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The African American Electorate
We would like to dedicate this book to family and friends, and most especially to election scholars and academicians, who with their brilliant and memorable teaching, research, and studies have expanded our intellectual imagination with insights that have provided clues, visions, and perspectives on extant, fugitive, and new empirical registration and voting data of the African American electorate. From Hanes Walton, Jr. Professor Robert H. Brisbane Professor Tobe Johnson Professor Samuel DuBois Cook Professor Emmett Dorsey Professor Harold Gosnell Professor V. O. Key, Jr. Professor Robert Martin Professor Ralph Bunche Professor Leslie B. McLemore Professor Matthew Holden Fannie Lou Hamer Gloria Richardson Sojourner Truth Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Reverend Dr. Benjamin E. Mays From Sherman C. Puckett Rosetta, Cheryl, Ann, Wanda, Jamal, Monet, Che’Rai, and Blake Professor Darlene Puckett Simmons Lois Deskins Mrs. Crippens Minerva Hawkins Professor Brice Carnahan Professor Gary Fowler Professor John Nystuen Mayor Coleman A. Young From Donald R. Deskins, Jr. Lois, Sharon, Sharlene, Sheila, Edward, James, Ryan, Selia, Jason, and Justin Professor John D. Nystuen Professor L.A.P. Gosling Professor George Kish Professor Charles M. Davis Professor Robert B. Hall Professor Waldo R. Tobler Professor Otis D. Duncan Professor Amos H. Hawley Professor Angus Campbell Professor Harold M. Rose
The African American Electorate A Statistical History Hanes Walton, Jr. University of Michigan Sherman C. Puckett University of Michigan Donald R. Deskins, Jr. University of Michigan
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Walton, Hanes, 1941The African American electorate: a statistical history/Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett, Donald R. Deskins. v. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87289-508-9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Suffrage—History—Statistics. I. Puckett, Sherman C., 1948- II. Deskins, Donald Richard. III. Title. JK1924.W36 2012 324.9730089′96073—dc23 2012018400
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Brief Contents VOLUME 1 Preface xxix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The State of African American Election Data
9
Chapter 2. The Literature on the African American Electorate
25
Chapter 3. The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773
43
Chapter 4. The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
79
Chapter 5. The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861: The Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause
95
Chapter 6. The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867
117
Chapter 7. The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1788–1870
133
Chapter 8. Suffrage Referenda Prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870
145
Chapter 9. Voting Behavior of the African American Electorate prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1788–1870
161
Chapter 10. The First African American Nominees and Public Office Holders, 1776–1870
179
Chapter 11. The National Equal Rights League
191
Chapter 12. The Civil War Election and the African American Soldiers’ Vote, 1864
217
Chapter 13. African American Voter Registration and Turnout in 1867 Southern State Elections: The First, Second, Third, and Fourth Military Reconstruction Acts
231
Chapter 14. African American Voting Behavior in the First Presidential and Congressional Elections after the Abolition of Slavery in the South, 1868 and 1872
255
Chapter 15. African American Voting Behavior in the First Presidential and Congressional Elections after the Abolition of Slavery in the Border, Midwest, and Far West States, 1868 and 1872
279
Chapter 16. African American Voting Behavior in Subsequent Elections through Disenfranchisement, 1868–1920
297
Chapter 17. African American Voting and Non-Voting Behavior in the Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1908) and Beyond
321
Chapter 18. The Lodge Bill and Beyond: Proposed Federal Supervision of Federal Elections in the South, 1861–1921
363
Chapter 19. African American Voters and Electoral Empowerment in the North, 1876–1944: A Mobilizer of the Re-enfranchisement Drive in the South
387
Chapter 20. The Enfranchisement of African American Women, 1669–1921
411
Chapter 21. The Electoral Revolt of African American Voters in 1920–1921 and Beyond
441
VOLUME 2 Chapter 22. African American Registration and Voting in the South, 1920–1944
459
Chapter 23. African American Registration and Voting in the South, 1944–1965
481
Chapter 24. Rare African American Registration and Voting Data: Episodic Events from the 1920s–1964
545
Chapter 25. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, Expansions and Renewals, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006
605
Chapter 26. Felon and Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement: The Newest Technique of Vote Dilution and Candidate Diminution
649
Chapter 27. African American Voting Rights in a Historic Presidential Election: The 2008 Election of President Barack Obama
673
Chapter 28. Summary and Conclusions
711
Appendices 731 Cumulative Bibliography
903
Copyright Acknowledgments
917
Index I-1
Detailed Contents VOLUME 1 Preface: The Genesis of This Work in the Journeys of Its Authors
xxix
Hanes Walton, Jr. xxix Sherman C. Puckett xxx Donald R. Deskins, Jr. xxxi Acknowledgments xxxi Notes xxxii
Introduction 1 Uniqueness of This Work 2 Methodology of This Study 4 Notes 7
Chapter 1. The State of African American Election Data
9
The African American Electorate in Colonial and Revolutionary America
10
Table 1.1 Voting Rights of Free-Men-of-Color in the Thirteen Original Colonies: Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum Eras Map 1.1 States with Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color, 1855
11 12
Election Data: From National and State Collections to the Commercial and Scholarly Sources Finding Historical Election Data for African American Candidates: Monroe N. Work, W. E. B. DuBois, and Ralph Bunche
13
Table 1.2 Seven Categories of Political Data and Statistics in the Negro Year Book, 1912–1952
17
The State of African American Election Data: A Summary
20
Conclusion on the State of African American Election Data
21
15
Notes 22
Chapter 2. The Literature on the African American Electorate
25
The Separation Phenomenon in the Reporting of Election Return Data Examining the Suffrage Literature
26 27
Table 2.1 Constitutional Convention and Referenda Votes on Equal Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color in States and Federal Territories of the United States, 1790–1870
31
The Registration, Turnout, and Voting Data Literature
33
Table 2.2 Percent and Number of Registered Voters in Counties of Arkansas by Race, 1867 Map 2.1 Arkansas Counties with African American vs. White Voting Majorities, 1867 Table 2.3 Percent Ratio of Registered African American Voters to Eligible African American Voters in Arkansas, 1867–1990 Table 2.4 Number and Percent of Counties in Georgia that Reported Separately on Black Voters, 1944–1954
35 36 37 37
The Balance of Power Theory Literature
38
Conclusions on the Literature Concerning the African American Electorate
39
Notes 40
Chapter 3. The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773
43
The Demography of African Americans in Colonial America
45
Table 3.1 Numbers of Censuses during the American Colonial Period, 1624–1773
47
Table 3.2 African American Populations and Population Growth in Regions of Colonial America, 1610–1770
48
Figure 3.1 African American Share of Population in Colonial Virginia, 1610–1770
49
Figure 3.2 African American Share of Population in Colonial Maryland, 1610–1770
49
Figure 3.3 Distribution of African American Population in Colonial America Regions, 1610–1770
49
Table 3.3 Population by Census or Estimate during the American Colonial Period, 1624–1773
50
Figure 3.4 Percent Change in White and African American Populations, Seventeenth-Century Colonial America
54
Figure 3.5 Percent Change in White and African American Populations, Eighteenth-Century Colonial America
54
Potential African American Voters in Colonial America
54
Table 3.4 African American Populations of “Voting Age” in Colonial America, 1624–1625 to 1773
55
Table 3.5 Voting Rights, Population, and Population Change of African Americans in the Thirteen Original Colonies in the Colonial Era
56
Table 3.6 “Voting Age” African American Populations in Maryland, 1704–1755
58
Table 3.7 Taxable and Untaxable African American Populations in Maryland, 1704–1755
58
Table 3.8 Estimated African American Electorate by Colony, 1703–1773
59
Table 3.9 Local-Level Population Censuses and Enumerations of African Americans, 1624–1773
60
Table 3.10 Settlement-Level Demography for Virginia, Census of 1624
61
Table 3.11 County-Level Demography of Slaves in Massachusetts, Census of 1754
62
Table 3.12 County-Level Demography of Massachusetts, Census of 1764
63
Table 3.13 County-Level Demography of Connecticut, Census of 1756
63
Table 3.14 County-Level Demography of New Hampshire, Census of 1773
64
Table 3.15 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1708
64
Table 3.16 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1748–1749
64
Table 3.17 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1755
65
Table 3.18 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1726
66
Table 3.19 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1738
66
Table 3.20 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1745
67
Table 3.21 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1704
67
Table 3.22 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1710
68
Table 3.23 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1712
68
Table 3.24 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1712
69
Figure 3.6 African Americans as Percentage of Total Population in New York, 1703–1773
69
Table 3.25 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1703
70
Table 3.26 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1712
70
Table 3.27 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1723
71
Table 3.28 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1731
71
Table 3.29 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1737
72
Table 3.30 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1746
72
Table 3.31 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1749
73
Table 3.32 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1756
73
Table 3.33 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1771
74
Figure 3.7 African Americans as Percentage of Total Electorate in New York, 1703–1773 Figure 3.8 African American Men as Percentage of Male Electorate in New York, 1703–1773 Figure 3.9 African American Share of Taxable Population in North Carolina, 1754 –1773 Table 3.34 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1754 Table 3.35 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1755 Table 3.36 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1756 Table 3.37 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1765 Table 3.38 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1766 Table 3.39 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1767
74 74 75 75 75 76 76 77 77
Conclusions on the African American Electorate in the Colonial Era
78
Notes 78
Chapter 4. The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
79
The Demography of African Americans in Revolutionary America
80
Table 4.1 Numbers of Censuses in the Thirteen Original States, 1774–1789
81
Table 4.2 Populations by Census or Estimate, 1774–1789
82
Potential African American Voters in Revolutionary America
84
Table 4.3 African American Populations in the Thirteen Original States, 1774–1789
85
Table 4.4 Voting Rights, Population, and Population Change of African Americans in the Thirteen Original States: The Revolutionary Era
86
County-Level Election Data in the Revolutionary Era
87
Table 4.5 Town-Level Demography for Rhode Island, Census of 1774 Table 4.6 Town-Level Demography for Rhode Island, Census of 1783 Table 4.7 County-Level Demography for Connecticut, Census of 1774 Table 4.8 County-Level Demography for Connecticut, Census of 1782 Table 4.9 County-Level Demography for New Hampshire, Census of 1775 Table 4.10 County-Level Demography for New Hampshire, Census of 1786 Table 4.11 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1786 Table 4.12 County-Level Demography for Massachusetts, Census of 1776 Table 4.13 County-Level Demography for North Carolina, Incomplete Census of 1786 Table 4.14 Local-Level Population Censuses and Enumerations of African Americans during the Period of the American Revolution
87 88 89 89 89 90 90 91 91 92
Conclusions on the African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Period
92
Notes 92
Chapter 5. The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861: The Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause 95 The Demography of African Americans in Antebellum America Table 5.1 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1788–1789 Elections Table 5.2 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1790 Census Table 5.3 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1800 Census Table 5.4 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1810 Census Table 5.5 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1820 Census Table 5.6 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1830 Census Table 5.7 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1840 Census Table 5.8 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1850 Census Table 5.9 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1860 Census Figure 5.1 Number of States Admitted to the United States by Decade, 1787–1860s Figure 5.2 Numerical Parity of Free and Slave States in the United States by Decade, 1787–1860s
96 98 99 100 101 102 104 105 107 108 109 109
Longitudinal Analysis of the Three-Fifths Clause
109
