable gap between municipal and state voting regulations, as occurred in St. Louis in the 1850s.56

  Such was the scenario played out dramatically in North Carolina in the late 1840s and early 1850s. State politics had been dominated by the Whigs until David S. Reid, a long-shot Democratic candidate for governor, embraced the cause of suffrage reform, somewhat to the surprise of his fellow Democrats. In the election of 1848, Reid did much better than expected (there was no property requirement in gubernatorial elections) and aided by a wave of support from the landless was elected governor in 1850, promising a constitutional amendment to eliminate the property qualification for senatorial voting. Once elected (and reelected), Reid pursued that goal, declaring that the “elective franchise is the dearest right of an American citizen” and complaining that 50,000 free white men were disfranchised by the state’s constitution. Sobered by political reality, the Whigs abandoned their opposition to suffrage reform: by the early 1850s, they saw the wisdom of tacitly approving a measure that they had denounced in 1848 as “a system of communism unjust and Jacobinical.”57

  A more common scenario unfolded when two parties were fairly evenly matched, and a broadening of the franchise appeared likely to be of particular benefit to one. In Connecticut, for example, the Republicans stood to gain far more than the Federalists from the abolition of property requirements; in Pennsylvania in 1837, the Democrats expected to benefit from a halving of the residency requirement; and throughout the Midwest, the Democratic Party seemed likely to attract far more alien voters than the Whigs.58 In each of these instances, and many others, support for democratization stemmed in part from partisan self-interest.59 Once suffrage reform appeared possible, however, what might be called an endgame dynamic often came into play: the parties that formerly resisted reform would drop their opposition, regardless of their convictions, because they did not want to risk antagonizing a new bloc of voters. In the 1840s and 1850s, for example, in both Ohio and New Jersey, the Whigs ended up capitulating to Democratic demands because they feared the political damage that might result from appearing hostile to men who might well gain the franchise anyway.60

  These partisan dynamics also point to the ways in which suffrage sometimes was expanded as a political compromise or tactical concession. The Massachusetts convention of 1820-1821, for example, was dominated by a well-organized faction of conservatives who generally opposed democratization of the state government: as was true in New York (and later in Virginia), the constitutional convention had been forced on them. The Bay State’s conservatives, however, were willing to tolerate expansion of the franchise as long as seats in the powerful state senate continued to be allocated on the basis of property rather than population.61 Similarly, in North Carolina, the final acquiescence of the most conservative Whigs to “free suffrage” fo
r senatorial elections was prompted by their desire to maintain a favorable legislative apportionment system and to fend off a constitutional convention that might adopt further reforms.62 Partisan compromises and tactical maneuvering also marked the New York convention of 1821 and Virginia’s final “reform” convention of 1850.63 Conceding suffrage reform could be a means of taking the steam out of democratic movements while retaining or reconstructing institutional structures that would keep dominant factions and elites in power.

  Ideas and Arguments

  Alongside the shifts in the social structure and in political institutions—and surely linked to them—was another factor that played a critical role in the expansion of suffrage: a change in prevailing political ideas and values. Stated simply, more and more Americans came to believe that the people (or at least the male people—“every full-grown featherless biped who wears a hat instead of a bonnet”) were and ought to be sovereign and that the sovereign “people” included many individuals who did not own property. Restrictions on the franchise that appeared normal or conventional in 1780 came to look archaic in subsequent decades. Franklin’s oft-cited view that the right to vote should belong to the man and not the ass began to look commonsensical rather than radical. The shift in political temper was evident in the decisions of states admitted to the union after 1800 not to impose any pecuniary qualifications on suffrage. It also surfaced throughout the nation in newspapers, in the occasional treatise, in public debate: at William and Mary College, in both 1808 and 1812, the graduating students who gave commencement addresses seized the occasion to proclaim their support for universal suffrage. “The mass of the people,” declared one newspaper in 1840, “are honest and capable of self-government.” Not everyone embraced such ideas, but the tide of political thought was flowing in the direction of democracy.64