The Right to Vote

by Alexander Keyssar

  33 I disagree with Montgomery’s conclusion (Citizen Worker, 22) that the “wage contract” took its place alongside property ownership as a “badge of participation in the polity.” Although true perhaps for skilled workers, the wage contract did not similarly empower the unskilled and semiskilled.

  34 Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829-30 (Richmond, VA, 1830), 158.

  35 Marvin E. Gettleman, The Dorr Rebellion—A Study in American Radicalism, 1833-1849 (New York, 1973), 6-7; Williamson, American Suffrage, 243-245; George M. Dennison, The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831-1861 (Lexington, KY, 1976), 14, 28.

  36 Seth Luther, An Address on the Right of Free Suffrage (Providence, RI, 1833), 14-16, 23; Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 8-9.

  37 Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 21-28; Dennison, Dorr War, 13-19.

  38 Dennison, Dorr War, 37, 43-45; Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 25-35.

  39 Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 25-35, 42-47; Montgomery, Citizen Worker, 19-21.

  40 Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 64-83.

  41 Ibid., 64-90; Dennison, Dorr War, 33, 53.

  42 Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 101-103.

  43 John Ashworth, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (London, 1983), 225-229.

  44 Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 89-144, 160-173; Dennison, Dorr War, 96.

  45 Williamson, American Suffrage, 259. See also Evelyn S. Sterne, Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence (Ithaca, NY, 2004), 13-35.

  46 “Note, Political Rights as Political Questions: The Paradox of Luther v. Borden,” Harvard Law Review 100 (1987): 1127-1145; Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 177, 199.

  PART TWO

  1 Anderson v. Baker, 23 Md. 531 (1865), cited in Frederick C. Brightly, A Collection of Leading Cases on the Law of Elections in the United States (Philadelphia, 1871), 38. Cf. Joel H. Silbey et al., eds., History of American Electoral Behavior (Princeton, NJ, 1978), 141-142.

  2 See Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York, 1976), 234-259; Lawrence M. Lipin, Producers, Proletarians, and Politicians: Workers and Party Politics in Evansville and New Albany, Indiana, 1850-87 (Urbana, IL, 1994), 45-180, 212-246; David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market During the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1993), 115-157.

  3 “Limited Sovereignty in the United States,” Atlantic Monthly 43 (February 1879): 185-192.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1 Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New York, 1992), 497-500.

  2 Ibid., 500-505.

  3 Ibid.

  4 William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party 1852-1856 (New York, 1987), 93; Stephen Erie, Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985 (Berkeley, CA, 1988), 26; George H. Haynes, “The Causes of Know-Nothing Success in Massachusetts,” American Historical Review 3 (1897-1898): 70-71.

  5 Dirk Hoerder, ed., Labor Migration in the Atlantic Economies: The European and North American Working Classes During the Period of Industrialization (Westport, CT, 1985), 3-31; for the eighteenth century, cf. Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America (New York, 1986), and idem, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1986). In the twentieth century, the settler-worker distinction also seems germane, although it changes shape: highly educated migrants, such as physicians and engineers, have many of the characteristics of “settlers,” while unskilled “workers” still abound. This distinction generally overlaps with—but is not identical to—flows of migration from different countries; in many instances, moreover, settlers intend to remain in the United States permanently, while workers do not.

  6 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Indiana, 1850 (Indianapolis, IN, 1850), 1295, 1300, 1302, 1312; Jamin B. Raskin, “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141 (1993): 1406-1409; Gerald M. Rosberg, “Aliens and Equal Protection: Why Not the Right to Vote?” Michigan Law Review 75 (1977): 1098; Gerald L. Neuman, “‘We Are the People’: Alien Suffrage in German and American Perspective,” Michigan Journal of International Law 13 (Winter 1992): 298.

  7 Michael F. Funchion, “The Political and Nationalist Dimensions,” in Lawrence J. McCaffrey et al., eds., The Irish in Chicago (Urbana, IL, 1987), 62; cf. Kirk H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, 1918), 122.