Table 5.10 States Admitted to the Union of the United States, Founding–1870 Figure 5.3 Number of House of Representatives Seats Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s Figure 5.4 Percentage of House of Representatives Seats Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s Figure 5.5 Percentage of Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s Figure 5.6 Total Electoral Votes and Number of Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s Figure 5.7 African American Population Growth in the United States by Slavery Status, 1790–1860 Figure 5.8 White Population Growth in the United States by Slavery Status of Residence, 1790–1860 Figure 5.9 African American and White Population Growth in the United States, 1790–1860 Figure 5.10 Number of Electoral Votes by Slavery Status Grouping of States, 1787–1860s Figure 5.11 Two-Fifths of African American Slave Population as a Share of Total U.S. Population, 1790–1860 Table 5.11 Number of Seats in the House of Representatives Held by the Slave States during and after the Period of the Three-Fifths Clause, 1860, 1872, and 1882
109 110 110 111
Summary and Conclusions on the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause
115
112 112 112 113 113 114 115
Notes 115
Chapter 6. The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867
117
Potential African American Voters in Antebellum and Civil War America
118
Table 6.1 Suffrage Rights of Free-Men-of-Color in the New States, 1791–1867
118
Table 6.2 Year of Eventual Suffrage Exclusion for Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color in the Thirteen Original States
119
Table 6.3 Free African American Population in States that Provided Suffrage Rights to African Americans, 1790–1867
120
African American Partisanship in State Elections, 1788–1866
120
African American Voting in Federal Elections, 1788–1866
126
Table 6.4 Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates in Massachusetts and New York, 1828–1860
129
Table 6.5 Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, 1828–1860
130
Table 6.6 Partial Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates, 1828–1860
130
Summary and Conclusions on the African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America
131
Notes 131
Chapter 7. The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1788–1870
133
The Politics of Total Reversals: Denial of Suffrage Rights in Eight States during the Antebellum and Civil War Eras
134
Table 7.1 Number of Petitions For and Against African American Suffrage Rights in Pennsylvania: Selected Counties by Submission to the 1837–1838 State Constitutional Convention
136
The Politics of Partial Reversals: The Abridgement of Suffrage Rights in New York and Rhode Island
137
The Politics of Reversal: Granting Suffrage Rights in Louisiana: 1838–1860
139
Map 7.1 Rapides Parish, Louisiana 1840
139
Table 7.2 Presidential Election Vote and Voting Age African American Male Population in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, 1828–1860
140
Figure 7.1 Percentage of Presidential Vote in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, for the Major and Third Political Parties, 1836–1860
141
Summary and Conclusions on the Reversals of African American Suffrage Rights
141
Map 7.2 States that Reversed Suffrage Rights for African Americans during the Antebellum Era
141
Notes 142
Chapter 8. Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870
145
The Nature and Scope of the Statewide Referenda, 1846–1870
146
Figure 8.1 Number of Referenda on Suffrage Rights for African Americans in States and Territories, 1846–1870
147
Table 8.1 Referenda on Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color in States and Federal Territories, 1846–1870
147
States with Multiple Statewide Referenda for Suffrage Rights, 1846–1870
148
Table 8.2 Results of Four Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Wisconsin, 1846, 1849, 1857, and 1870
149
Figure 8.2 Results of Four Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Wisconsin, 1847–1865
150
Table 8.3 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in New York, 1846, 1860, and 1869
151
Figure 8.3 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in New York, 1846–1869
151
Table 8.4 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Minnesota, 1865, 1867, and 1868
151
Figure 8.4 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Minnesota, 1865–1868
152
Table 8.5 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Michigan, 1850, 1868, and 1870
153
Figure 8.5 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Michigan, 1850–1870
154
Table 8.6 Results of Two Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Iowa, 1857 and 1868
155
Figure 8.6 Results of Two Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Iowa, 1857–1868
156
States with Single Statewide Referenda for Suffrage Rights, 1862–1868
156
Table 8.7 Results of Five Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Illinois (1862), Connecticut (1865), Kansas (1867), Ohio (1867), and Missouri (1868)
157
Figure 8.7 Results of Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Illinois, Connecticut, Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri, 1862–1868
157
The Failure of Suffrage Rights Referenda in Federal Territories after the Civil War, 1865–1868: Congress Steps In
157
Table 8.8 Results of Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Six Federal Territories and the District of Columbia, 1865–1868
157
Summary and Conclusions on African American Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
158
Map 8.1 States and Territories that Held Referenda on Suffrage Rights for African Americans, 1846–1870
159
Notes 159
Chapter 9. Voting Behavior of the African American Electorate prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1788–1870
161
The Evidentiary Sources for Inferences about African American Voting and Partisan Behavior prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
162
Table 9.1 Three Evidentiary Sources Used to Estimate African American Voting Behavior in Presidential Elections, 1789–1868
163
The Number and Percentage of States Allowing Popular and African American Voting prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
164
Table 9.2 Number of African American Suffrage States by Popular Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1789–1868
165
Figure 9.1 Number of African American Suffrage States in Presidential Elections with and without Popular Voting before the Fifteenth Amendment, 1789–1868
166
Figure 9.2 Percent of States in Presidential Elections Having African American Suffrage with and without Popular Voting Before the Fifteenth Amendment, 1789–1868
166
Table 9.3 Number of African American Suffrage States Making Use of Popular and Non-Popular Voting in Presidential Elections, 1789–1868
167
African American Partisanship and Voting Behavior in Presidential Elections prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
167
Figure 9.3 Number of African American Suffrage States Making Use of Popular and Non-Popular Voting in Presidential Elections, 1789–1868
168
Table 9.4 Three Categories of African American State Party Voting prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
170
Summary and Conclusions on African American Partisanship prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
171
Map 9.1 States Permitting African American Suffrage before the Fifteenth Amendment, 1789–1868
172
Table 9.5 Free African American Male Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1789–1868
173
Notes 177
Chapter 10. The First African American Nominees and Public Office Holders, 1776–1870
179
African American Delegates at the National Conventions of the Anti-Slavery Political Parties
180
Table 10.1 African American Delegates at Anti-Slavery Political Party National Conventions
181
The Anti-Slavery Parties and African American Presidential Nominees
184
Table 10.2 African American Nominees for President and Vice President, 1847–1888
184
Table 10.3 Nominating Votes and Percentages for Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates at Selected National Conventions of the Liberty and Republican Parties, 1848–1888
185
African American Candidates for Local and State Offices: Before and Immediately after the Civil War
185
Table 10.4 African American Candidates for Local, State, and National Offices, 1792–1866
185
Summary and Conclusions on African American Elected Officials prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
186
Map 10.1 States with African American Candidates for Local, State, and National Offices, 1776–1866
187
Notes 189
Chapter 11. The National Equal Rights League
191
The Rise of African American Political Agency: Individual and Small Group Protests
192
The Birth and Evolution of the National Convention Movement: The Forerunner of the National Equal Rights League
193
Figure 11.1 Number of African American National and State Conventions in Antebellum America, 1830–1865
194
Table 11.1 Number of Delegates and Honorary Members Participating in the Founding National Negro Convention by State, 1830 194 Map 11.1 States and Numbers of Delegates and Honorary Members at the National Negro Convention, 1830
195
Table 11.2 Numbers of States, Cities, and Delegates Participating in the National Negro Convention Movement, 1831–1855 196
The Rise and Evolution of the National Equal Rights League, 1864–1865
197
Table 11.3 Numbers of Cities and Delegates, by Region and State, Participating in the Founding Convention of the National Equal Rights League, 1864 198 Map 11.2 States of the Founding Convention of the National Equal Rights League, 1864
199
Figure 11.2 The Cover of a Model Constitution Pamphlet Used by Local Branches of the National Equal Rights League
199
Diagram 11.1 The Standing Committees of the National Equal Rights League
201
Table 11.4 Leadership and Organizational Structure of the National Equal Rights League at the First Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, October 19–21, 1865 201 Map 11.3 Branch States of the National Equal Rights League, 1865
202
The NERL, Congress, and the Elective Franchise for Southern Freedmen: The Four Military Reconstruction Acts of 1867
206
Table 11.5 Delegate States and Number of Delegates to the National Convention of Colored Men of America, 1869 208 Map 11.4 Delegate States and Number of Delegates to the National Convention of Colored Men of America, 1869
209
Figure 11.3 Number of Delegates to the National Convention of Colored Men by State, 1869
210
Diagram 11.2 The Rise, Evolution, and Demise of the Three Different National Equal Rights Leagues, 1864–1915
212
Summary and Conclusions on the National Equal Rights League
213
Notes 214
Chapter 12. The Civil War Election and the African American Soldiers’ Vote, 1864
217
The Partisan and Political Debates over Soldiers Voting
218
The Demography and Deployment of African American Soldiers in the Civil War
220
Table 12.1 Civil War African American Troops as Percentage of Total Union Troops by State
221
African American Soldiers’ Field Voting Behavior in the 1864 Presidential Election
222
Table 12.2 Reported Soldier’s Field Vote in the 1864 Presidential Election, Ranked in Order of the Number of Votes for Lincoln-Johnson by State
222
Map 12.1 The Reported Soldiers’ Field Vote in the 1864 Presidential Election for Lincoln vs. McClellan 223 Figure 12.1 Reported Soldiers’ Field Vote in the 1864 Presidential Election for Lincoln vs. McClellan 224 Table 12.3 African American Soldiers’ Field Vote in the 1864 Presidential Election
224
Map 12.2 The African American Soldiers’ Vote in the 1864 Presidential Election 225 Table 12.4 Comparing the Number of the African American Troops to the Difference in Popular Votes between Candidates of the 1864 Presidential Election by State
226
Figure 12.2 African American Soldiers’ Field Vote in the 1864 Presidential Election 227 Table 12.5 Popular Vote, Soldiers’ Vote, and Electoral Vote in the Presidential Election of 1864
228
Summary and Conclusions on the African American Soldiers’ Vote
229
Notes 230
Chapter 13. African American Voter Registration and Turnout in 1867 Southern State Elections: The First, Second, Third, and Fourth Military Reconstruction Acts
231
The Four Military Reconstruction Acts: An Overview
233
Table 13.1 Nature, Scope, and Power of the Four Military Reconstructions Acts
233
The Sources of Political Antagonism and Tension: Southern States Legislatures’ Votes on the Fourteenth Amendment
234
Table 13.2 Voting of Southern White State Legislators For and Against the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1866–1867
235
State Constitutional Conventions in the South: Voter Registration in 1867 and Delegates
237
Table 13.3 Number and Percentage of African American and White Registered Voters in the South, 1867 (Original Senate Report) Figure 13.1 Percentage of Registered Voters, African American and White, in States of the South in 1867 (Original Senate Report) Table 13.4 Number and Percentage of African Americans and Whites Voting for State Constitutional Conventions in the South, 1867 Figure 13.2 Percentage of Voters for Constitutional Conventions, African Americans and Whites, in States of the South, 1867 Table 13.5 Number and Percentage of African American and White Voters against State Constitutional Conventions in the South, 1867 Figure 13.3 Percentage of Voters against Constitutional Conventions, African Americans and Whites, in States of the South, 1867 Table 13.6 Number and Percentage of African American and White Registered Non-Voters on State Constitutional Conventions in the South, 1867 Figure 13.4 Percentage of Non-Voters, African Americans and Whites, in Elections for State Constitutional Conventions in the South, 1867 Table 13.7 Number and Percentage of African American and White Voters Disenfranchised by the Military Reconstruction Acts Figure 13.5 Percentage of African American and White Voters Disenfranchised by the Military Reconstruction Acts Table 13.8 Number and Percentage of Registered and Disenfranchised Voters by Race, Southern State Constitutional Convention Referenda, 1867
239 239 240 241 242 242 243 243 244 244 245
Table 13.9 Number and Percentage of African American and White Registered Voters in the South, 1867–1869 (Senate Report Revised and Updated with New Scholarship)
246
Map 13.1 States in the South Differentiated by Median Percentage of African American Registered Voters, 1867
247
