The Right to Vote

by Alexander Keyssar

  20 Dinkin, Voting, 40-48; Nash, Urban Crucible, 63, 363, 451; Jensen, Articles, 17.

  21 Dinkin, Voting, 40-49; Nash, Urban Crucible, 63, 266, 351. As Dinkin, among others, has pointed out, the available evidence varies in quality from place to place.

  22 Epigraph from Maryland Gazette, 15 August 1776, cited in Kruman, Between Authority and Liberty, 95.

  23 On interpretations of the revolution, see Carl L. Becker, “The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776,” Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, no. 286, History Series, vol. 2, no. 1 (Madison, WI, 1907), 5; Becker, United States, 34-35; Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 232; Brown, Middle-Class Democracy, v-vi; Pole, Paths, 228-229.

  24 Greene, Imperatives, 260-261; Mark D. Hall, The Political and Legal Philosophy of James Wilson, 1742-1798 (Columbia, MO, 1997), 108-109; The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., vol. 6 (1989), 144; for the best overview of these arguments, see Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980), 207-227. By the seventeenth century, suffrage was being used to refer to collective opinions or the expression of collective opinions, but it was only in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the term began to be commonly used to refer to the right to vote.

  25 Pole, Paths, 245.

  26 Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 437; J. Allen Smith, The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government (New York, 1930), 29.

  27 Michael Levin, The Spectre of Democracy: The Rise of Modern Democracy as Seen by Its Critics (New York, 1992), 45; Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969), 178-179.

  28 Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, facsimile of the first edition of 1765-1769, vol. 1 (Chicago and London, 1765), 165; Williamson, American Suffrage, 10-12, 62; John Phillip Reid, The Concept of Representation in the Age of the American Revolution (Chicago, 1989), 39-40.

  29 Chilton Williamson, “American Suffrage and Sir William Blackstone,” Political Science Quarterly 68 (1953): 552-554; Foner, Tom Paine, 122-123; John Adams, Thoughts on Government (Philadelphia, 1776), 209-211.

  30 Adams, First American Constitutions, 209-210; Greene, Imperatives, 254, 257, 259, 260-261; Williamson, American Suffrage, 10-11; Pole, Pursuit of Equality, 42-43; Elisha P. Douglass, Rebels and Democrats: The Struggle for Equal Political Rights and Majority Rule During the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1955), 28; Levin, Spectre of Democracy, 85-86; Wood, Radicalism, 56, 178-179; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 554.

  31 Greene, Imperatives, 260-261; Wood, Radicalism, 178-179; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 556.

  32 On Paine’s views, see Foner, Tom Paine, 142-144.

  33 Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, vol. 10 (Boston, 1856), 268; see also J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, Suffrage, and the Establishment of the One-Party South (New Haven, CT, 1974), 1261; Pole, Pursuit of Equality, 45-46.

  34 Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2 (New Haven, CT, 1966), 203-204; Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980), 128-132; Pole, Paths of Equality, 245-246; Levin, Spectre of Democracy, 87; Adams, Works, vol. 10, 267-268.

  35 W. J. Shepard, “Suffrage,” in Edwin R. A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1934), 448; Harold F. Gosnell, Democracy: The Threshold of Freedom (New York, 1948), 16; Adams, First American Constitutions, 215.

  36 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 487, 562; for additional examples of the use of the language of rights, see ibid., 34-36, 266-267, 550, 562, 580-581.

  37 Ibid., 248-249, 277, 302; Adams, First American Constitutions, 184-185.

  38 Adams, Works, vol. 9, 375-378; for a later iteration in 1817, see vol. 10, 267-268.

  39 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 36.

  40 Marc Kruman also has used the phrase Pandora’s box in reference to the Adams quotation. Kruman, Between Authority and Liberty, 89.

  41 Ibid., 92-95.

  42 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 231; see also Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 293-294.

  43 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 385.

  44 Ibid., 483; Adams, First American Constitutions, 127.

  45 Wood, Radicalism, 96-97, 258-259; Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 341; for a full discussion of theories of representation, see Reid, Concept of Representation, 43-62.

  46 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 584.

  47 Ibid., 254.

  48 Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 256; quote from Elector cited in Steven Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and “Lower Sort” During the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1987), 89-90. See also Williamson, American Suffrage, 79-82; Kruman, Between Authority and Liberty, 98-99.

