The Right to Vote

by Alexander Keyssar

54 Wang, Trial of Democracy, 216-232.

  55 Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., vol. 21, pt. 7 (1890), 6537-6567, 2d sess., vol. 22, pt. 1 (1890), 21-26; Joseph A. Fry, John Tyler Morgan and the Search for Southern Autonomy (Knoxville, TN, 1992), 54-55; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 209-211.

  56 Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., vol. 21, pt. 7 (1890), 6543; George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, vol. 2 (New York, 1903), 150-165; John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (New York, 1953), 116-125.

  57 Congressional Record, 51st Cong., 1st sess., vol. 21, pt. 7 (1890), 6548-6554, 6672-6675, 2d sess., vol. 22, pt. 1 (1890), 75-80; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 239-246; Rayford W. Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thoughts: The Nadir, 1877-1901 (New York, 1903), 62-66.

  58 George R. Brown, ed., Reminiscences of Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada (New York, 1908), 297-307; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 228-252; Franklin L. Burdette, Filibustering in the Senate (Princeton, NJ, 1940), 51-57; Russell R. Elliot, Servant of Power: A Political Biography of Senator William M. Stewart (Reno, NV, 1983), 127-131; Dorothy G. Fowler, John Coit Spooner: Defender of Presidents (New York, 1961), 132-158; Stanley P. Hirshson, Farewell to the Bloody Shirt: Northern Republicans and the Southern Negro, 1877-1893 (Bloomington, IN, 1962), 143-165; Homer Socolofsky, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (Lawrence, KS, 1987), 60-65; Richard Bensel, Sectionalism and American Political Development: 1880-1980 (Madison, WI, 1984), 76-78.

  59 Wang, Trial of Democracy, 255-259.

  60 Since the story of black (and some poor white) disfranchisement is well known and well documented, here it is summarized. For a thorough and persuasive account, see Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics.

  61 Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 139-145.

  62 Virginia Proceedings, 1901, 3067; Robert C. Brooks, Political Parties and Electoral Problems (New York, 1923), 364-365; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 5, 63-65; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 618-619; C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South (Baton Rouge, LA, 1951), 321-349. As Kousser explains (p. 50), multiple voting-box arrangements required voters to put ballots for each office (or group of offices) into a separate voting box. Those placed in the wrong box would not be counted, and the order of the boxes could be changed repeatedly to outwit illiterate voters. Regarding failed efforts at disfranchisement in Maryland (with the exception of some local property requirements), see Margaret L. Callcott, The Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870-1912 (Baltimore, MD, 1969). For Texas, see David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin, TX, 1987), 140-145.

  63 Virginia Proceedings, 1901, 3076-3077; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 47-50, 59, 83-86.

  64 Virginia Proceedings, 1901, 3046-3047, 3056, 3058-3059, 3060-3061; see also ibid., 3062-3076. Texas citation from Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 58, 112, 200-201.

  65 Virginia Proceedings, 1901, 3062, 3069, 3074; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 68-71, 129, 168-171, 191, 246-249; Matthew J. Schott, “Progressives Against Democracy: Electoral Reform in Louisiana, 1894-1921,” Louisiana History 20 (Summer 1979): 247-260.

  66 See Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 238-250; cf. Jerrold G. Rusk and John J. Stucker, “The Effect of the Southern System of Election Laws on Voting Participation,” in Joel H. Silbey et al., eds., The History of American Electoral Behavior (Princeton, NJ, 1978), 220ff.; James B. Drake, “Making Voting Compulsory,” Machinists’ Monthly Journal 19 (August 1907): 759-760; on North Carolina, see Glenda E. Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 119-125, 256n.

  67 Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 43-44, 60-62, 236-237; Bensel, Sectionalism, 81; Bruce A. Campbell, The American Electorate: Attitudes and Action (New York, 1979), 24; Rusk and Stucker, “Effect of the Southern System,” 200, 247-248; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 260-261.

  68 John F. Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 122-123; Arthur Holcombe, State Government in the United States (New York, 1926), 85-86; Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S. 213 (1898); Loren P. Beth, The Development of the American Constitution, 1877-1917 (New York, 1971), 110-111; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, 57, 250-257; Wang, Trial of Democracy, 253-266; Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in United States History (New Haven, CT, 1997), 383-385, 428-429, 451-453.