Figure 13.6 Percentage of Registered Voters, African American and White, in States of the South, 1867 (Updated Senate Report)
247
Table 13.10 Initial and Supplemental Registrations: The Increase in New Voters
248
The Relationship between the Initial Freedmen Voters and the Number of Freedmen Elected as Delegates to the State Constitutional Conventions, 1867–1868
248
Table 13.11 Number and Percentage of Freedmen and Whites at the State Constitutional Conventions, 1867–1868 Table 13.12 African American Shares of Registered Voters and State Convention Delegations in the South, 1867–1869
248 249
The First African American Federal Registrars: The Case of Georgia
249
Table 13.13 Demographic Characteristics of African American Registrars in Georgia, 1867–1868
250
Map 13.2 Geographic Distribution by County of Residence of African American Federal Reistrars for Georgia, 1867
250
Summary and Conclusions on African American Voters of 1867
251
Table 13.14 Composite Table of Total Voters Ranked by Percentage of Registered Voters
252
Table 13.15 Voters by Race in the Electorate of the Reconstructed South
252
Figure 13.7 Total Voters by Race in States of the Reconstructed South, 1867–1868
253
Notes 253
Chapter 14. African American Voting Behavior in the First Presidential and Congressional Elections after the Abolition of Slavery in the South, 1868 and 1872
255
The African American 1868 Presidential Vote in Seven Southern States
257
Map 14.1 Majority African American Counties in the Southern States of the 1868 Presidential Election
258
Figure 14.1 Number of Southern Counties by Census Racial Majorities, 1860–2000
258
Table 14.1 Number of Southern Counties by Census Racial Majorities, 1860–2000
259
Table 14.2 Number of Majority African American Counties by Census, 1860–2000
259
Table 14.3 Number and Percentage of African American Majority Counties in the Seven Southern States of the 1868 Presidential and Congressional Elections: A Rank Ordering
260
Table 14.4 Popular and Electoral Votes in the Seven Southern States, 1868 Presidential Election
260
Table 14.5 Gain and Loss of Majority African American Counties Voting for the Republican Party in the South in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
261
Table 14.6 Gain and Loss of Majority White Counties Voting for the Republican Party in the South in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
262
Table 14.7 Gain and Loss of Votes in Majority African American Counties Voting for the Republican Party in the South in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
262
Table 14.8 Gain and Loss of Votes in Majority White Counties Voting for the Republican Party in the South in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
263
Figure 14.2 Percentage of Racial Majority Counties in the South Voting for the Republican Party in the 1868 Presidential Election
264
The African American 1872 Presidential Vote in the Eleven Southern States
264
Map 14.2 Majority African American Counties in the Southern States of the 1872 Presidential Election
265
Table 14.9 Comparing the Vote of the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections in the South for the Major Political Parties
266
Figure 14.3 Percentage of Racial Majority Counties in the South Voting for the Republican Party in the 1872 Presidential Election
268
The Democratic Presidential Vote in the African American and White Majority Counties in 1868 and 1872
268
Figure 14.4 Percentage of Racial Majority Counties in the South Voting for the Democratic Party in the 1868 Presidential Election
269
Figure 14.5 Percentage of Racial Majority Counties in the South Voting for the Democratic Party in the 1872 Presidential Election
270
The Comparative Portrait of Party Voting in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
270
Table 14.10 Gain and Loss of Counties Voting for the Republican Party in Majority African American Counties of the Original Seven Southern States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
271
Table 14.11 Gain and Loss of Counties Voting for the Republican Party in Majority White Counties of the Original Seven Southern States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
272
Table 14.12 Gain and Loss of Votes in Majority African American Counties Voting for the Republican Party in the Original Seven Southern States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
272
Table 14.13 Gain and Loss of Votes in Majority White Counties Voting for the Republican Party in the Original Seven Southern States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
273
The African American Congressional Vote in the 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1872 Elections
273
Table 14.14 Vote for African American Republican Congressional Candidates, 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1872
274
Summary and Conclusions on African American Voting Behavior in 1868 and 1872
275
Figure 14.6 Scatter Plot of Republican Party Percentage of Vote and African American Percentage of Population in the South for the 1868 Presidential Election
276
Figure 14.7 Scatter Plot of Republican Party Percentage of Vote and African American Percentage of Population in the South for the 1872 Presidential Election
277
Notes 277
Chapter 15. African American Voting Behavior in the First Presidential and Congressional Elections after the Abolition of Slavery in the Border, Midwest, and Far West States, 1868 and 1872
279
The African American Presidential Vote in the Border States, 1868 and 1872
280
Map 15.1 Border States, Midwest States, and Far West States with Noteworthy African American Voting Behavior, 1868, 1872, and Beyond
281
Map 15.2 Majority African American Counties in the Border States, 1860 Census
282
Table 15.1 Comparing the Vote of the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections in the Border States for the Major Political Parties
282
Table 15.2 Comparing the Vote of the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections in Border State Counties with Majority African American Populations
283
Table 15.3 Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in the Border States
283
Table 15.4 Border States and the Potential African American Vote, 1868
283
Figure 15.1 Comparing the Republican Party Percentage of the Vote in Majority African American Counties of the Border States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections 285 Figure 15.2 Comparing the Democratic Party Percentage of the Vote in Majority African American Counties of the Border States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections 286 Figure 15.3 Comparing Votes and Percent of Votes for the Democratic Party Presidential Candidate in Majority African American Counties of the Border States in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections 286 Table 15.5 Counties of West Virginia Ranked by Number of African American Registered Voters, 1870
287
Table 15.6 Partial Correlations between African American Registered Voters in West Virginia, 1870, and the Percentage of Votes for the Major Political Parties in the 1868 and 1872 Presidential Elections
289
A Comparative Regional Portrait of the African American Voter in the Southern and Border State Regions
290
The African American Vote and Partisanship in the Midwest and Far West: The Historical Evidence
291
Summary and Conclusions on African American Voting in 1868 and 1872 outside the South
293
Notes 294
Chapter 16. African American Voting Behavior in Subsequent Elections through Disenfranchisement, 1868–1920
297
Map 16.1 Electoral Vote by State, Presidential Election of 1876
300
The 1876 Presidential Vote of African Americans in the South and the Border States Table 16.1 1876 Presidential Election Results and 1870 Census Information for the African American Majority Counties of the Border and Southern States Table 16.2 1876 Presidential Election Results and 1870 Census Information for the White Majority Counties of the Border and Southern States Figure 16.1 Support of Racial Majority Counties for the Republican Party in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina Presidential Elections of 1868, 1872, and 1876 Figure 16.2 Support of Racial Majority Counties for the Democratic Party in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina Presidential Elections of 1868, 1872, and 1876 Table 16.3 Election Results for Rapides Parish, Louisiana, 1868–1920 Figure 16.3 Support for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, Presidential Elections of 1868–1920 Figure 16.4 Support of Racial Majority Counties for the Republican Party in the Border States Presidential Elections of 1868, 1872, and 1876 Figure 16.5 Support of Racial Majority Counties for the Democratic Party in the Border States Presidential Elections of 1868, 1872, and 1876
301 301 302 303 304 305 306 306 307
The Voting Behavior of African Americans in Presidential Elections from 1868–1920 in the Southern and Border States
307
Figure 16.6 Mean Support for Democratic and Republican Parties in African American Majority Counties of the South, 1868–1920
308
Figure 16.7 Mean Support for Democratic and Republican Parties in Majority White Counties of the South, 1868–1920
309
Figure 16.8 Mean Support for Democratic and Republican Parties in Racial Majority Counties of the South, 1868–1920
310
Figure 16.9 Mean Support for Democratic and Republican Parties in Racial Majority Counties of the Border States, 1868–1920
310
County-Level Analysis for 1868–1920 Southern and Border States Elections
311
Table 16.4 Counties with the Largest Black Majorities in Each State of the South, 1860–1920 Censuses
311
Figure 16.10 Mean Support for the Democratic and Republican Parties in Largest Majority African American Counties of the South, Presidential Elections, 1868–1920
312
Table 16.5 Counties with the Largest White Majorities in Each State of the South, 1860–1920 Censuses
313
Figure 16.11 Mean Support for the Democratic and Republican Parties in Largest Majority White Counties of the South, Presidential Elections, 1868–1920
314
Table 16.6 Number of All-White Counties in the South and Border States, 1860–1920
314
Table 16.7 Counties with the Largest Black Majorities in Each of the Border States, 1860–1920 Censuses
315
Table 16.8 Counties with the Largest White Majorities in Each of the Border States, 1860–1920 Censuses
315
Summary and Conclusions Concerning African American Voting from 1868–1920
316
Figure 16.12 Mean Support for the Democratic and Republican Parties, by Race, in Largest Majority Counties of the Border States, Presidential Elections, 1868–1920
316
Figure 16.13 Support for the Democratic Party in the Southern States, 1868–1920
317
Figure 16.14 Support for the Republican Party in the Southern States, 1868–1920
318
Figure 16.15 Support for the Democratic Party in the Border States, 1868–1920
318
Figure 16.16 Support for the Republican Party in the Border States, 1868–1920
319
Notes 319
Chapter 17. African American Voting and Non-Voting Behavior in the Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1908) and Beyond
321
The Literature on the Redemption Movement: A New Linkage to the Era of Disenfranchisement
325
Figure 17.1 Passage of Separate-Coach Laws in the Redeemed Southern States
326
Table 17.1 Elapsed Years from Southern Redemption to New State Constitutions
327
The Era of Disenfranchisement: Elimination of Freedmen Voting Rights
327
Map 17.1 Southern and Border States by Category of Disenfranchisement, 1888–1908
328
Table 17.2 Enactment Years of the Poll Tax, Literacy Test, Grandfather Clause, and Segregation Laws in the South and Border States
329
Table 17.3 Characteristics of Poll Tax Laws in the South, 1890–1918
330
Table 17.4 Characteristics of Literacy Test Laws and Their Alternatives in the South, 1890–1918
331
Table 17.5 Classification of Southern and Border States Grouped by the Stringency of Disenfranchisement Laws, 1890–1920
332
Table 17.6 Presidential Election Turnout Means of Non-Poll Tax and Poll Tax Counties for the South and Border States
332
Figure 17.2 Impact of the Poll Tax in Racial Majority Counties of the Southern and Border States, 1892–1920
333
Table 17.7 Presidential Election Turnout Means of Non-Literacy Test and Literacy Test Counties for the Southern and Border States
333
Figure 17.3 Impact of Literacy Tests in Racial Majority Counties of the South and Border States, 1892–1920
334
Table 17.8 Presidential Election Turnout Means of Non-Grandfather Clause and Grandfather Clause Counties for the South and Border States
334
Figure 17.4 Impact of the Grandfather Clause in Racial Majority Counties of the South and Border States, 1892–1920
335
Table 17.9 Presidential Election Voter Turnout in Non-Poll Tax and Poll Tax Black Counties of the South and Border States, 1892–1920
335
Figure 17.5 Presidential Election Turnout Means of Non-Poll Tax and Poll Tax Black Counties in the South and Border States
336
Table 17.10 Presidential Election Voter Turnout in Non-Literacy Test and Literacy Test Black Counties of the South and Border States, 1892–1920
336
Figure 17.6 Presidential Election Turnout Means of Non-Literacy Test and Literacy Test Black Counties in the South and Border States
337
Table 17.11 Presidential Election Voter Turnout in Non-Grandfather Clause and Grandfather Clause Black Counties of the South and Border States, 1892–1920
337
Figure 17.7 Presidential Election Turnout Means of Non-Grandfather Clause and Grandfather Clause Black Counties in the South and Border States
338
Table 17.12 Voter Turnout in Southern Counties Imposing the Poll Tax, Literacy Tests, and the Grandfather Clause, 1892–1920
339
Figure 17.8 Comparing the Effects of the Poll Tax, Literacy Tests, and the Grandfather Clause on Voter Turnout in Southern Counties, 1892–1920
340
Figure 17.9 African American and White Voter Registration in Louisiana, 1867–1964
341
Figure 17.10 African Americans as Percentage of Registered Voters in Louisiana, 1900–1948
341
Table 17.13 Longitudinal Analyses of African American Disfranchisement in Louisiana, 1867–1964
342
Table 17.14 Effect of Understanding Clause on Voters in White Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1892
344
Figure 17.11 Understanding Clause Effect on Registering Black and White Voters in Black and White Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1892