  8 Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1863 (New York, 1949), 162; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1970), 230-231; Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York, 1992), 122; John W. Le Barnes, The Amendment to the Constitution Argument of John W. Le Barnes, Esquire, upon the Unconstitutionality, Injustice and Impolicy of the Proposed “Two Years Amendment” (Boston, 1859), 10; Rudolph Vecoli, The People of New Jersey (Princeton, NJ, 1965), 138-139; Erie, Rainbow’s End, 27; William E. Gienapp, “‘Politics Seem to Enter into Everything’: Political Culture in the North, 1840-1860,” in Stephen E. Maizlish and John J. Kushma, eds., Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860 (College Station, TX, 1982), 22-28.

  9 Charles Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana: A Source Book of Constitutional Documents with Historical Introduction and Critical Notes, vol. 1 (Indianapolis, IN, 1916), civ-cv, and ibid., vol. 2 (Indianapolis, IN, 1916), 11-16, 40; Debates Indiana 1850, 1295ff.; Journal of the Convention of the State of New York, Begun and Held at the Capitol in the City of Albany, On the First Day of June, 1846 (Albany, NY, 1846), 1036; Porter, History of Suffrage, 116-118; Arthur W. Bromage, “Literacy and the Electorate: Expansion and Contraction of the Franchise,” American Political Science Review 24 (1930): 951; Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana: A Social History of White Farmers and Laborers During Slavery and After, 1840-1875 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1939), 128-129; Vecoli, New Jersey, 138-141.

  10 On the South, see W. Darrell Overdyke, The Know-Nothing Party in the South (Baton Rouge, LA, 1950); Leon C. Soulé, The Know Nothing Party in New Orleans: A Reappraisal (Baton Rouge, LA, 1961); Jean H. Baker, Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland (Baltimore, MD, 1977).

  11 Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 103; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 92-96; Stephen E. Maizlish, “The Meaning of Nativism and the Crisis of the Union: The Know-Nothing Movement in the Antebellum North,” in Maizlish and Kushma, eds., Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860 (College Station, TX, 1982), 168, 181; Richard P. McCormick, The History of Voting in New Jersey: A Study of the Development of Election Machinery, 1664-1911 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1953), 142-143. In Louisiana, notably, the Know-Nothings dropped their religious plank and religious exclusion. Soulé, Know Nothing Party, 66.

  12 Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 96; Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 106, 121-122.

  13 Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 92; Maizlish, “Nativism,” 166-167; Haynes, “Causes,” 67-82; Benjamin Tuska, Know-Nothingism in Baltimore 1854-1860 (New York, n.d.), 6, 15-16, 20; Harry J. Carman and Reinhard H. Luthin, “Some Aspects of the Know-Nothing Movement Reconsidered,” South Atlantic Quarterly 39 (April 1940): 218; Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 32-43, 128; John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth (New York, 1989), 385-386; Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties, Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, NJ, 1971), 339; Baker, Ambivalent Americans, 141-145; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, 1999), 845-846. An economic slowdown in 1854 may have intensified the antagonism of native-born workers;
overall, the proportion of farmers voting for the Know-Nothings was low in comparison to city and town dwellers.

  14 Haynes, “Causes,” 71; Vecoli, New Jersey, 138-141; Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 255-256; Stephen E. Maizlish, The Triumph of Sectionalism: The Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844-1856 (Kent, OH, 1983), 176-178; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 427-428; Joel H. Silbey, The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Before the Civil War (New York, 1985), 141-142.

  15 Haynes, “Causes,” 72-73; Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 137-138, 256-257; Silbey, Partisan Imperative , 141-156; Tuska, Know-Nothingism in Baltimore, 15-16; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 428; A. C. Bernheim, “The Ballot in New York,” Political Science Quarterly 4 (1889): 131-134; Fred Siegel, “Artisans and Immigrants in the Politics of Late Antebellum Georgia,” Civil War History 27 (1981): 221-230. For similar issues in Ohio, see Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 258-259; and Maizlish, “Nativism,” 190-198, 221-230; see also Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Oregon held at Salem, Commencing August 17, 1857, together with the Constitution adopted by the people, November 9, 1857 (Salem, OR, 1882), 321, 361-362.

  16 Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 137-141, 254; John R. Mulkern, The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts (Boston, 1990), 156-158, 211, 219; Le Barnes, Amendment, 8-14; Porter, History of Suffrage, 118; Dale Baum, “Know-Nothingism and the Republican Majority in Massachusetts: The Political Realignment of the 1850s,” Journal of American History 64 (March 1978): 974-976; Donald B. Cole, Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1963), 34-38; Bromage, “Literacy and the Electorate,” 950-951.