  69 Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915); Myers v. Anderson, 238 U.S. 368 (1915); for a labor protest against the southern laws, see United Mine Workers’ Journal (14 August 1913): 7.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1 Washington Post, 20 February 1899, cited in the Coast Seamen’s Journal, 8 March 1899, 7; see also exchange of letters between E. B. Smith and E. L. C. Morse, Nation, 9 July 1903 and 30 July 1903. The term sansculottes is from the French Revolution: it referred loosely to urban-dwelling men of the people, who supported the Jacobin republic.

  2 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), 497-498.

  3 Herbert G. Gutman, Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class (New York, 1987), 380-394.

  4 Francis Parkman, “The Failure of Universal Suffrage,” North American Review 263 (July-August 1878): 7.

  5 Parkman, for example, made one brief reference to “priests” but otherwise did not mention Catholicism.

  6 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., “The Protection of the Ballot in National Elections,” Journal of Social Science 1 ( June 1869): 108-109; Alexander Winchell, “The Experiment of Universal Suffrage,” North American Review 136 (February 1883): 129; William L. Scruggs, “Citizenship and Suffrage,” North American Review 177 (December 1903): 844-845; Frank J. Scott, The Evolution of Suffrage (New York, 1912), 7; Melvin G. Holli, Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York, 1969), 172; David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin, TX, 1987), 130-131. For a broader expression of racial antagonism (against non-Anglo-Saxons of all types), see Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York, 1886). Cf. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, vol. 2 (New York, 1941), 103.

  7 Howard B. Grose, Aliens or Americans? (Cincinnati, OH, 1906), 214-216; see also ibid., 248-249, 255; Winchell, “Experiment,” 126-127, 131; John R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America (New York, 1907), 220-221.

  8 “The Crime Against the Suffrage in Washington,” Nation 26 (27 June 1878): 415; Parkman, “Failure of Universal Suffrage,” 4, 8; Richmond Mayo Smith, Emigration and Immigration: A Study in Social Science (New York, 1890), 83-90.

  9 Edward L. Godkin, “The Democratic View of Democracy,” North American Review 101 (July 1865): 109-110, 113-114; 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), 33-34; Parkman, “Failure of Universal Suffrage,” 10, 20.

  10 The Outlook 68 (27 July 1901): 711-712; Scruggs, “Citizenship and Suffrage,” 839-840.

  11 John Martin Luther Babcock, “The Right of the Ballot: A Reply to Francis Parkman and Others Who Have Asserted ‘The Failure of Universal Suffrage,’” reprinted from the Boston Herald, 15 March 1879 (Boston, 1879), 4-13.

  12 “Sincere Demagogy,” Atlantic Monthly 44 (October 1879): 489-490; “Universal Suffrage,” Nation 3 (8 November 1861): 371-372; George W. Julian, “Suffrage a Birthright,” International Review 6 (1879): 16-17. For other examples, see Francis N. Thorpe, “A Century’s Struggle for the Franchise in America,” Harper’s Magazine 94 (January 1897): 207-215; Commons, Races and Immigrants, 184; Maurice Maeterlinck, “Universal Suffrage,” The Bookman 19 (March-August 1904): 133-135; E. B. Smith, “Debasement of Suffrage,” Nation 77 (9 July 1903): 28-29. Cf. Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986), 45-52.

  13 Among the commentators noting a decline in faith in a broad suffrage (in a
ddition to those expressly cited earlier) were James Schouler, “Evolution of the American Voter,” American Historical Review 2 ( July 1897): 669; Commons, Races and Immigrants, 3-4; Edward L. C. Morse, “The Debasement of Suffrage,” Nation 76 (25 June 1903): 515; idem, “The Suffrage Again,” Nation 77 (30 July 1903): 93; Edward L. Godkin, Problems of Modern Democracy: Political and Economic Essays, ed. Morton Keller (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 123; “Topics of the Time: A Recent Election and Universal Suffrage,” Century Magazine 67 ( January 1904): 474-475; cf. J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (New Haven, CT, 1974), 251-252; Foner, Reconstruction, 492-493; McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics, 43-45; McGerr attributes the Nation article in the chapter epigraph to Jonathan B. Harrison. The two quotations are from Charles Seymour and Donald P. Frary, How the World Votes: The Story of Democratic Development in Elections, vol. 2 (Springfield, IL, 1918), 321-322; William B. Munro, “Intelligence Tests for Voters,” Forum 80 (December 1928): 828-830.

  14 Godkin, Problems of Modern Democracy, 146-147, 201-202.

  15 “Limited Sovereignty in the United States,” Atlantic Monthly 43 (February 1879): 190-193.