345
Maintaining the Era of Disenfranchisement: The White Primaries and Run-Off Primaries in the South
345
Table 17.15 Effect of Understanding Clause on Voters in African American Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1892
346
Table 17.16 Enactment Years of the Direct and White Primaries in the South and Border States, 1888–1915
347
Table 17.17 Year of Run-Off Primary Law Adoption in the South
347
Map 17.2 Southern States that Implemented the White Primary, 1888–1915
348
Rare Data in Georgia, North Carolina, and Oklahoma
349
Table 17.18 Results of Disenfranchisement Referendum in North Carolina by County and Racial Majority, 1900
350
Figure 17.12 Number of Counties by Racial Majority Voting For or Against Disenfranchisement Referendum in North Carolina, 1900
351
Figure 17.13 Percent of Counties by Racial Majority Voting For or Against Disenfranchisement Referendum in North Carolina, 1900
351
Map 17.3 Racial Majority Counties of North Carolina, 1900
352
Figure 17.14 Number of Counties by Racial Majority Voting For or Against Disenfranchisement Referendum in Georgia, 1908
354
Figure 17.15 Percent of Counties by Racial Majority Voting For or Against Disenfranchisement Referendum in Georgia, 1908 Table 17.19 Results of Disenfranchisement Referendum in Georgia by County and Racial Majority, 1908 Map 17.4 Racial Majority Counties of Georgia, 1908
354 355 357
Summary and Conclusions on the Era of Disenfranchisement
359
Table 17.20 Gain or Loss in Number of African American Registered Voters in the South from 1867 to after Disenfranchisement (1888–1908) Figure 17.16 Loss in Number of African American Registered Voters in the South from 1867 to after Disenfranchisement
360 360
Notes 360
Chapter 18. The Lodge Bill and Beyond: Proposed Federal Supervision of Federal Elections in the South, 1861–1921
363
Political Parties, Congress, and the Legislation before the Lodge Bill
364
Figure 18.1 Republican and Democratic Party Majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1860–1920 Figure 18.2 Republican and Democratic Party Majorities in the U.S. Senate, 1860–1920 Figure 18.3 Republican and Democratic Party Majorities in the U.S. Congress, 1860–1920 Table 18.1 Political Party in Control of the Presidency and Congress, 1860–1920
365 366 367 367
Republicans, Democrats, and the Politics of Enforcement of Suffrage Rights
368
Figure 18.4 Number of Convictions under the Enforcement Acts by Region and Year, 1870–1894 Figure 18.5 Number of Dismissals under the Enforcement Acts by Region and Year, 1870–1894 Figure 18.6 Number of Criminal Prosecutions under the Enforcement Acts in the South, 1870–1894 Figure 18.7 Number of Criminal Prosecutions under the Enforcement Acts in the Border States, 1870–1894 Table 18.2 Number of Criminal Cases in the Enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment in the South and Border States, 1870–1877 Figure 18.8 Number of Enforcement Cases for the Fifteenth Amendment in Southern States, 1870–1877 Figure 18.9 Number of Enforcement Cases for the Fifteenth Amendment in Border States, 1870–1877 Figure 18.10 Percentage of Enforcement Cases for the Fifteenth Amendment in Southern and Border States, 1870–1877
368 369 370 370
The Republican Party’s Lodge Bill: The Failure to Pass the New Enforcement Act
373
Figure 18.11 House of Representatives Vote of the Major Political Parties in the 51st Congress for H.R. 11045 (the Lodge Bill), 1890 Figure 18.12 Senate Vote of the Major Political Parties in the 51st Congress for Wolcott’s Motion (1891) Figure 18.13 Republican and Democratic Party Majorities in the U.S. Congress during the Administrations of President Grover Cleveland, 1885–1889 and 1893–1897
371 371 372 372
374 375 376
The Senate Popular Election Bill and the Women’s Suffrage Bill: The Republican Party’s New Political Opportunities
376
Table 18.3 House of Representatives Vote for Congressional Investigations of Suffrage Restrictions (the Burleigh Bill), 56th Congress, 1st Session, 1900 Figure 18.14 Number of Repealed Sections from the Enforcement Acts by Year and Political Party in Control of Congress
378 379
Summary and Conclusions on the Lodge Bill and Beyond
380
Diagram 18.1 The Lodge Bill in the Political Context of the Era of Disenfranchisement, 1877–1920 Table 18.4 Historical Composition of the United States Congress by Session, 1861–1921 Table 18.5 Criminal Prosecutions under the Enforcement Acts, by Region and Year, 1870–1894
381 381 383
Map 18.1 Fifteenth Amendment Enforcement Cases in the South and Border States, 1870–1877
384
Notes 384
Chapter 19. African American Voters and Electoral Empowerment in the North, 1876–1944: A Mobilizer of the Re-enfranchisement Drive in the South
387
The 1876 Chicago, Illinois, Electoral Symbol for African American Electoral Empowerment: North and South
389
Table 19.1 Illinois Legislature Election Outcomes with African American Candidates, 1868–1944
392
Beyond Illinois: Pioneer African American Multistate Legislative Empowerment in the North: An Additional Mobilizer
394
Figure 19.1 Votes for African American State Legislative Candidates in Illinois, 1876–1944
395
Figure 19.2 Number of African Americans Running for and Elected to the Illinois State Legislature, 1876–1944
395
Table 19.2 Early Elections of African American State Legislators, 1868–1944 397 Map 19.1 African American State Legislators, 1868–1944
401
Table 19.3 Pioneering African American Women State Legislative Candidates, 1868–1944
401
Map 19.2 African American Women State Legislative Candidates, 1868–1944
402
Beyond State Legislative Empowerment—Pioneer African American Congressional Empowerment in the North: A New Mobilizer
402
Table 19.4 Election Results Statistics for the First Congressional District of Illinois, 1920–1944
404
Figure 19.3 Votes for Democratic and Republican Candidates in the First Congressional District of Illinois, 1920–1944
405
Figure 19.4 Percentage of the Vote for Democratic and Republican Candidates in the First Congressional District of Illinois, 1920–1944 405
The Roots and Rising of the Northern African American Electorate in Presidential Elections: Another Mobilizer
406
Figure 19.5 Percentage of African American Voters Voting Democratic for President in Selected Wards of Chicago and Philadelphia, 1932–1960
407
Summary and Conclusions on African American Voters and Electoral Empowerment in the North
407
Notes 409
Chapter 20. The Enfranchisement of African American Women, 1669–1921
411
Long before the Women Suffrage Movement: Free Women of Color Voting in Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum America
412
Table 20.1 Inferred and Actual Female Populations in Colonial Virginia Including Years of African American Suffrage Denials
414
Table 20.2 Inferred and Actual Female Populations in Revolutionary and Early Antebellum New Jersey Including Years of Federal Censuses, Presidential Elections, and the Denial of African American and Women Suffrage
415
Table 20.3 Potential African American Female Voters in Colonial Virginia and Revolutionary/Antebellum New Jersey
416
The Struggle for the Re-Acquisition of Voting Rights for African American Women
416
Table 20.4 Potential Women Voters in States and Territories Fully Enfranchising Women Prior to the Nineteenth Amendment
420
Table 20.5 Potential Women Voters in States Enfranchising Women for Votes in Municipal Elections or on Tax and Bond Issues Prior to the Nineteenth Amendment (Exclusive of States Granting Full Suffrage to Women)
421
Table 20.6 Potential Women Voters in States Enfranchising Women to Vote in Elections Dealing with Schools prior to the Nineteenth Amendment (Exclusive of States Granting Full Suffrage to Women)
422
The Nineteenth Amendment: African American Women Suffrage Granted and Restricted in the South
424
Map 20.1 States and Territories that Fully Enfranchised Women prior to the Nineteenth Amendment
425
Table 20.7 Potential Women Voters in States that Enacted Statutes Permitting Women to Vote in Presidential Elections before the Nineteenth Amendment
426
Table 20.8 Distribution of African American Voters by Region and State, Census of 1910
427
Figure 20.1 Distribution of Eligible African American Women Voters by Region, 1910–1930
429
Table 20.9 Distribution of African American Voters by Region and State, Census of 1920
430
Table 20.10 Distribution of African American Voters by Region and State, Census of 1930
431
Table 20.11 Number and Percentage of African American Women Disenfranchised in the 1920 Presidential Election—The NAACP Investigations
434
Map 20.2 States and Cities in which the NAACP Investigated Disenfranchisement of African American Women in the 1920 Presidential Election
435
Table 20.12 1920 Voter Registration of African American Women (and Men) in Selected Cities of North Carolina
435
Table 20.13 African American Registered Voters in Jacksonville, Florida, by Gender, Marital Status, and Occupation: Paul Ortiz Data, 1920 437 Table 20.14 Summary of Election Results by County and Racial Majority for Superintendent of Public Instruction in Virginia, 1921
438
Summary and Conclusions on the Enfranchisement of African American Women
438
Notes 439
Chapter 21. The Electoral Revolt of African American Voters in 1920–1921 and Beyond
441
Motives and Strategies for African American Satellite Parties
442
The Roots and Rising of the Black and Tan Republicans
443
The African American Electoral Revolt in the 1920 Elections: State and National Elections
445
Table 21.1 Votes and Percentages for the Black and Tan Republican Candidates and Opposition Parties in Arkansas, Florida, Texas, and Virginia, 1920–1928
447
Table 21.2 Votes and Percentages for the Black and Tan Republican Candidates and Opposition Parties in Black and White Majority Counties, 1920–1921
448
The Longitudinal Voting Behavior of the Black and Tan Republicans: Mississippi and South Carolina
449
Table 21.3 Comparing the Republican Vote of the Black and Tans vs. Lily-Whites in Racial Majority Counties, 1920–1921 Table 21.4 Total and Factional Republican Vote in Mississippi for the Presidential Elections of 1928–1956 Figure 21.1 Black and Tan vs. Lily-White Vote Percentages for Republican Presidential Candidates in Mississippi, 1928–1956 Figure 21.2 Black and Tan vs. Lily-White Vote Percentages for Republican Presidential Candidates in African American Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1928–1956 Figure 21.3 Black and Tan vs. Lily-White Vote Percentages for Republican Presidential Candidates in White Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1928–1956 Figure 21.4 Black and Tan Vote Percentages for Republican Presidential Candidates in African American vs. White Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1928–1956 Table 21.5 Vote of Republican Factions in South Carolina for Selected Presidential, Senatorial, and Gubernatorial Elections, 1920–1952 Figure 21.5 Percentages of Republican Presidential Votes for Black and Tans vs. Lily-Whites in South Carolina, 1920, 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1952
450 451
Summary and Conclusions on the Electoral Revolt of the Black and Tan Republicans
456
Map 21.1 States with Black and Tan Gubernatorial and Senatorial Candidates in the African American Electoral Revolt of 1920–1921
457
452 452 453 453 454 455
Notes 457
VOLUME 2 Chapter 22. African American Registration and Voting in the South, 1920–1944
459
Legal Battles for African American Voting Rights
460
African American Voters in the Urban Areas of the South, 1920–1940s
461
Table 22.1 First Generation Voting Rights Cases Table 22.2 Total Votes and Percentages for Candidates in Three San Antonio Mayoral Elections, 1939–1941 Table 22.3 African American Votes and Percentages in the Mayoral Election of San Antonio, Texas, 1939 Table 22.4 African American Votes and Percentages in the Mayoral Election of San Antonio, Texas, 1941 Table 22.5 African American Votes and Percentages in the Mayoral Run-Off Election of San Antonio, Texas, 1941 Figure 22.1 African American and Other Votes in San Antonio, Texas, Mayoral Elections, 1939–1941 Table 22.6 Comparing Literate Voting-Age Black Population and Estimated Black Voting Population in Selected Cities and Counties of the Southern States, 1920 Table 22.7 Summary of Voting-Age Blacks and Voting Black Populations in Selected Cities and Counties of the Southern States, 1920
462 464 465 465 465 466 467 468
Table 22.8 Official Louisiana Voter Registration for the State by Race and for New Orleans African Americans, 1896–1928
468
Figure 22.2 Registered Black Voters in New Orleans as a Percent of Registered Black Voters in Louisiana, 1896–1928
469
Changing the Rules: The Elimination of the Poll Tax by Southern States
469
Map 22.1 Southern Cities and Urban Areas that Allowed the African American Electorate to Vote 1896–1930
470
Table 22.9 Southern States that Voted For or Against Repeal or Reduction of the Poll Tax, 1920–1963
471
Federal Elimination of the Poll Tax: Causes and Effects
473
Map 22.2 Southern States For and Against Repeal of the Poll Tax, 1920–1963
474
Figure 22.3 Results of State Referenda to Repeal or Reduce the Poll Tax, 1920–1963
475
Table 22.10 Analysis of the Vote in the House of Representatives on Final Passage of the Anti-Poll Tax Bills
475
Table 22.11 Analysis of the Vote in the Senate on Cloture Applicable to the Anti-Poll Tax Bills
476
Table 22.12 Ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment by the Southern and Border States
476
Table 22.13 African American Voting-Age Population in the Southern States by Poll Tax Repeal, 1920s–1950s
478
Figure 22.4 African American Voting-Age Population and Southern States by Repeal of the Poll Tax, 1920s–1950s
478
Summary and Conclusions on African American Registration and Voting, 1920–1944
479
Notes 479
Chapter 23. African American Registration and Voting in the South, 1944–1965
481
The Legal Stages in Dismantling the Democratic Party’s White Primary on the Road to Re-enfranchisement
484
Diagram 23.1 The Legal Stages and Cases in Dismantling the Democratic Party’s White Primary: 1921–1953
485
The African American Electorate before the 1965 Voting Rights Act: An Empirical Overview and Case Study Portrait
487
