A Liberal
Dose
November 11,
2021
Troy D.
Smith
“The
History of Voting in America, Part 2”
(Read Part 1 HERE)
Last week we discussed how, in the early days of the
country, there were many restrictions on voting. Not only could women, slaves,
and Native Americans not vote, but even among white men only those with
substantial property could cast a ballot. Surprisingly, free black men who met
the minimum property requirement could vote in 10 of the 13 original states
(excluding Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina).
In the 1790s, after the Constitution and the government it
mandated went into effect, property requirements became unpopular. There was
more emphasis on individual liberty, and a man’s ownership of his own person
and his own labor became, in the eyes of many, as important as the ownership of
real estate. The first new state admitted to the Union, Vermont (in 1791),
guaranteed the vote to all men regardless of color or wealth. When Kentucky was
admitted the following year, they made the same guarantees. Also in 1792,
original states Delaware and New Hampshire removed property requirements; no
new state admitted to the Union after 1800 had them. By 1825 only three states
still had property requirements for white males: Virginia, North Carolina, and
Rhode Island. Virginia’s requirement was $25, or $788 in today’s money; Rhode
Island’s was $132, or $4,200 today. A few states in the north allowed Native
Americans to vote IF they owned property, and several states that did not have
property requirements for white men in general still applied them to white men
who were foreign-born or did not speak English, making immigrants second-class
citizens.
This trend toward eliminating property requirements for
white men in the 1820s helps explain the rise of Andrew Jackson, who won the
popular vote in 1824 and the electoral college in 1828. Andrew Jackson was the
seventh president, but he was the first who had come from a working-class
background. Yes, he had become wealthy by the 1820s, but he had literally been
born in a log cabin whereas all six of his predecessors had come from
privileged, wealthy families. Jackson appealed to the “common man,” famously
opening up the White House to the general public during his inauguration (to
the dismay of many Washington elites). Every presidential candidate after
Jackson would have to find ways to appeal to the average white male voter,
rather than just to the wealthy and middle-class, and this would fundamentally
change politics.
While the status of unpropertied white men was rising,
however, that of propertied free black men was falling. Within a couple of
years of Kentucky coming into the Union as a state that allowed free black men
the franchise, the state rescinded it. Other Southern states began following
suit -but so did Northern states, as well. Those who did not ban the black vote
outright kept property requirements attached to it, even though they had been
removed from white voters. For example, New York removed property requirements
for white men in 1821, but raised it for free blacks -to $250, or almost $8,000
dollars today. This was about double the average farmer’s annual income. Only
16 black men in New York were wealthy enough to vote that year. By 1825, only
68 of the 13,000 free black men in the state could meet the requirement.
By 1860, free black men had the equal right to vote in only
five states, all of them in New England. Why were their rights diminishing over
time?
The answer is simple: cotton. Eli Whitney’s new invention
the cotton gin -invented in 1793, the year after Kentucky became a state
-immediately started making cotton a profitable crop to grow. By the 1820s it
dominated the U.S. economy, eventually making up half of all exports. Cotton’s
profitability meant new life, and new protections, for slavery. Restricting the
rights of free blacks served to reinforce the color barrier that made slavery
easier to maintain.
Race had become more important than class.
--Troy D. Smith,
a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech.
His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
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