  16 Holli, Reform in Detroit, 172-174; Winchell, “Experiment,” 125, 133-134; Scruggs, “Citizenship and Suffrage,” 845-846; Parkman, “Failure of Universal Suffrage,” 5, 12-13, 20.

  17 The history of electoral laws presented here is based on the following sources: all extant transcripts of the debates and proceedings of constitutional conventions held in all states during this period; all state constitutions and amendments in force at any time between 1870 and 1920; a systematic examination of the statutes and case law in roughly a dozen states; a less systematic canvass of statutes and case law in other states; and secondary sources. All quotations and laws cited are indicated in notes, but broader generalizations are based on these other sources as well; see also the tables and sources in the appendix.

  18 Peter Argersinger has ably analyzed many of the technical laws that influenced political outcomes during the Gilded Age; see “‘A Place on the Ballot’: Fusion Politics and Antifusion Laws,” American Historical Review 85 (April 1980): 287-306; idem, “The Value of the Vote: Political Representation in the Gilded Age,” Journal of American History 76 ( June 1989): 59-90; idem, “New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age,” Political Science Quarterly 100 (Winter 1985-86): 669-687; idem, “Regulating Democracy: Election Laws and Dakota Politics, 1889-1902,” Midwest Review 5 (Spring 1983): 1-19. See also John Buenker, “The Politics of Resistance: The Rural-Based Yankee Republican Machines of Connecticut and Rhode Island,” New England Quarterly 47 ( June 1974): 212-237; Terrence J. McDonald, The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socioeconomic Changes and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860-1906 (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 160; Donald B. Cole, Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1963), 42-49. For examples of contemporary opinion about the inequalities inherent in district voting, see Simeon Stetson, The People’s Power or How to Wield the Ballot (San Francisco, 1883); and “Legal Disfranchisement,” Atlantic Monthly 69 (April 1892): 542-546.

  19 The subject of compulsory voting still awaits its historian. See J. Allen Smith, The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government (New York, 1930), 54; Alfred R. Conkling, City Government in the United States (New York, 1895), 200; Albert B. Hart, “The Exercise of the Suffrage,” Political Science Quarterly 7 ( June 1892): 307-329; Frederick Holls, “Compulsory Voting,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 1 (1890-91): 586-614; Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917-1918, vol. 3 (Boston, 1920): chap. 8.

  20 The two best monographs dealing with the politics of suffrage history (those of McCormick and Reynolds, cited herein) are both about New Jersey.

  21 Geoffrey Blodgett, The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 117-118; Dale Baum, The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848-1876 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), 11-13; Nathan Matthews, Municipal Charters (Cambridge, MA, 1914), 20. Massachusetts courts also had ruled that men who had been exempted from taxation due to poverty for two successive years before they were seventy (at which time they were exempted from taxation due to age) were not entitled to vote. George W. McCrary, A Treatise on the American Law of Elections (Chicago, 1880), 64-65. Regarding Delaware, see Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Delaware, Commencing December 1, 1896 (Milford, DE, 1958), vol. 1, 334-340, 770-776; ibid., vol. 2, 1141-1170; ibid., vol. 5, 3495-3501. Dudley O. McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley: The Need for a National Uniform Suffrage (Chicago, 1949), 116. Delaware for a time imposed a registration fee in place of a poll tax.

  22 Evelyn S. Sterne, Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence (Ithaca, NY, 2004), 60-107; Buenker, “Politics of Resistance,” 222-236; Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896 (New York, 1972), 13-14.

  23 Debates and Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 1872-73, vol. 1 (Harrisburg, PA, 1873), 626-634, 639-646, 649-657, 707, 711; A. D. Harlan, Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention 1872 and 1873: Its Members and Officers and the Result of Their Labors (Philadelphia, 1873); Rosalind L. Branning, Pennsylvania Constitutional Development (Pittsburgh, PA, 1960), 93-94, 135; Edward McPherson, A Hand-Book of Politics For 1890 (Washington, DC, 1890), 57; Clinton R. Woodruff, “Election Methods and Reforms in Philadelphia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 17 (March 1901): 192-195.

  24 Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois, 1869, vol. 1 (Springfield, 1870), 736; Isidor Loeb and Floyd Shoemaker, eds., Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1875, vol. 12 (Columbia, 1944), 343-365; Charles Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana, vol. 2 (Indianapolis, IN, 1916), 365, 370, 387, 394; Charles T. Russell, Manhood Suffrage Under Constitutional Guaranty: An Argument in Favor of Rescinding the Provision in the State Constitution Establishing the Payment of a State or County Tax as a Qualification of Voters (Boston, 1879), 11; Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of California, 1878, vol. 1 (Sacramento, CA, 1880), 86; Debates in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875 (Austin, TX, 1930), 167-189.