Table 23.1 Estimated Number of African Americans Registered to Vote in the South, 1940–1956
488
Figure 23.1 Percentage Increase in African Americans Registered to Vote in the South, 1940–1956
488
Table 23.2 Estimated Number of African Americans Registered to Vote in the South before and after Smith v. Allwright, 1940–1947
489
Figure 23.2 Top Ten Counties of Alabama by Number of Registered African American Voters, 1956
489
Figure 23.3 Top Ten Counties of Alabama by Percent of Eligible Black Voters Registered to Vote, 1956
490
Figure 23.4 Percentage of Black Voter Registrations in the Top Ten Counties of Alabama by Eligible Black Voter Population, 1956
490
Figure 23.5 Scatter Plot of Eligible Black Voters by Percent of Eligible Black Voters Registed to Vote in Counties of Alabama, 1956
491
Figure 23.6 Number of and Percent Change in African American Voter Registrations in Arkansas, 1930–1956
492
Figure 23.7 Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote in Arkansas and Alabama by African American Share of County Population, 1958
492
Table 23.3 African American Major Party Registration in Florida, 1944–1956 493 Figure 23.8 Major Party African American Voter Registration in Florida, 1944–1956
493
Table 23.4 Top and Bottom Ten Counties of Florida in Number of African American Registered Voters in 1956, and Change Since 1946 494 Figure 23.9 Top Ten Counties of Florida in Number of Registered African American Voters in 1956 and Change from 1946 to 1956
494
Figure 23.10 Bottom Ten Counties of Florida in Number of Registered African American Voters in 1956 and Change from 1946 to 1956
495
Table 23.5 Purged Voters and Hypothetical Impact of African American Voters in Georgia by County, 1946 Gubernatorial Primary
496
Map 23.1 Counties Won by Talmadge Where Registered and Purged African American Voters Exceeded His Margin of Victory, 1946 Georgia Gubernatorial Primary
498
Table 23.6 African American Voter Registration in the State of Georgia and in the Cities of Atlanta and Macon, 1920–1964
499
Figure 23.11 African American Voter Registration in the State of Georgia and in the Cities of Atlanta and Macon, 1920–1964
500
Figure 23.12 Votes in Predominantly African American Precincts Ranked by Percent Turnout, Atlanta, Georgia, Mayoral Primary Election, May 18, 1957
500
Figure 23.13 African American Voter Registration in Louisiana, March 1940–October 1956
501
Figure 23.14 Number of Louisiana Parishes by Percentage of Registered African American Voters, 1956
501
Figure 23.15 Relation between African Americans in Parish Population and African American Voter Registration, Louisiana, 1956
502
Table 23.7 African American Voter Registration by Religio-Cultural Sections of Louisiana, 1956
502
Figure 23.16 African American Voting Behavior, Louisiana Democratic Primary, 1956
503
Figure 23.17 Percentage of African American Vote for the Long Ticket Inside and Outside New Orleans, Louisiana Democratic Primary, 1956
504
Figure 23.18 Percentage of African American Vote in New Orleans for the Long Ticket vs. Morrison Ticket, Louisiana Democratic Primary, 1956
504
Table 23.8 African American Voter Registration and Voting Behavior in Selected Counties of Mississippi, 1946 505 Table 23.9 African American Registration and Voting Behavior in African American Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1954
505
Table 23.10 African American Registration and Voting Behavior in White Majority Counties of Mississippi, 1954
506
Table 23.11 African American Voting Behavior in Selected Counties of Mississippi by Racial Majority, 1946–1954
507
Table 23.12 African American Voter Registration in North Carolina, 1940–1964
508
Table 23.13 Population, VAP, and African American Voter Registration in Sampled Counties of North Carolina, Grouped by Racial Majority, 1956–1958
508
Table 23.14 African American Voter Registration in Tuskegee, Alabama; Macon County, Alabama; Durham County, North Carolina; and Memphis, Tennessee, 1919–1966
510
Table 23.15 Votes for U.S. Senator in South Carolina by County, Ranked by the Progressive Democratic Party Vote, 1944
512
Table 23.16 African American Voter Registration in South Carolina, 1940–1964 514 Table 23.17 African American Voter Registration in South Carolina, by Racial Majority of the County, 1957–1958
515
Table 23.18 African American Voters in Tennessee, 1940–1962 516 Figure 23.19 Number of Eligible and Registered African American Voters in Tennessee, 1940–1952
517
Figure 23.20 Regional Distribution of African American Registered Voters in Texas, 1956
517
Figure 23.21 Percentage of Registered African Americans in Texas Who Voted, by Urban Status, 1956
518
Figure 23.22 Percentage of Registered African Americans Who Voted in Selected Urban Counties of Texas, 1956
518
Map 23.2 African American Voting and Poll Tax Payment in Selected Urban Counties of Texas, 1956
519
Table 23.19 African American Voter Registration in Sampled Counties of Texas, Grouped by Racial Majority Populations, 1956
520
Figure 23.23 Distribution of African American Registered Voters in Cities and Counties of Virginia, 1952 and 1956
521
Table 23.20 Comparison of African American Voter Registration with African American Population and Literacy, Virginia, 1920–1930 521 Table 23.21 African American Voter Registration in Sampled Counties of Virginia, Grouped by Racial Majority Populations, 1958
522
African American Voting Behavior in the 1952 and 1956 Presidential Elections
523
The Rise of Federal Election Statistics on African American Voters, 1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965
523
Table 23.22 Vote of African American Precincts in Southern Cities, Presidential Elections 1952 and 1956
524
Map 23.3 Non-White Population by County in the Southern and Border States, 1950
525
Map 23.4 Non-White Population in the Southern and Border States, 1950
526
Table 23.23 Attempted and Accepted African American Voter Registrations in Macon County, Alabama, 1951–1958 526 Table 23.24 African American Population and Voter Registration in African American Majority Counties of the Southern States, 1958
528
Figure 23.24 Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote Compared to African American Population in African American Majority Counties in the Southern States, 1958
528
Figure 23.25 Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote Compared to African American Percentage of Total Population in the Southern States, 1958 Figure 23.26 Number of African American Voter Registrations in the South by State, 1956 and 1962 Table 23.25 Voter Registration Statistics by County in Mississippi, 1962 and 1964
529 530 531
Using the Commission on Civil Rights Reports to Analyze the V. O. Key Thesis
532
Table 23.26 Percentage of African Americans in County Populations of Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi Compared to Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote, 1958
533
Figure 23.27 Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote by Percentage of African Americans in County Populations of Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi, 1958
534
Table 23.27 Percentage of African Americans in County Populations of Florida and Georgia Compared to Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote, 1958
534
Figure 23.28 Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote by Percentage of African Americans in County Populations of Florida and Georgia, 1958
535
Table 23.28 Percentage of African Americans in County Populations of Louisiana and Texas Compared to Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote, 1956, 1958, and 1959
536
Figure 23.29 Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote by African American Share of County Populations, Louisiana (1956 and 1959) and Texas (1958)
536
Table 23.29 Percentage of African Americans in County Populations of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia Compared to Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote, 1958
537
Figure 23.30 Percentage of Eligible African Americans Registered to Vote by African American Share of County Populations in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, 1958
537
Map 23.5 African American Voting Behavior in Selected African American Majority Counties, 1950
538
Table 23.30 Voting Behavior of African Americans in Selected African American Majority Counties, 1950 539 Table 23.31 African American Voter Registration in Selected Louisiana Parishes, Using Permanent and Periodic Registrations, March 1956–November 1958
540
Conclusions on African American Registration and Voting in the South, 1944–1965
541
Notes 542
Chapter 24. Rare African American Registration and Voting Data: Episodic Events from the 1920s–1964 545 The Nature and Types of African American Electoral Events, 1915–1964
547
Table 24.1 Place and Type of Rare Electoral Events in the South and a Border State, 1896–1964
547
Map 24.1 States and Counties of Rare African American Registration and Voting Data, 1896–1964
548
Table 24.2 African American Statewide Voter Registration Organizations, 1940s–1960s
549
The Socio-Demographic Characteristics of African American Voters: Registrants in Savannah, Georgia: 1915–1916, 1920–1921, and 1924–1926
550
Document 24.1 Original “Oath of Voter” Documents from Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia
551
Document 24.2 Original “Oath of Voter” Documents from Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia
552
Table 24.3 African American Voter Registration by Gender in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1915–1926
553
Table 24.4 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1915–1926
554
Figure 24.1 Percentage Distribution of African American Registered Voters by Year and Gender in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1915–1926
555
Figure 24.2 Number of African American Registered Voters by District in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1920
556
Figure 24.3 Age Distribution of African American Voters Registered in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1915–1926
556
Table 24.5 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1915
557
Table 24.6 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1916
557
Table 24.7 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1920
558
Table 24.8 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1921
559
Table 24.9 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1924
559
Table 24.10 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1925
560
Table 24.11 Oath of Voter Statistics for African American Voters in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1926
561
Table 24.12 African American Voter Registrations and Presidential Election Results in Chatham County (Savannah), Georgia, 1916, 1920, and 1924
561
African American Farmers’ Voting Behavior in the Carolinas’ Cotton and Tobacco Referenda, 1938–1946
563
Table 24.13 States and Counties of the Cotton Control Program Referendum, 1938
564
Table 24.14 The States and Counties in which Ralph Bunche Field Investigator George Stoney Conducted Interviews on the 1938 AAA Cotton Referenda
566
Table 24.15 Regional and State Summary of Cotton Referendum Votes, March 12, 1938 567 Table 24.16 Voter Participation in the Cotton and Tobacco Referenda of North Carolina and South Carolina, 1938–1946 568 Table 24.17 Populations of Wilson County, North Carolina, and Darlington County, South Carolina, 1940 568 Table 24.18 Distribution of Farm Operators by Race and Tenure in Wilson County, North Carolina, and Darlington County, South Carolina, 1940
568
Table 24.19 Numbers of Farm Operators and Interviewed Farmers in Wilson County, North Carolina, and Darlington County, South Carolina
569
Table 24.20 Participation in the AAA Referenda by Tenure and Race in Wilson County, North Carolina, and Darlington County, South Carolina
570
The African American Statewide Candidates in Louisiana’s 1952 and 1956 Elections
570
Table 24.21 Tabulation of Interview Responses to the Question of White Farmers’ Feelings About Black Farmers Voting
571
Table 24.22 Tabulation of Responses by White Farmers in Wilson County, North Carolina, and Darlington County, South Carolina
572
Table 24.23 Tabulation of Interview Responses Regarding African American Voting in Wilson County, North Carolina, and Darlington County, South Carolina
573
Table 24.24 Democratic Party Primary Election for Governor of Louisiana, January 15, 1952
575
Table 24.25 Democratic Party Primary Election for Attorney General of Louisiana, January 17, 1956
578
The Mississippi “Freedom Elections” for Governor, Congress, and the Presidency, 1963 and 1964
579
Table 24.26 Comparison of Votes for Parker and Amedee in the Louisiana Democratic Primaries and African American Voter Registrations in 1956
580
Table 24.27 Pioneering African American Congressional Candidates of Mississippi, 1962
582
Map 24.2 Counties of the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts of Mississippi, 1962
583
Table 24.28 Freedom Vote of Mississippi Cities Cast with State Affidavits in the 1963 Democratic Primary
584
Table 24.29 Democratic Primary Election for Governor of Mississippi and the Freedom Vote, 1963
585
Table 24.30 Democratic Run-Off Election for Governor of Mississippi and the Freedom Vote, 1963
587
Table 24.31 Freedom Vote and Official Results of the 1963 Mississippi Gubernatorial Election, by Racial Majority Counties and Ranked by the Freedom Vote
589
Table 24.32 Comparing the Mississippi Freedom Vote of 1963 with African American Voter Registrations in 1962 and 1964
593
Table 24.33 Official Primary and Unofficial General Election Votes for Freedom Vote Candidates in Mississippi, 1964
595
Table 24.34 Unofficial Results for the Mississippi Freedom Vote in the 1964 Presidential Election
595
Rare Data in a Border State: West Virginia
596
Table 24.35 Counties of West Virginia Ranked by Number of African American Registered Voters, 1870
596
Table 24.36 Number of African American Eligible Voters by County in West Virginia, 1920
597
Table 24.37 Voting for African American Candidates to the West Virginia State Legislature, 1896–1952
599
Map 24.3 Counties of African American Candidates for the West Virginia State Legislature, 1896–1952
600
Summary and Conclusions on Rare African American Registration and Voting Data