  17 Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 141-142, 248-253, 267; Le Barnes, Amendment, 14; Baum, “Know-Nothingism,” 975; idem, The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848-1876 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), 44-48; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 423, 427, 428, 444-446; Edward L. Pierce, Letter of Edward L. Pierce, Esq. of Chicago (Boston, 1857), 16. Some historians of Know-Nothingism, including Mulkern, Haynes, Holt, and Formisano, see the movement as a response to modernization and rapid social change as well as immigration; these interpretations tend to emphasize the quasi-populist content of the movement.

  18 Henry Ward Beecher, “Universal Suffrage: An Argument,” delivered at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, 12 February 1865, (Boston, 1865), 10; Marion T. Wright, “Negro Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776-1875,” Journal of Negro History 33 (April 1948): 198, 211-215; Manfred Berg, “Soldiers and Citizens: War and Voting Rights in American History,” in David K. Adams and Cornelis A. van Minnen, eds., Reflections on American Exceptionalism (Staffordshire, UK, 1994), 194-200.

  19 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), 27, 60, 62-66, 75, 110-114; Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979), 522-536; William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore, MD, 1965), 21-22; Xi Wang, The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1869-1910 (Athens, GA, 1997), 11-18; Barbara J. Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, CT, 1985), 133.

  20 Beecher, “Universal Suffrage,” 5-11; see also J. K. H. Willcox, “Suffrage a Right Not a Privilege,” speech delivered to the Universal Franchise Association, 19 July 1867 (Washington, DC, 1867).

  21 Robert R. Dykstra and Harlan Hahn, “Northern Voters and Negro Suffrage: The Case of Iowa,” in Joel H. Silbey and Samuel T. McSeveney, eds., Voters, Parties, and Elections (Lexington, MA, 1972), 156-157, 203-205, 215; Wright, “Negro Suffrage,” 176, 198, 202-217; Gillette, Right to Vote, 25-27; Foner, Reconstruction, 223.

  22 Foner, Reconstruction, 60, 186-187.

  23 Ibid., 131, 252, 258; Gillette, Right to Vote, 22-24; William L. Scruggs, “Citizenship and Suffrage,” North American Review 177 (December 1903): 840.

  24 Foner, Reconstruction, 241-242, 255; Gillette, Right to Vote, 22-25.

  25 Foner, Reconstruction, 277, 314; Gillette, Right to Vote, 28-29; Dan T. Carter, When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865-1867 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1985), 248-250.

  26 Wang, Trial of Democracy, 29-35; Foner, Reconstruction, 272, 314; Gillette, Right to Vote, 28-32.

  27 Wang, Trial of Democracy, 35-40; Foner, Reconstruction, 272-279; Gillette, Right to Vote, 31.

  28 Foner, Reconstruction, 280-284, 330, 342, 425ff.; James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, 1982), 542-545; petition cited in Michael Les Benedict, The Fruits of Victory: Alternatives in Restoring the Union 1865-1877 (Philadelphia, 1975), 118.

  29 Foner, Reconstruction, 215, 291, 314-315, 470-471; Gillette, Right to Vote, 32-33, 38-39; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 65, 529-542; Felice A. Bonadio, “Ohio: A ‘Perfect Contempt of All Unity,’” in James C. Mohr, ed., Radical Republicans in the North: State Politics During Reconstruction (Baltimore, MD, 1976), 85-92; see also the insightful analysis of coalition building and incomplete institutionalization in Richard M. Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago, 2004), 23-72.

  30 Gillette, Right to Vote, 32-34, 48-49; John M. Mathews, Legislative and Judicial History of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore, MD, 1909), 20-21; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 545; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York, 1974), 325-331.

  31 Gillette, Right to Vote, 42-54; F. Rives, J. Rives, and George A. Bailey, eds., The Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 3d sess. (Washington, DC, 1869), 643, 744.

  32 Gillette, Right to Vote, 56-57; Congressional Globe, 1009, 1014, 1035.

  33 Congressional Globe, 672, 709, 1009, 1010, 1035-1039, 1626-1628, 1641, Appendix, 153-154; Mathews, Fifteenth Amendment, 22-33; Gillette, Right to Vote, 57. On Wilson’s links with the Know-Nothings, see Richard H. Abbott, Cobbler in Congress: The Life of Henry Wilson, 1812-1875 (Lexington, KY, 1972), 58-78; Ernest McKay, Henry Wilson, Practical Radical: A Portrait of a Politician (Port Washington, NY, 1971), 88-93.

