The practice of limiting suffrage arrived in North America with the first settlers from England. Every colony imposed a property qualification for voting, and many denied the franchise to Catholics, Jews, Native Americans, and freed black slaves; women were rarely allowed to vote. Many of these restrictions made it through the Revolution intact; only about half of the free adult male population was eligible to vote at the time the Constitution was adopted. The right to vote has progressed to virtually all citizens eighteen years and older who are not in prisons or mental institutions. The success of nearly universal adult suffrage reflects the powerful appeal of democratic ideas, combined with deep socials changes, the struggles of dedicated activists, and the continuous scramble of politicians for votes. The property qualifications and voting restrictions brought over from England in colonial times imitated the basic social realities there.
…show more content…
Most adults during this time were poor, illiterate, and dependent; they were servants, tenants, hired hands, or paupers. Members of the upper-class minority-a well-born, prosperous, and educated elite-took for granted their right to govern. They were not about to risk the present social order, which served them so well, by extending voting rights to people whose interests might be better served by changing it. In the colonies, land was easier to obtain and far more evenly distributed in the than in England, a larger proportion of adult males qualified to vote. By the revolutionary period any “respectable” man-meaning white, protestant, and gainfully employed-was in practice, allowed to vote in many places. More important and long-lasting, the ringing statements in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and enjoy unalienable rights to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” left little ground for denying voting rights to any citizen. However, universal suffrage for (white) men was not fully achieved until the late 1840s in the wake of the triumph of Jacksonian democracy. The democratic logic that justified giving the vote to all white men did not stop there; it also fostered demands that all adult citizens, regardless of race or sex, be eligible to vote. For more than a century, race, sex, and the institution of slavery interacted to complicate suffrage politics. The women’s suffrage movement grew directly out of the antislavery movement, sharing its underlying ideals and some of its activists. Suffragists felt betrayed when the Civil War amendments enfranchised the newly freed black men but not white or black women. The largely successful effort by white southerners to purge blacks from the electorate after the end of Reconstruction raised a major barrier to giving women the vote. The resistance to women’s suffrage was gradually overcome by a combination of social change- the expansion of education for both sexes, the entry of women into the workforce outside the home-and political need. Western territories were the first to grant women the right to vote, not because places like Wyoming or Utah were centers of radical democracy but because women were expected to vote for “family values” in raw frontier communities. As women’s suffrage grew at the state and local levels, politicians competing for women’s votes naturally supported further expansion.
Most adults during this time were poor, illiterate, and dependent; they were servants, tenants, hired hands, or paupers. Members of the upper-class minority-a well-born, prosperous, and educated elite-took for granted their right to govern. They were not about to risk the present social order, which served them so well, by extending voting rights to people whose interests might be better served by changing it. In the colonies, land was easier to obtain and far more evenly distributed in the than in England, a larger proportion of adult males qualified to vote. By the revolutionary period any “respectable” man-meaning white, protestant, and gainfully employed-was in practice, allowed to vote in many places. More important and long-lasting, the ringing statements in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and enjoy unalienable rights to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” left little ground for denying voting rights to any citizen. However, universal suffrage for (white) men was not fully achieved until the late 1840s in the wake of the triumph of Jacksonian democracy. The democratic logic that justified giving the vote to all white men did not stop there; it also fostered demands that all adult citizens, regardless of race or sex, be eligible to vote. For more than a century, race, sex, and the institution of slavery interacted to complicate suffrage politics. The women’s suffrage movement grew directly out of the antislavery movement, sharing its underlying ideals and some of its activists. Suffragists felt betrayed when the Civil War amendments enfranchised the newly freed black men but not white or black women. The largely successful effort by white southerners to purge blacks from the electorate after the end of Reconstruction raised a major barrier to giving women the vote. The resistance to women’s suffrage was gradually overcome by a combination of social change- the expansion of education for both sexes, the entry of women into the workforce outside the home-and political need. Western territories were the first to grant women the right to vote, not because places like Wyoming or Utah were centers of radical democracy but because women were expected to vote for “family values” in raw frontier communities. As women’s suffrage grew at the state and local levels, politicians competing for women’s votes naturally supported further expansion.