601
Notes 601
Chapter 25. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, Expansions and Renewals, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006
605
The Rise of the Voting Rights Issue to National Prominence
607
The Legislative Voting Behavior of Southern Members of Congress on Voting Rights Acts, 1957–2006
609
Table 25.1 Congressional Votes for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964 and for the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006
610
Figure 25.1 Number of Northern and Southern Democrats Voting For and Against Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation in the House of Representatives, 1957–2006
612
Figure 25.2 Number of Northern and Southern Democrats Voting For and Against Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation in the Senate, 1957–2006
612
Figure 25.3 Number of Southern Democrats Voting For and Against Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation in the House and Senate, 1957–2006
613
Figure 25.4 Percentage of Northern and Southern Democrats Voting For Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation in the House and Senate, 1957–2006
614
Figure 25.5 Number of Southern Republicans Voting For and Against Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation in the House and Senate, 1957–2006
614
Figure 25.6 Percentage of Southern Republicans Voting For and Against Civil Rights and Voting Rights Legislation in the House and Senate, 1957–2006
615
Table 25.2 Presidents and Republican Party Strength during Passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006
615
Assessing the 1965 Voting Rights Act: Reports of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
616
Table 25.3 Commission on Civil Rights and Academic Studies and Reports on the Impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act
616
Table 25.4 Comparing African American Voter Registrations in Counties under Federal Examination for the Voting Rights Act with Nearby Counties Not Examined
617
Map 25.1 Counties Selected by the United States Commission on Civil Rights for Evaluation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
618
Figure 25.7 Comparing African American Voter Registrations in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi Immediately after Passage of the Voting Rights Act
619
Table 25.5 Cumulative Totals of Federal Examinations for Voter Registration in Selected Southern States, by County, Following Passage of the Voting Rights Act, August 6–October 30, 1965
620
Figure 25.8 Cumulative Voter Registration Applicants Listed under Voting Rights Examining by Race Immediately Following Passage of the Voting Rights Act
621
Figure 25.9 Cumulative Voter Registration Applicants Rejected under Voting Rights Examining by Race Immediately Following Passage of the Voting Rights Act
621
Table 25.6 Voter Registration Totals in Selected Counties of Selected Southern States Following Passage of the Voting Rights Act, August 6–October 30, 1965
621
Map 25.2 New Voters Registered by Race Following Implementation of the Voting Rights Act, August 6–October 30, 1965
622
Figure 25.10 Accepted Voter Registration Applications in Selected Southern States by Race Following Passage of the Voting Rights Act, 1965
622
Figure 25.11 Rejected Voter Registration Applications in Selected Southern States by Race Following Passage of the Voting Rights Act, 1965
623
Table 25.7 Gains in Ratio of Registered Voters to Eligible Voters by Race before and after the Voting Rights Act of 1965
625
Figure 25.12 Percentage Point Gains in Ratio of Registered Voters to Eligible Voters in Examiner Counties by Race before and after the Voting Rights Act of 1965
626
Figure 25.13 Percentage Point Gains in Ratio of African American Registered Voters to Eligible Voters before and after the Voting Rights Act of 1965
627
Table 25.8 Impact of Federal Examiners for the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Comparison of Voter Registrations by State in Examiner and Non-Examiner Counties
627
Figure 25.14 Impact of the Voting Rights Act on African American Voter Registrations: A Comparison of Examined and Non-Examined Counties, 1965
628
Figure 25.15 Numbers of Counties with VRA Federal Examiners and Persons Listed for Registration, 1974
629
Table 25.9 Voter Turnout in the Presidential Elections of 1964, 1968, and 1972 in Southern States Covered by the Voting Rights Act 629 Figure 25.16 Percentage Point Changes in Voter Turnout for the Presidential Elections of 1964, 1968, and 1972 in Southern States Covered by the Voting Rights Act
630
Table 25.10 Estimated Gap in Voter Registration between Blacks and Whites in Southern States Covered by the Voting Rights Act, 1971–1972
630
Table 25.11 Voter Registration Shares by Race in Southern States Covered by the Voting Rights Act, 1971–1972
631
Figure 25.17 Percentage Point Difference in Voting Age Population Registered to Vote among Blacks and Whites in Southern States Covered by the Voting Rights Act, 1971–1972
631
The Long-Term Impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: The Fourth Report, 1981
631
Table 25.12 Counties Designated for Federal Examiners and Number of Persons Listed by Examiners, 1980 Table 25.13 Election Observation Assignments under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 1966–1980 Table 25.14 Percentage of Voting Age Population Reported Registered to Vote in Jurisdictions Covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, by Race and Ethnicity, 1976 Table 25.15 Voting Age Population and Voter Registration in Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina, 1971–1980
632 633
The Major Literature on the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Renewals
635
Table 25.16 Categorization of the Major Literature on the 1965 Voting Rights Act
636
Summary and Conclusions on the Voting Rights Act and Its Renewals
643
Table 25.17 Counties in the 1963 Department of Justice Lawsuit, Examined and Observed under the Voting Rights Act, as of 1980
644
634 634
Notes 645
Chapter 26. Felon and Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement: The Newest Technique of Vote Dilution and Candidate Diminution
649
The Historical Genesis of African American Felon Disenfranchisement: The Slave and Black Codes
650
Before Mass Incarceration: Segregation as a Criminalization System
652
Table 26.1 Number of African American and White Prisoners Sent to State and Federal Prisons and Reformatories, 1939 Table 26.2 Number of African American and White Male Felony Prisoners Sent to State and Federal Prisons and Reformatories, 1939 Table 26.3 Rank Ordered Distribution of Arrests by Race According to Type of Offense, 1940
654
African American Felons and Ex-Felons During Mass Incarceration
655
654 655
Figure 26.1 Rank Order Distribution of Non-Violent Offense Arrests of African Americans, 1940 656 Table 26.4 Statehood, Changes to Felon Disenfranchisement Laws, and Comparison to Adoption of Universal White Suffrage 657 Table 26.5 Disenfranchised Felons by Region and State, 2004 659 Table 26.6 Disenfranchised African American Felons by Region and State, 2004 660 Table 26.7 Race and Gender of Persons Convicted of Felonies in State Courts, by Offense, 2006 662 Table 26.8 Types of Felony Sentences Imposed in State Courts, by Race of Felons and Offense, 2006 662 Table 26.9 Mean Length (in Months) of Felony Sentences Imposed in State Courts, by Race, Gender, and Offense, 2006 663 Table 26.10 Corrections and Felony Disenfranchised Populations by Region and State, 2004–2008 664 Figure 26.2 Number of African Americans Disenfranchised by Felony Convictions in the South and Border States, 2004 666 Figure 26.3 African Americans by Felony Disenfranchisement in the South and Border States as a Share of the Total African American Population in the State, 2004 666 Figure 26.4 African Americans by Felony Disenfranchisement in the South and Border States as a Share of the Total Felony Disenfranchised Population in the State, 2004 667
National Coalition on Black Voter Participation (NCBVP) Report
667
Table 26.11 Procedure for the Restoration of Voting Rights to Ex-Felons and Ex-Convicts in Selected States, 1995 669
Summary and Conclusions on Felon Disenfranchisement
670
Notes 671
Chapter 27. African American Voting Rights in a Historic Presidential Election: The 2008 Election of President Barack Obama
673
Invoking the Voting Rights Act in the 2008 Presidential Election: The Role of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
676
Table 27.1 Federal Election Observations (1966–1980) and Federal Examiner and Observer Assignments (July 1, 1982–June 30, 2004)
678
Table 27.2 Statutory Provisions Enforced by the Voting Section of the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Fiscal Years 2001–2007
679
U.S. Senator Barack Obama, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and Other Voting Rights Legislation
680
Demography and the 2008 Election: State- and Individual-Level Results
682
The Long-Term Influence of Disenfranchisement on the 2008 Obama Presidential Election
685
Table 27.3 Number and Percentage of African American Majority Counties Lost during the Disenfranchisement Era until 2000 and the Relationship to Coverage by the Voting Rights Act
686
Map 27.1 Past and Present African American Majority Counties in the South
687
Figure 27.1 Coverage of States by the Voting Rights Act and Number of African American Majority Counties Lost
688
Figure 27.2 Coverage of States by the Voting Rights Act and Percentage of African American Majority Counties Lost
689
Table 27.4 2008 Presidential Election in the Southern and Border States
689
Figure 27.3 Difference in Votes between Obama and McCain in the South, Presidential Election of 2008
691
Figure 27.4 Percentage Point Difference in the Vote between Obama and McCain in the South, Presidential Election of 2008
691
Table 27.5 Counties Won by the Democratic Party by Racial Majority, U.S. Presidential Elections 2000–2008
692
Figure 27.5 Percent of Racial Majority Counties Won in the South and Border States by the Democratic Party, 2000–2008
694
Table 27.6 Republican Party Vote and Percent of Total Vote in Racial Majority Counties of the South and Border States in U.S. Presidential Elections, 2000–2008
695
Figure 27.6 Percent of White Majority Counties in the South and Border States Won by the Republican Party, 2000–2008
697
Figure 27.7 Number of Votes Gained or Lost in White Majority Counties Won by the Republican Party in the South and Border States, 2004–2008
698
Table 27.7 2008 Presidential Election in the Southern States by Past and Present Black Majority Counties
699
Table 27.8 2008 Presidential Election in the Southern States by Past and Present Black Majority Counties and by Counties in the VRA Implementation
700
Table 27.9 Projecting Same Support in Former Black Majority Counties as in Current Black Majority Counties Won by Obama in the South in 2008 Presidential Election
702
The Short-Term Influence of Disenfranchisement on the 2008 Obama Presidential Election
703
Table 27.10 Comparing the Actual Outcome of the 2008 Presidential Election in the South with a Model that Awards the Votes of Former Black Majority Counties to Barack Obama 703 Table 27.11 Support for Barack Obama in the South by Race and Coverage under the Voting Rights Act, 2008 Presidential Election 704 Table 27.12 Percentage of the Vote for Obama by Region and Race in the 2008 Democratic Party Presidential Primary Elections 704 Table 27.13 Percentage of the Vote for Obama in the Presidential Election of 2008 by Region, Race, and Coverage under the Voting Rights Act in the South 705 Table 27.14 Percentage Gain or Loss in White Support for Obama From the 2008 Democratic Party Presidential Primary Elections to the General Election 706 Figure 27.8 Percentage Point Gain or Loss in White Support for Obama in the South From the 2008 Democratic Party Primary Elections to the General Election 707
Summary and Conclusions on the 2008 Obama Election
707
Notes 708
Chapter 28. Summary and Conclusions
711
King’s Voting Rights Activism and Policy Agenda: An Additional Perspective on the Relationship between Civil and Voting Rights
712
Diagram 28.1 The Voting Rights Activism of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Public Policy Results, 1957–1965
715
The Origins of Voting Rights Activists and Activism as Variables in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
715
Geography (Political Context) as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
716
The Origin of Opponents and Opposition as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
717
The Origin of Party Competition as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
720
The Origins of Public Sentiment and Mass Public Opinion as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
721
Figure 28.1 Percent of the Vote Against and For African American Suffrage Rights in Three Statewide Referenda of New York, 1846, 1860, and 1869
722
Figure 28.2 Percent of the Vote For or Against the Imposition or Repeal of Poll Taxes in Three Statewide Referenda of Texas, 1902, 1949, and 1963
723
Map 28.1 Southern States Holding Referenda on Poll Taxes and African American Suffrage Rights, 1900–1963
723
The Origins of States and Localities as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
724
The Courts and Liberal Jurisprudence as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
725
African American Election Data as a Variable in the Struggle for African American Suffrage Rights
726
Conclusion of The African American Electorate: A Statistical History 726 Diagram 28.2 The Empirically Based Determinative Variables in the African American Voting Rights Struggle
727
Notes 727
Appendices 731 Introductory Remarks
731
Cumulative Bibliography
903
Copyright Acknowledgments
917
Index I-1
Preface The Genesis of This Work in the Journeys of Its Authors
T
he three authors of this study come from different disciplinary backgrounds. In addition to collaborating on a previous book of county-level presidential election data,1 each of the authors had a different journey to this project. To share their stories is to illuminate both how this study came to be and the individuals whose prior work led to its creation.