  25 “The Rights of Taxpayers,” Harper’s Weekly 21 (7 April 1877): 263; “Municipal Politics,” Harper’s Weekly 21 (28 April 1877): 323; “Voting in Cities,” Harper’s Weekly 21 (29 September 1877): 758-759; “The City Amendments,” Harper’s Weekly 21 (10 November 1877): 879; “Distrust of the People,” Harper’s Weekly 22 (9 May 1878): 187; “The Constitutional Amendment on City Government,” Nation 26 (14 February 1878): 108-109; McGerr, Decline of Popular Politics, 49. For an argument in favor of a taxpaying requirement for municipalities while retaining “universal suffrage” for state elections, see Cuthbert Mills, “Universal Suffrage in New York,” The International Review 8 (1880): 199-211.

  26 McGovney, American Suffrage Medley, 113; Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Texas, 1875 (Galveston, TX, 1875), 53, 139, 176, 315; Leon Fink, Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, IL, 1983), 72; Act of 22 February 1905, chap. 215, Kan. Laws (1905), 306, 312, 314. Maryland gave municipalities the right to limit the franchise to taxpayers through public local laws. See, e.g., Md. Pub. Loc. Laws, art. 12, sec. 74 (1888). These municipal laws, which generally had to be passed both by town councils and by the state legislatures, were difficult to track, and the listing here is not comprehensive.

  27 Spitzer v. Village of Fulton, 64 N.E. 957, 958 (N.Y. 1902); Myers v. Anderson, 238 U.S. 368, 380 (1915); State ex rel. Gilson v. Monahan, 72 Kan. 492 (1905). See also Hanna v. Young, 84 Md. 179 (1896).

  28 For an example of a constitutional debate on this issue, see Debates Pennsylvania 1872-73, vol. 1, 706-710. The precise number of pauper exclu
sions in effect is unclear. Table A.6 lists all those that I have been able to detect. Robert Steinfeld believes that there were more, but he does not offer a comprehensive list; see Steinfeld, “Property and Suffrage,” Stanford Law Review 41 (January 1989): 372-373.

  29 Massachusetts Report 124, Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, January-June, 1878 (Boston, 1879), 596-598.

  30 Steinfeld, “Property and Suffrage,” 372-373; Charles T. Russell, Jr., The Disfranchisement of Paupers (Boston, 1878), 3-5, 19-31; regarding the legal definition of “pauper” and an attempt to change the outcome of an election because a man who was allegedly a pauper had been permitted to vote, see Edward P. Loring and Charles T. Russell, Jr., Reports of Contested Elections in the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston, 1886), 139-142. On unemployment and tramps, see Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (New York, 1986), 130-142.

  31 The Morning Mercury (New Bedford, MA), 1 February 1898; unidentified newspaper article in the Ashley Scrapbooks, vol. 9, New Bedford Public Library; Machinists’ Monthly Journal (April 1898): 192-193.

  32 Burns quoted in Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Third Constitutional Convention of Ohio, 1873 (Cleveland, OH, 1874), 1903-1904. Many workers, of course, also came to favor immigration restriction but did so because they feared economic competition, not because they decried the influence of immigrants on political life.

  33 Debates Ohio 1873, 1800, 1802, 1903-1904.

  34 Debates Missouri 1875, vol. 5, 16; Journal of the Texas Constitutional Convention, 1875, 40-41, 92-93; Taliesin Evans, American Citizenship and the Right of Suffrage in the United States (Oakland, CA, 1892), 59; Debates California 1878, vol. 1, 146; Albert J. McCullough, Suffrage and Its Problems (Baltimore, MD, 1929), 53; Holli, Reform in Detroit, 67. Cf. Joseph H. Brewer et al., Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Michigan, 1907, vol. 2 (Lansing, MI, 1907), 1068-1078, 1270-1284. As late as 1917, proposals for alien suffrage were introduced at the Massachusetts constitutional convention but were rejected. Raymond L. Bridgeman, The Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917 (Boston, 1923), 229; Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1917 (Boston, 1917), 61, 76, 99, 630. For revealing details regarding the dynamics of this contraction of the franchise, see Ronald Hayduk, Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States (New York, 2006), 25-40.