For the most part, however, advocates for expanding suffrage on class lines claimed the right to vote based on their understanding of republican principles of contribution and consent of the governed. Both of these, however, were premised upon an understanding of belonging that most delegates recognized as bound by the institution of citizenship and the category of race.
Consent and Community
A natural right to consent to the laws to which one is subject offers perhaps the widest scope for suffrage expansion. There were delegates who claimed the right to vote for the disfranchised on the fact that they were governed, a claim prior to any contribution and vested in their status as free men with natural rights: “we claim the right of suffrage as freemen—we claim the right to choose our rulers—we will afterwards contribute.”208
However, the universal potential of this claim was highlighted by delegates supporting a more restrictive suffrage, who argued that it would mandate the enfranchisement of all persons. These delegates traced out the logic of the claim to a position that few of the delegates were willing to support, as it would violate commitments to allegiance, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Arguing against abolishing the freehold qualification, Leigh
205Emphasis added. Thompson,Proceedings and debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830(1830, 418).
206This was likely a rhetorical ploy, as Thompson would be aware that free blacks did not enjoy full civil rights in Virginia. But the decision to use this language suggests its broader resonance.
207M’Cahen,Proceedings. . . Pennsylvania, vol.11 (1838, 53).
208Woodward,Proceedings. . . Pennsylvania, vol.3 (1837, 118). See also Mayo, Proceedings. . . Louisiana(1846, 98); Wilson,Proceedings. . . Virginia(1830, 351); Leigh,Proceedings. . . Virginia(1830, 398-99).
of Virginia declared that “I am incapable of conceiving any natural right. . . which is not common to every human being. . . . It is manifest, these rights belong not only to every man who pays public taxes and bears arms, but also to every woman and child in the community.”209 The implication was that the right to vote was not a natural right, with
the reference to women and children a frequent tactic emphasizing what for the delegates was the evident absurdity of the position. Others would point to the exclusion of aliens, of free blacks, of slaves, of criminals, as revealing the political rather than natural nature of the right.
Precisely because of its potential universality, consent of the governed was under- stood in practice as a principle limited by community membership, with most delegates agreeing that the right to vote “attached to the individual upon his becoming a member of the community.”210 The Virginia Declaration of Rights from 1776 provides a good
example how the principle of consent of the governed was embedded within an under- standing of community membership. Article 6 of the declaration reads “all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the commu- nity have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the public good.” The principle of consent is here limited to men with common interest and attachment to the community, who alone are considered full members.
The language of common interest and attachment would recur throughout the con- ventions, and raised the question of what constituted evidence of ones interest and attachment. Here advocates of more restrictive qualifications along class lines or less restrictive qualifications on racial grounds were at a rhetorical disadvantage. The Jef- fersonian tradition of praising the laboring classes and the small farmer meant that delegates in favor of restrictive suffrage were hesitant to deny their membership in the community, while their advocates in convention had the resonant languages of contri- bution and equality upon which to draw. But while white men were for the most part read into the community as full members, they could be read out based upon their be- havior, social standing, their residence, or the character of their putative class. Property was one possible form of evidence of stake in society, and in New York and Virginia in the 1820s this was deployed to argue that only the freeholder was bound to the soil in
209Leigh,Proceedings. . . Virginia(1830, 399).
such a way that gave them sufficient stake in society to be trusted with its governance: “to [the freehold farmer] belongs not only all the real property of the Commonwealth, but almost all of the personal property also,. . . they are the class. . . who hold the greatest stake in society; who are the only persons who have any stake that may not be withdrawn at pleasure. . . who therefore have, and actually take, the deepest interest in the public welfare.”211
Delegates in favor of expanding suffrage on class lines, however, had a powerful retort, namely that the poor man had an equal interest in life and liberty and these were conditioned upon the institutions of the state and its well-being:
“has the poor man no interest? Are his personal rights and safety nothing? Is the sacred right of conscience nothing? Is it nothing to him that he stands among men a man, equal to the highest and wealthiest? . . . Has he no attachments to his home, though it may be another’s?. . . Government to the poor man is his all! . . . All history proves that the poor man feels as great an interest in the Government of his choice as the rich—nay, if he might make a comparison he would say a greater.”212
Others would argue that even where attachment or common interest was lacking, en- franchisement would help to ensure that this attachment was generated: “One gentleman (Mr. Quincy) had looked forward to our becoming a great manufacturing people. God forbid. If it should happen, however, it was not to be expected, that this modicum of property required would exclude the laborers in manufactories from voting. It was better to let them vote—they would otherwise become the Lazzaroni of the country.”213 Advo-
cates for suffrage reform argued that the laboring classes, blacks, and aliens would share attachment and common interest once they were enfranchised. In the South this often meant that laboring class whites would become committed to the defense of slavery.