Hanes Walton, Jr. Hanes Walton, Jr., the senior co-author on this project, initially heard about African American voters in his hometown of Athens, Georgia, during the 1950s. At the time, he was in high school, and although the White Primary had been outlawed in Georgia, for African Americans to register and vote was still difficult in this city. The state had habitually ignored and defied the Supreme Court in its ruling of Smith v. Allwright in 1944 and delayed their response in defiance of the federal district court ruling in King v. Chapman, a case brought in Georgia in 1946 to outlaw the White Primary there. The African American electorate was—to put it mildly—discouraged from registering and voting. One example of this discouragement and intimidation was the terrible lynching of several African Americans in Monroe, Georgia, when they had neglected to disperse from a sidewalk during the 1946 gubernatorial election. Whispered discussions carried information that well before the 1944 ruling a few handpicked African Americans were allowed to vote. In the research of co-author Walton for his Black Politics book in 1972, he utilized a master’s thesis that had found that “in 1930, for example, thirty blacks voted in the municipal election in Athens, Georgia,” despite the fact that in 1908 African Americans had been disenfranchised from voting in the state.2 Some of those in this group usually spoke at Walton’s church, Ebenezer Baptist Church, West, on Men’s Day and Youth Day about how leading whites in Athens liked their demeanor, political attitude, and behavior and rewarded them with this right. These chosen African American voters would close their addresses with the conclusion that other African American citizenry of the congregations could achieve the same thing if their example was followed of so-called circumspect civic behavior. The official data source, the Clarke County voter registration and voting records, contains very few references to the African American electorate in Athens, Georgia, during and before
1930.3 Of course, at the time Walton did not realize that this data and documentation of these experiences were quietly being omitted from most academic and scholarly studies. At this time Walton was unable to register to vote due to his age, although Georgia was then the only southern state where an eighteenyear-old could register. Walton’s first year at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, 1959, coincided with the beginning of the desegregation sit-ins. Professor of Political Science Robert H. Brisbane in his Introduction to Social Science course discussed with his class the electoral power of the African American electorate in the “balance-of-power” voting strategy as well as such African American political innovations as black political parties.4 During Walton’s second year Professor Brisbane in his American Government classes noted the numerous ways that the African American electorate had been creative and imaginative both in trying to vote and in trying to evade, avoid, and bypass white efforts to disenfranchise them. In his lectures and books Professor Brisbane offered places where data existed about these innovative efforts.5 Walton began his own voting rights activism in the 1962 congressional election in Atlanta, Georgia, concerning the Democratic incumbent James Davis, a rabid segregationist. Davis was in charge of the House of Representatives’ District of Columbia Committee and ensured that the national capitol was tightly segregated, even though this had become an international embarrassment because black ambassadors and diplomats from third-world countries had been forced to endure rigid racial segregation. The African American communities of D.C. and Atlanta protested against Congressman Davis, and the Kennedy administration decided to try to unseat him in hopes that the next chairman would not continue with these tradition-based segregation policies. The challenger to Congressman Davis was a moderate liberal Georgian, Charles Weltner. In order to assist in Davis’s defeat, in a newly reapportioned congressional district, many Morehouse students, including Walton, were recruited to mobilize the African American electorate through door-to-door canvassing and driving African American voters to the polls. This initial “get-out-the-vote” effort succeeded, and Charles Weltner upset the long-serving segregationist to represent this congressional district in Georgia.6
xxx
The African American Electorate
Professor Tobe Johnson arrived during Walton’s third year at Morehouse. Johnson’s Public Administration class provided Walton and his classmates with vividly detailed analyses of public and private bureaucracies and, thereby, state and county voter registration administrative offices in the South; the class also showed how regional and individual personnel policies of these agencies permitted their prejudicial biases to limit and circumscribe the democratic implementation of the suffrage laws of the nation. Johnson’s careful analysis in his lectures on public bureaucracies, especially in this era of the 1960s, was both poignant and significant, as his students tried to make sense of the regional systemic reaction to the civil and voting rights laws of 1957 and 1960 and the 1963 Freedom Vote Campaign and its emphasis on voter registration in Mississippi.7 Thus, in this period of significant African American voting rights activists and activism, one needed to know how values and beliefs of the dominant political behavioral culture influenced a scientific discipline, which declared that values and beliefs had nothing to do with understanding political behavior and public bureaucracies. Professor Johnson provided the necessary intellectual insights.8 After graduating from Morehouse in 1963, Walton began a master’s degree at Atlanta University. In his first year, Professor Samuel DuBois Cook offered a class on the American Political Process, including an astounding lecture on the relationship between the African American electorate in Georgia and the Tom Watson–led Populist Party there and in the nation. It not only was personally electrifying for Walton but also became the motivation for his first book, The Negro in Third Party Politics,9 and for this joint effort. Professor Cook not only brought the African American electorate off the intellectual sidelines in this course but also showed the roles and functions that they played in the political process via their political innovations.10 According to Professor Cook, these roles and functions could be understood through the rare empirical data on the African American electorate, which in turn offered new perspectives on the American political experience. Another major intellectual contribution of Professor Cook was his use of stellar and classic works in the discipline, including those of V.O. Key, Jr. (e.g., his Southern Politics and his textbook, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups), and those of Professor Key’s mentor, Professor Harold Gosnell (e.g., his Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago). In both authors’ works were new data sources on the African American electorate. Professor Key’s work Southern Politics in State and Nation contained a chapter on the Negro Republicans, particularly the Black-and-Tan Republican satellite parties, while Professor Gosnell’s work had Appendix Table XVIII, which listed all of the pioneering African American state legislators of Illinois from 1876 through 1932. Also assisting Professor Key was another political scientist, Alexander Heard, who went on to gather and publish election returns data on some of the African American political parties and independent candidacies that Professor Cook brought to our attention.11 Here was previously unseen and unused empirical data on the African American electorate. In addition to providing literature that covered little known factual information, Professor Cook left his students with a terrific moral compass to guide them through the civil rights movement, led by
his Morehouse classmate, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who had by then become a national figure. At the doctoral level, Walton’s experience at Howard University included department chairman and Professor Emmett Dorsey and Professor Harold Gosnell, as well as the late Robert Martin and Bernard Fall. At the University of Chicago, Professor Gosnell had taught not only Key but Martin as well and became a co-author with Martin of works on African American elected officials. While several things stand out in this intellectual sojourn, one of particular mention is Professor Gosnell’s discussions and dialogues about the use of homogeneous precinct analysis in studying the African American electorate, which led to its innovative use in this volume. Professor Walton gratefully acknowledges his intellectual debt to these giants in the study of electoral politics and especially to their expertise on the African American electorate when few were paying attention or believed the topic to be worthy of intellectual concern. Their talents, skills, and publications have clearly helped make this volume possible. And Walton would also like to acknowledge his two co-authors, Sherman C. Puckett and Donald R. Deskins, Jr. Having co-authored an earlier volume with them, Walton knew that their superb computer and mapping skills would be essential to producing this volume on the African American electorate, and he is quite pleased that they agreed to join him on this major breakthrough study.
Sherman C. Puckett Co-author Sherman C. Puckett also has southern roots that helped shape him, having grown up in Nashville, Tennessee. He began his collegiate experience at the historic Fisk University, where he majored in mathematics and American history. Despite the pride within his community for classmates who had achieved an undefeated high school basketball season and state championship, there was a certain degree of timidity, unexplained at least to Puckett, surrounding the issue of civil rights. In Puckett’s first year at Fisk, an unannounced visit to the campus by African American activist Stokely Carmichael was met with hostility by school administrators. At the end of his second and last year at Fisk, the assassination of the great civil rights leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., induced rioting in African American communities throughout the nation, including Nashville, leading to nighttime curfews for all residents of the community surrounding Fisk University and Tennessee State University, a couple of miles away. The next year Puckett transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to study electrical and computer engineering. After his first year Puckett had one of his most important experiences while at Michigan when he learned computer programming from, and worked for, engineering Professor Brice Carnahan. Like many other African American students, Puckett became politicized by isolation as a member within an “out” group at Michigan. In his senior year, just when the one protest in which he participated had seemed to fail, a large host of other students joined in an unforgettably dramatic fashion and the university accepted the single demand for increased diversity.
Two of his most rewarding experiences as an engineering student bracketed his senior year. After a period at Cummins Engine Company in Indiana (running a computer laboratory for testing diesel engines), Puckett returned to graduate school in Ann Arbor. Several professors at Michigan left strong impressions upon Puckett: Professor Gary Fowler (statistics), Professor Donald R. Deskins, Jr. (sociology), one of very few African American professors on campus at that time, and Professor John Nystuen (geography). And Thomas Anton, a professor of political science, taught that African American politics had become a practical reality in some of the largest urban areas such as Atlanta, Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit. After earning a PhD in urban and regional planning, Puckett was employed as a political appointee of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. Puckett had previously assisted a fellow graduate student in conducting and analyzing political surveys during the mayor’s first reelection. As an appointee Puckett also traversed the city on patrols against the arsons of “Devil’s Night,” in sweeps to encourage citizens to come forward for census counts, and, of course, to support various political campaigns. Professor Deskins suggested to Puckett that he could present survey results geographically with choropleth maps of Detroit. Rather than specialized commercial software, only a little computer programming was necessary to produce the spatial polygons and patterns that represented Detroit’s twenty-four community districts. Like the continental United States, the shape of Detroit overall fits comfortably on the screen or landscaped on a sheet of paper. The mayor was thrilled with the results. Convincing the Detroit Elections Commission to report city election results using maps has not been, to this point, successful. The Commission did eventually produce a digital map of its more than 600 precincts, but Puckett could not persuade the then-director to share his vision of the value of showing election results on the map, immediately after any election and to the general public. The current mayor has announced a policy of triage for the delivery of services to the neighborhoods of Detroit, a city with a greater than 80% African American population, and in the fall election of 2011, the city charter was amended to henceforth elect a super-majority of city council members by district.12 Perhaps that outcome coupled with reception of this work will convince the Commission to help its citizenry to realize the potential of all of its neighborhood electorates and even to preserve the legacy of its past elections in the records that it should and can retain, organize, and exploit with current and future mapping technologies.