  49 Farrand, Records, vol. 2, 204-208; Benton, 1787, vol. 1, 235; Lawrence D. Cress, Citizens in Arms: The Army and the Militia in American Society to the War of 1812 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982), 59.

  50 In several of the colonies, there were movements to liberalize the franchise even prior to independence.

  51 Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 251-256; Rosswurm, Arms, Country, Class, 55-69.

  52 Pole, Political Representation, 260, 268, 271-275; Nash, Urban Crucible, 378-380; Foner, Tom Paine, 63-64, 126-132; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 251-252, 255-256, 268-269; Rosswurm, Arms, Country, Class, 12, 55-69, 71, 77, 86-93, 97, 99-105, 252-253; Williamson, American Suffrage, 92-96; Wood, Creation, 169; Robert L. Brunhouse, The Counter-Revolution in Pennsylvania, 1776-1790 (New York, 1971), 227.

  53 Kruman, Between Authority and Liberty, 91, 99-100; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 51-52, 54; Pole, “Suffrage and Representation in Maryland,” 62-63; Charles G. Steffen, The Mechanics of Baltimore: Workers and Politics in the Age of Revolution, 1763-1812 (Urbana, IL, 1984), 61-64, 92-93; Adams, First American Constitutions, 206; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 108-110.

  54 Adams, First American Constitutions, 205; J. R. Pole, “The Suffrage in New Jersey, 1790-1807,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 71 (January 1953): 39-41, 57-59, 69, 113-114, 186-187, 192-193.

  55 Fletcher M. Green, Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 1776-1860: A Study in the Evolution of Democracy (Chapel Hill, NC, 1930), 87; Williamson, American Suffrage, 104-105.

  56 Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 105-106; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 331; Jere R. Daniell, Experiment in Republicanism: New Hampshire Politics and the American Revolution, 1741-1794 (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 108, 167-179.

  57 Williamson, American Suffrage, 107-108; Adams, First American Constitutions, 205; Linda G. DePauw , The Eleventh Pillar: New York State and the Federal Constitution (Ithaca, NY, 1966), 141-147; Becker, “Parties in New York,” 141, 166, 252; Nash, Urban Crucible, 362-363; L. Ray Gunn, The Decline of Authority: Public Economic Policy and Political Development in New York, 1800-1860 (Ithaca, NY, 1988), 66-67; Peter J. Galie, Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York (New York, 1996), 40, 45.

  58 Williamson, American Suffrage, 110; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 116-130; Green, Constitutional Development, 86.

  59 Michael A. Bellesiles, Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier (Charlottesville, VA, 1993), 47, 136-141, 161-163, 258, 260; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 97-99.

  60 Pole, “Representation and Authority,” 16, 17, 25, 28; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 294; Chandler, “Suffrage in Virginia,” 16, 17; Adams, First American Constitutions, 203-204; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 85, 111-115.

  61 Regarding Massachusetts, see Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, esp. 19-50, 113
, 163, 182, 192-193, 202-228, 286-294, 309-327, 402, 410-411, 437-459, 476-499, 510-586 passim, 616, 644, 685-695, 702-745, 767, 771-797, 805-843ff., 860-870, 894-895, 907-908; Nash, Urban Crucible, 359, 380-381; Robert J. Taylor, Western Massachusetts in the Revolution (Providence, RI, 1954), 89; Brown, Middle-Class Democracy, 394; Pole, Political Representation, 73, 178-186, 205-214; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 177-183; Samuel E. Morison, “Struggle over the Adoption of the Constitution of Massachusetts, 1780,” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 50 (Boston, May 1917), 389, 390, 391; idem, A History of the Constitution of Massachusetts (Boston, 1917), 18-31; Adams, First American Constitutions, 90-91, 184-185, 200-203; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 100-102.

  62 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 312; Stephen E. Patterson, Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts (Madison, WI, 1973), 171-196.

  63 Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 437; Pole, Political Representation, 73, 344, 510; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 199-200.

  64 Patterson, Political Parties, 234-247, 251-254; Pole, “Suffrage Reform,” 565, 570; Brown, Middle-Class Democracy, 384-385, 390-391; Taylor, Western, 99-100; Douglass, Rebels and Democrats, 204-205.

  65 In some states, conflicts continued after the drafting of the first constitutions. See Williamson, American Suffrage, 131-136.

  66 J. Morgan Kousser, “Suffrage,” in Jack P. Greene, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Political History, vol. 3 (New York, 1984), 1238; Greene, Imperatives, 262; Pole, “Representation and Authority,” 27.