“There is one other argument which ought to have some influence on this question [suffrage]. It is one of delicacy. . . . We find that all the slave-holding
211Leigh,Proceedings. . . Virginia(1830, 399).
212Brown, Proceedings. . . Pennsylvania, vol.2 (1837, 490); Blake in Massachusetts would insist that life and liberty were “as dear to a poor man as to a rich man” and that “every subject therefore, involving only life or liberty, could be acted upon, with as good authority, by the poor as by the rich.” He was willing to leave the Senate as the guardian of property, “the rich man’s citadel,” but he insisted that the poor should have an equal stake in the assembly precisely because his life and liberty were invested in the government. Blake,Journal. . . Massachusetts, 1820(1853, 249).
213Austin, Journal. . . Massachusetts, 1820 (1853, 253). The lazzaroni were the poorest class in late 18th century Naples. They were seen as easily organized by demagogues, but perhaps more crucially, were fiercely royalist in their political inclination. Their devotion to the House of Bourbon ensured that French-established republican governments in Naples had little popular support. Their invocation in the American context usually presents them as a threat to republicanism.
States South of us, deemed it of the utmost importance to make all the free white men as free and independent, as Government could make them: and why? Sir, it is known that all the slave-holding States are fast approaching a crisis truly alarming: a time when freemen will be needed—when every man must be at his post. . . . Is it not wise now, to call together at least every free white human being, and unite them in the same common interest and Government? Surely it is.” 214
Even when the issue of free black suffrage was raised in the South some delegates put it in terms of securing their attachment to the state, and thereby securing slavery.215 Others
argued in favor of enfranchising aliens, as this would make them “feel and know that they had a permanent interest to sustain—and the welfare of the country to subserve.”216
The delegates were debating membership in a community, whether it should rest on property, on residence, or on an equal interest in the protection of life and liberty. The important point, however, is that once this attachment and belonging were recognized, the grounds for exclusion from the suffrage were considerably weakened by republican commitments to equality and consent. For blacks, the categorical exclusion of the ‘white male republic’ dominated delegate understandings and imposed additional costs on their advocates than were imposed on disfranchised white men. A delegate to the North Carolina convention of 1835 asked “if there is any solid ground for the belief that a free mulatto can have any permanent interest with an attachment to this country?”217 A
delegate in Wisconsin in 1846 would reference this claim that free blacks could not have a shared interest in white society, and would juxtapose his position on black suffrage with alien suffrage: “I am in favor of withholding the elective franchise from the colored man for the same reason that I would confer it upon the foreign population,” because the foreign population had a capacity to be accepted as part of the community that the racial ordering of citizenship denied to blacks.218
214Morgan,Proceedings . . . Virginia(1830, 382).
215In 1791 the authorities in St. Domingo “put the free colored men on the same footing with the whites, and it produced the happiest effects in attaching them to their interests. But some years afterwards, the French Government again deprived them of their privileges, which had the effect of throwing them into the ranks of the slaves, and of course, they felt a common interest with them, and the consequence was the dreadful catastrophe which afterwards took place.” HolmesProceedings. . . North Carolina(1836, 354).
216Fox,Journal of the Convention to form a constitution for the state of Wisconsin, Begun and Held at Madison,
on the Fifteenth Day of December, 1847 (1848, 153). 217McQueen,Proceedings. . . North Carolina(1836, 78). 218Clark,The Convention of 1846 (Quaife 1919, 278).
Contribution to a Community
The republican emphasis on the principle of contribution, which Jefferson had been advocating in the late 18th century and which was deeply embedded in the Jeffersonian
understandings of American citizenship, was an especially important argument in the conventions. It had the potential to be a limiting principle, and by the 1830s advocates of maintaining a taxpaying qualification were deploying Jeffersonian republican language to this effect: “the doctrine of taxation and representation was a republican doctrine. The people were sovereign, but no man ought to exercise any right in a community he did not assist to maintain. Every citizen, however, who contributed to the support of the community, ought to be entitled to vote.”219
The Jeffersonian language of contribution, however, was especially powerful in sup- porting expansions of the suffrage. Not only did the language of equality and class virtue that had been so strong in the democratic-republican societies have broad resonance, calling into question the distinction between the contributor and non-contributor, but the institutional arrangement of the militia likewise gave powerful rhetorical tools for the securing of suffrage for the laboring classes. The language of class virtue and equality before the law, key features of Jeffersonian understandings of citizenship, were deployed to insist upon a leveling of contribution. Democrat and future vice-presidential can- didate for the Liberty Party Thomas Earle would assert that the “poor laboring man” contributed more to the community than the rich: “He works upon your highways, pays a tax on nearly all he wears, on nearly all he eats, and on nearly all that his family wears, and his tax is infinitely greater than that of the wealthy man. He is, too, a producer in the community and both the wealthy and his country are reaping an advantage from his labor.”220
The language of class virtue would also be deployed to insist upon the commu- nity membership and contribution to society of the laboring classes. Cramer of New York would assert that “more integrity and more patriotism are generally found in the labouring class of the community than in the higher orders,”221 while Van Buren would 219Porter,Proceedings. . . Pennsylvania, vol.3 (1837, 125); Edwards argued in New York in 1821 that while he “disclaimed any sentiments in favour of artificial distinctions in society,” thereby answering to the charge of establishing un-republican inequalities, “he did believe, that there were many who were not qualified to exercise this right. In his view, taxation and representation should go hand in hand.” Edwards,
Reports. . . New York(1821, 281).