  34 Congressional Globe, 1036-1037, 1628, 1641, 1869.

  35 Ibid., 1010, Appendix, 165-169.

  36 Ibid., 1030, 1035, 1038; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 545-546; Mathews, Fifteenth Amendment, 30-34; Gillette, Right to Vote, 58-74.

  37 Congressional Globe, 705-706, Appendix, 285; New York Times, 15 February 1869; Gillette, Right to Vote, 56-57; Benedict, Compromise of Principle, 321-335.

  38 Congressional Globe, 1029-1030, 1040, 1044, 1425-1428, 1440, 1466, 1625, 1627-1628; Gillette, Right to Vote, 64-76, 88-90; see also Earl M. Maltz, Civil Rights, The Constitution, and Congress, 1863-1869 (Lawrence, KS, 1990), 142-156.

  39 Congressional Globe, 1291, 1307, 1625-1641; Gillette, Right to Vote, 64-65, 70-90; Benedict, Compromise of Principle, 331-335.

  40 New York Times, 8 March 1869; Foner, Reconstruction, 446.

  41 Gillette, Right to Vote, 147-154; Foner, Reconstruction, 446.

  42 Gillette, Right to Vote, 148-157; Foner, Reconstruction, 446-447.

  43 Gillette, Right to Vote, 79-139; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 49-51.

  44 Phillips and Douglass cited in Wang, Trial of Democracy, 50-53; New York Times, 8 March 1869; Garfield cited in Foner, Reconstruction, 449.

  45 Foner, Reconstruction, 272-278, 323-324; Julian A. C. Chandler, The History of Suffrage in Virginia (Baltimore, MD, 1901), 56-64.

  46 Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois (Springfield, IL, 1862), 191, 1021; General Laws, and Joint Resolutions, Memorials and Private Acts, Passed at the Third Session of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Colorado (Denver, CO, 1864), 77-78; Albert G. Burr, “Address to the People of Illinois” speech delivered March 1862 (Springfield, IL, 1862), 53; George McCrary, A Treatise on the American Law of Elections (Chicago, 1880), 46; Journal of the Constitutional Convention of New York, 1872-73, 22, 167-169, 176, 197-198, 338-339, 457; Debates and Proceedings of t
he Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 1872-73, vol. 2, 29-32; Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Third Constitutional Convention of Ohio, 1873, vol. 2 (Cleveland, OH, 1874), 1937-1938; Marc W. Kruman, “Legislatures and Political Rights,” in Joel H. Silbey, ed., Encyclopedia of the American Legislative System, vol. 3 (New York, 1994), 1241. Pennsylvania also attempted to disfranchise deserters permanently, but the law was declared unconstitutional in a state court because it constituted a legislative narrowing of a constitutional right.

  47 Neuman, “‘We Are the People,’” 298; Rosberg, “Aliens and Equal Protection,” 1096, 1099; Raskin, “Legal Aliens,” 1408-1415; Kruman, “Legislatures,” 1245-1253.

  48 Gordon quoted in James H. Lindsay, comp., Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Virginia, held in the city of Richmond, June 12, 1901 to June 24, 1901 (Richmond, VA, 1906), 3061-3062. William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1979), 37-41; Foner, Reconstruction, 422-423.

  49 McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 564-566; Foner, Reconstruction, 424-435, 559-560.

  50 Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 37; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 566-567; Foner, Reconstruction, 454-457, 558, 586; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 57-92, 118-119.

  51 Foner, Reconstruction, 423-424, 428-429, 587-596.

  52 Wang, Trial of Democracy, 120-121, 161, 300; Bernard Grofman et al., Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality (New York, 1992), 6-7.

  53 Foner, Reconstruction, 588-593; J. Morgan Kousser, “Suffrage,” in Jack P. Greene, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Political History, vol. 3 (New York, 1984), 1245-1247; idem, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (New Haven, CT, 1974), 11-44; Walter L. Fleming, ed., Documentary History of Reconstruction, vol. 2 (New York, 1966), 434-435.