  67 Kousser, “Suffrage,” 1238.

  68 See Porter, History of Suffrage, 14-17.

  69 Chandler, “Suffrage in Virginia,” 17; Pole, “Suffrage Reform,” 293-294; Pole, Political Representation, 55; idem, “Representation and Authority,” 18, 27.

  70 Teaford, Municipal Revolution, 66-67; Williamson, American Suffrage, 103, 123-124; Perpetual Statutes of 1788 for Massachusetts, 21-22, 25-27; Pole, “Suffrage Reform,” 562-564.

  71 Teaford, Municipal Revolution, 66-67.

  72 Ibid., 71-75, 82-89.

  73 Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, in the convention held at Philadelphia, in 1787; with a diary of the debates of the Congress of the Confederacy; as reported by James Madison, a member, and deputy from Virginia, vol. 5 (Philadelphia, 1859), 335; Farrand, Records, vol. 2, 139-140, 151, 153, 163-165; Rakove, Original Meanings, 83, 224-225.

  74 Elliot, Debates, vol. 5, 386.

  75 Ibid., 387; variations in the accounts of these debates can be found in Farrand, Records, vol. 2, 201-211.

  76 Elliot, Debates, vol. 5, 385-389; Benton, 1787, vol. 1, 233-235; Carr, Oldest Delegate, 109.

  77 Pole, Political Representation, 71-76, 358-361; McCoy, Elusive Republic, 128-132; Farrand, Records, vol. 1, 132, 422, 465-466; ibid., vol. 2, 225; ibid., vol. 3, 146-147, 450-455; Benton, 1787, vol. 1, 234-237, 1535.

  78 Benton, 1787, vol. 1, 19-20; Raskin, “Legal Aliens,” 1402; Robert M. Taylor, ed., The Northwest Ordinance 1787: A Bicentennial Handbook (Indianapolis, IN, 1987), 49. The District of Columbia also was directly governed by the federal government, but between 1790 and 1802 everyone in Washington, DC, was disfranchised. Frank W. Blackmar, “History of Suffrage in Legislation in the United States,” The Chautauquan (October 1895): 32. For a different interpretation, see Rakove, Original Meanings, 225.

  79 James Madison, Federalist, no. 52; Elliot, Debates, 385; Thornton Anderson, Creating the Constitution: The Convention of 1787 and the First Congress (University Park, PA, 1993), 94-97.

  80 See Richard Greene, “Congressional Power Over the Elective Franchise: The Unconstitutional Phases of Oregon v. Mitchell,” Boston University Law Review 52 (1972): 516-528; Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT, 1997), 115.

  81 The method of distinguishing between votes for president and votes for vice-president was, of course, altered in the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution (1804).

  82 For a discussion of the potential problems that could be caused by this constitutional architecture, see Alexander Keyssar, “Shoring Up the Right to Vote for President: A Modest Proposal,” Political Science Quarterly 118 (Summer 2003): 181-190.

  83 For estimates regarding the number of persons eligible to vote, see Adams, First American Constitutions , 198-207; Greene, Imperatives, 259-260; Becker, “Parties in New York,” 10-11; Williamson, “American Suffrage,” 111-112; DePauw, Eleventh Pillar, 141-159. Regarding socioeconomic changes and growing inequality, see Handlin and Handlin, Popular Sources, 35; Nash, Urban Crucible, 324-327, 379-383; Billy G. Smith, ed., Life in Early Philadelphia: Documents from the Revolutionary and Early National Periods (University Park, PA, 1995), 9-11; Jeffrey G. Williamson and Peter H. Lindert, American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History (New York, 1980), 44-46, 295-303; Jackson T. Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (Princeton, NJ, 1965), 33-47, 277, 287.

  84 See Williamson, American Suffrage, 115-116; William B. Munro, “Intelligence Tests for Voters,” Forum 80 (December 1928): 824-825; Kruman, Between Authority and Liberty, 107-108; Boeckel, Voting, 521; Wood, Radicalism, 6-7, 232, 234; Rosswurm, Arms, Country, Class, 253; John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990), 240-262.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1 Sanford quote from A Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention of the State of New York; Held at the Capitol in the City of Albany, on the 28th Day of August, 1821 (New York, 1821), 97; Harlow W. Sheidley, Sectional Nationalism: Massachusetts Conservative Leaders and the Transformation of America, 1815-1836 (Boston, 1998), 35-36; Robert P. Sutton, Revolution to Secession: Constitution Making in the Old Dominion (Charlottesville, VA, 1989), 73-74.