220He would further proclaim that “My democracy is that which was advocated by Jefferson, my religion that of the New Testament.” Earle,Proceedings. . . Pennsylvania, vol.2 (1837, 555).
describe “this class of men, composed of mechanics, professional men, and small land- holders” as “constituting the bone, pith, and muscle of the population of the state.”222
The valorization of the laboring classes was very much part of the Jeffersonian language of republican citizenship, and enabled a rhetorical leveling of contribution away from taxation and services and to the broader sphere of participation in the market and labor force.
A legacy of the Revolution was the development of a largely democratic militia. It was democratic in that it was broadly constituted—every able-bodied free white male be- tween the ages of 18 and 45 being required to participate, or purchase their exemption— and in that many of the militias were democratically structured, with each level choosing its immediate officers. The broad basis upon which the militias were founded meant that this language, and especially the resonant language of sacrifice and service, was avail- able not just to secure particularistic benefits for specific individuals but to secure rights for an entire class of persons.223 Because every able-bodied free white male citizen was
liable to do militia service, after a very limited period of residence, delegates in favor of broader suffrage provisions were able to argue that this entire class of persons should be enfranchised.
The claim of militia service as entailing a right to suffrage drew upon the language of equality and working class virtue that had been so important in the early period of the Jeffersonian regime, and it likewise entailed a veiled threat that were they excluded from the right of suffrage their “ardor would be chilled.”224 As a claim to equal standing within
the community, militia service was especially important. Fuller in Pennsylvania argued that “the poor man alone was called to do military duty in time of war, while the rich man provided a substitute, instead of going in person.”225 Memorialists to the Virginia
convention of 1829 argued that the claim that non-freeholders were “too ignorant and vicious” to enjoy the right of suffrage was not believed by the freeholders themselves: “why, else, are arms placed in the hands of a body of disaffected citizens, so ignorant, so depraved, and so numerous? In the hour of danger, they have drawn no invidious distinctions between the sons of Virginia.”226 In New York in 1821, delegates opposing 222Van BurenReports. . . New York(1821, 257).
223A number of states sought to tie the suffrage to militia service, in the form of a particular benefit to those who served for a given period of time. More commonly, however, the invocation of militia service and sacrifice was used to apply to the class of white men more broadly.
224RichardsonJournal. . . Massachusetts (1820, 253). 225FullerProceedings. . . Pennsylvania, vol.2 (1837, 537). 226Proceedings . . . Virginia (1830, 27).
property qualifications for the Senate insisted that it was the poor and laboring classes who bore the burdens of war most heavily, who contributed and sacrificed the most for the country, and who should accordingly be recognized as equals with the propertied and well-off: “how was the late war sustained. Who filled the ranks of your armies?”227
The claim of militia service was perhaps most resonant in regards to war, but even the burden of regular musters and preparation was considered to be akin to a tax and an important form of contribution to the community: “Young men of twenty one years old were subject to a poll tax and to the obligation of performing military duty, which is a heavy tax.”228
Legitimations founded on militia service, however, could also be deployed to jus- tify exclusions. The barring of blacks and aliens from the militias gave delegates who desired their exclusion an argument that resonated with Jeffersonian republicanism’s contributory frame. This was most expressly put forward by Erastus Root in the New York convention of 1821, who argued that the republican principles of contribution are embedded in an understanding of the community as constituted by those who have an interest in it and who owe it allegiance. Root articulated the principles of contribution as demarcating the political family—“the social compact”—in which popular sovereignty should be vested:
“‘In my judgment, every one who is taken into the bosom of that family [the social compact], and made to contribute, either in property or personal service, to the benefit of that family, should have a voice in managing its concerns. It cannot be denied that the preservation of property is a much less consideration, than that of a security in our liberty and independence. Every member of this political family who is worth to be one of its members, will prize much higher the freedom of the country, than the preservation of property.”229
This understanding of the community provided him with the rationale for extending the suffrage to the laboring classes, especially in the countryside, as well as legitimating the exclusion of aliens and blacks: “in case of an invasion or insurrection, neither the alien nor black man is bound to defend your country. They are not called on, because it is supposed there is no reliance to be placed in them, they might desert the standard and
227Tompkins Reports. . . New York (1821, 235). “[T]hese are the men who constitute your defence in