  2 Townshend quote from A Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Ohio, 1850-51, vol. 2 (Columbus, OH, 1851), 550. The tendency of the courts in general was to protect suffrage, as a constitutional right, from interference by the legislature. In principle, legislatures were permitted to implement and regulate the suffrage but not to change its breadth. See, e.g., Charles Theodore Russell, The Disfranchisement of Paupers: Examination of the Law of Massachusetts (Boston, 1878).

  3 Eldon C. Evans, A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States (Chicago, 1917), 1-10; L. E. Fredman, The Australian Ballot: The Story of an American Reform (Lansing, MI, 1968), 21-23.

  4 See, e.g., Massachusetts, General Laws (1791), chap. 26; (1793), chap. 40; (1809), chap. 25; (1855), chap. 416; John Duer et al., The Revised Statutes of the State of New York, As Altered by Subsequent Enactments, vol. 1 (Albany, NY, 1846), pt. 1, chap. 6, Titles I and IV, 129-137; Statutes of the State of New York, of a Public and General Character, Passed From 1829 to 1851, vol. 1, Samuel Blatchford, comp. (Auburn, NY, 1852), Elections, General Elections, Title 1, 435-443; Supplement to the Fifth Edition of the Revised Statues of the State of New York, arr. Isaac Edwards (Albany, NY, 1863), 42; Spragins v. Houghton, 3 Ill. (2 Scam.) 377 (1840). The emergence of such laws also is reflected in reports on disputed elections; see, e.g., Luther S. Cushing, Reports of Controverted Elections to the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, From 1780 to 1852 (Boston, 1853). For a discussion of the legal history of residence definitions, see Kenneth J. Winkle, The Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio (Cambridge, UK, 1988), 48-87.

  5 Fletcher M. Green, Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 1776-1860: A Study in the Evolution of Democracy (Chapel Hill, NC, 1930), 270.

  6 Louisiana and Tennessee did make property ownership a means—though not the exclusive means—of qualifying for the franchise. Florida, in its 1838 constitution, notably declared that “no property qualification for eligibility to office, or for the right of suffrage, shall ever be required in this state.” Comparative View of the State Constitutions, Manual for the
New York State Constitutional Convention, 1846 (Albany, NY, 1849), 172.

  7 Robert M. Taylor, The Northwest Ordinance 1787: A Bicentennial Handbook (Indianapolis, IN, 1987), 47-49, 118; Franklin B. Hough, ed., American Constitutions: Comprising the Constitution of Each State in the Union, and of the United States, vol. 1 (Albany, NY, 1872), 333; Charles Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana: A Source Book of Constitutional Documents with Historical Introduction and Critical Notes, vol. 1 (Indianapolis, IN, 1916), xcii-xciii, 3, 48.

  8 Kirk H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, 1918), 132-133; Arthur C. Cole, ed., The Constitutional Debates of 1847 (Springfield, IL, 1919), 536-537; Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana, vol. 1, 56, 58; R. H. Thompson, “Suffrage in Mississippi,” in Franklin L. Riley, ed., Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. 1 (Oxford, MI, 1898), 30; Dudley O. McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley: The Need for a National Uniform Suffrage (Chicago, 1949), 137; Malcolm C. McMillan, Constitutional Development in Alabama, 1798-1801: A Study in Politics, the Negro and Sectionalism (Chapel Hill, NC, 1955), 11-14.

  9 Notably, however, Illinois insisted that electors be white, which was not the case in Ohio or Indiana. Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America from the Organization of Government in 1780 to March 3, 1845 (Boston, 1848), vol. 2, 173-175, vol. 3, 289-291, 428-431, vol. 5, 49-50; “An Act in Relation to the Formation of a State Government in Wisconsin,” in W. T. Madison, ed., Laws of the Territory of Wisconsin (Simeon Mills, WI, 1846), 5-12; George Minot, ed., The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December 1, 1845 to March 3, 1851 (Boston, 1857), 56-58; “An Act to Enable the People of Michigan to form a Constitution and State Government,” in Acts Passed at the Extra and Second Session of the Sixth Legislative Council of the Territory of Michigan (Detroit, MI, 1835), 72-77.