Donald R. Deskins, Jr. The third co-author of this study, Donald R. Deskins, Jr., is a noted former athlete as well as continuing scholar. His journey to this effort has been long and eventful. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and he served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He was later a member of both the All-Marine and Michigan Wolverine football teams, and he was a first-round draft choice and member of the Oakland
Preface
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Raiders professional football team. He returned to the University of Michigan to earn his baccalaureate degree, master’s degree, and PhD and to become a professor of geography and sociology. To these accomplishments he has added several academic publications and awards, as well as the mentorship of numerous former students to noteworthy professional lives and academia. This is the third collaboration of Walton, Puckett, and Deskins. The second to appear, which began as their first, is the forthcoming Presidential Elections 1789–2008, to be published by the University of Michigan Press. We credit Deskins as the inspiration for that project and for bringing us together as a team. His vision and what both Walton and Puckett learned from it have made this current project possible.
Acknowledgments In closing Professor Walton would like to acknowledge the assistance of his sons, Brandon M. Walton and Brent M. Walton, Professor Josephine Allen of Cornell and Binghamton University, his typist and all-around troubleshooter, Margaret Hunter, and diagram maker Greta Blake for their numerous efforts in data collection and continual encouragement during this more than three-decade research and writing process. In particular, Brent Walton made several special trips to the Illinois State Archives to collect the election return data as well as the names of those African American state legislators who came after the ones listed by Professor Gosnell. Moreover, both Brent Walton and all three co-authors would like to acknowledge the excellent help and assistance of the Director of the Illinois State Archives, Dr. David A. Joens, in gathering this rare data. Another gatherer of rare election data, on the two state elections in the Louisiana State Archives, was a former student and native of Louisiana, Tanya Isom. On this same matter, Walton would like to acknowledge the assistance of Archivist Debra Basham in his data-collecting trip to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History in Charleston. At the University of Michigan graduate library, Multicultural Studies Librarian Charles Ransom was of immense help in tracking down fugitive books, monographs, and documents on the African American electorate. Ransom’s great skills and talent in ferreting out vital background works was certainly much appreciated over the three decades of research. He was always gracious in his help and assistance. In addition to Ransom, the rare book and manuscript division in the Hatcher Graduate Library had the complete issues of the elusive and short-lived newspaper, Mississippi Free Press, which contained county-level “Freedom Vote” election return data for the 1963 statewide election in Mississippi. African American voting rights activists chose their own gubernatorial candidates to run in this election. After two trips and numerous written queries to the state of Mississippi, said data was not collected by the Secretary of State nor does it exist in the State Archives, simply because it was not official data. Most books, articles, and doctoral dissertations on this election merely mention grand totals but do not give a countyby-county breakdown. The librarians in the rare book and manuscript division were quite helpful in reading and copying this fragile and rare data. As a consequence of this extant newspaper,
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The African American Electorate
readers will now have easy access to this data. At the University of Michigan Buhr Library storage facility reading room, two individuals deserve mention for their excellent assistance, Andrew Perez, Information Resources Senior Assistant, and Anne Elias, Information Resources Assistant Intern. Besides these individuals, Professor Walton would like to acknowledge his brother, Thomas N. Walton, and his always lovely wife and children, who provided kind words of support and great meals; cousins Edna and Pope Lane and Maxie, Katie, and Geneva Foster. These are a just a few of the people to whom the authors are grateful for assistance with this study. Dr. Puckett would like to acknowledge first of all the help and assistance of his wife, Cheryl, for her encouragement, love, support, and patience. She helped him with typing the input of several large data sets and she has been very tolerant of his sometimes working until the early hours of the morning. He is also grateful to the Boston Athenaeum for the sale of the model constitution for branches of the National Equal Rights League, the cover of which is presented in Chapter 11; to the many state archives, historical societies, libraries, and legislative organizations that are acknowledged in Chapter 19 for providing information on their earliest elected African American legislators; and to his co-authors, Professors Hanes Walton, Jr., and Donald R. Deskins, Jr., for the honor of working alongside them and allowing him to be a part of this journey and accomplishment. Each of the co-authors who signed a contract in August 2006 to write this two-volume work would like to express their sincere appreciation to the individuals who lent their skills, talents, and brilliant insights to this pioneering work and made it possible to complete it in such an informative and scholarly manner. Of the CQ Press acquisitions editors with whom we worked, Mary Carpenter assisted us in the initial overall conceptualization of the work. Later, when she took maternity leave, our new editor, January Layman-Wood, with telephone calls, emails, lunches, and personal conversations guided the work with wonderful patience and insight through several editors and organizational transformations. With her help David Arthur assisted us on the project through several chapters, and in 2009 he was joined by Professor Steven Danver, who provided diligent assistance and editorial changes through the end of the summer. Next came our final development editor, John Martino, who spent the most time with us and produced careful editorial work on both the structure and organization of the two volumes as well as the narrative, tabular, and map presentations. His skillful hands and talented eyes helped us develop a comprehensive bibliography and clear source notes for all of the visual statistical presentations. And most importantly, he made sure that the narrative and the visual statistical work reenforced and effectively complemented each other. This was quite important in a subject matter area where so much of the extant literature and election data was so fragmentary and sketchy. Finally, the work reached the copyediting stage, and CQ Press and SAGE provided us with production editor Gwenda Larsen, project editor Laureen Gleason, and a fine copy editor, Jay Powers.
Their judicious editing, production capabilities, and cooperation helped us reach our deadline with a quite polished manuscript. We salute each and every one of these outstanding individuals. We could not have asked to work with a better group of people. Hanes Walton, Jr., University of Michigan Sherman C. Puckett, University of Michigan Donald R. Deskins, Jr., University of Michigan
Notes 1. Donald R. Deskins, Jr., Hanes Walton, Jr., and Sherman C. Puckett, Presidential Elections, 1789–2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). 2. Quoted in Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics: A Theoretical and Structural Analysis (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972), p. 33. 3. A detailed analysis of two works on the state that covers the African American electorate in this period do not show any references. See John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977); and Laughlin McDonald, A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). However, the Dittmer book does reveal that “[v]oter registration lists on microfilm at the Georgia Archives document the decline of black voting both before and after disfranchisement,” p. 214. 4. Robert H. Brisbane, “The Negro Vote as a Balance of Power Factor in the National Elections,” Quarterly Review of Higher Education Among Negroes (July 1952), pp. 97–110. For more on this subject see Hanes Walton, Jr., and William H. Boone, “Black Political Parties: A Demographic Analysis,” Journal of Black Studies Vol. 5 (1974), pp. 86–95. 5. See Robert H. Brisbane, The Black Vanguard: Origins of the Negro Social Revolution, 1900–1960 (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1970) and his Black Activism: Racial Revolution in the United States, 1954–1970 (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1974). See also Hanes Walton, Jr., “Review of Black Activism: Racial Revolution in the United States, 1954–1970,” Journal of Negro History (July 1975), pp. 437–438. 6. Charles L. Weltner, Southerner (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966). For a limited scholarly analysis of this 1962 midterm election see L. Harmon Ziegler and M. Kent Jennings, “Electoral Strategies and Voting Patterns in a Southern Congressional District,” in M. Kent Jennings and L. Harmon Ziegler (eds.), The Electoral Process (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), chapter 7. 7. Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 36–38. 8. Hanes Walton, Jr., Invisible Politics: Black Political Behavior (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), pp. 1–19. 9. Hanes Walton, Jr., The Negro in Third Party Politics (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1969). 10. Samuel DuBois Cook, “Introduction: The Politics of the Success of Failure,” in Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Political Parties: An Historical and Political Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1972), pp. 1–8. 11. See Alexander Heard and Donald Strong, Southern Primaries and Elections, 1920–1949 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1950). This volume is one of the very few reliable election-return data sources that contains significant information on the African American electorate, but it has been rarely if ever used. 12. “Bing’s Neighborhood Plans Draw both Optimism, Fear,” The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/article/20110728/METRO/107280377, accessed July 28, 2011; “Detroit Services to Depend on Neighborhood Condition,” The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/article/20110728/ METRO/107280418, accessed July 28, 2011; “Revised City Charter Closer to Going before Voters,” The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/ article/20110811/METRO01/108110375, accessed August 11, 2011; and “Detroit City Charter Revisions Win Voter Approval,” The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/article/20111109/METRO01/111090390, accessed November 9, 2011.
Introduction Uniqueness of This Work
2
Methodology of This Study
4
Notes 7
2
T
Introduction
his pioneering study offers the first systematic and comprehensive longitudinal analysis of the African American electorate in America. This study describes and then explains both commonly known and newly discovered rare registration and voting data on the African American electorate. Using this empirical data, this study tells the story from the Colonial Era through the Revolutionary, Antebellum, and Civil War eras, through Reconstruction to the Disenfranchisement, pre-White Primary, and Poll Tax eras, to the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and finally to the historic presidential election of African American Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., in 2008. This new study on the African American electorate has a conceptualized dimension that completely distinguishes it from all other works on this electorate, including VRA reports and studies, voting behavior studies, and documentary and compendium volumes, i.e., longitudinal empirical registration, turnout, and voting data. This pioneering study contains detailed chapters on each major era; rare data on the more than twenty statewide suffrage referenda before, during, and after the Civil War; county- and state-level registration, turnout, and voting data on the freedmen in 1867 and 1868 using basically unused Senate and House of Representative reports; and white and African American voting data for African American congressmen from Reconstruction through the enfranchisement of African American women. This study also contains voting data on the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of African American women and on the African American electoral revolt in the 1920s. Rare data have been gathered and presented on southern urban areas as well as on the federal government’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) Cotton and Tobacco referenda, in which African American farmers in the rural South were given the right to vote with white farmers in the 1930s and 1940s.1 This public policy biracial voting experiment predated the 1965 VRA and was also successful. In addition, one will find new and fresh voting data on the sundry African American political and electoral innovations of the 1960s and 1970s. And there are additional empirical data on the Border States and northern states, especially enumerating the earliest African American statewide elected officials. And all of these established, neophyte, and rare data are presented in such a way that laypersons, academics, and scholars can use the data in their own historical or contemporary studies. As of this writing, this wealth of data on the African American electorate can be found nowhere else without extensive effort to track it down. The data presented here is the fruit of a detective effort that required more than three decades of research and data collection. Presentation of these established and rare election data is not just tabular in nature and scope. This study uses visual statistics to assist with its descriptions and explanations. Tabular data have been supplemented and/or supported with graphs, figures, charts, histograms, and maps. These visual statistics allow the reader to compare and contrast the southern states with the neighboring Border States and beyond to other states. Presentations within this new data-rich study aid further analyses and allow differently designed portraits of this electorate to emerge.
Uniqueness of This Work Unlike previous works on this electorate that have focused on different categories of periodizations, which inevitably causes numerous epistemic and conceptual problems by slicing and dicing this electorate into limited segments of American history, this study has sought linkage, unity, continuity, and connectivity. Although some chapters cover a particular period in time, others span a longer time frame (such as Chapter 20 on African American women in the electorate). This approach of continuity is essential to capture the dynamism of the African American electorate as it moved from the electoral empowerment of Free-Women-and-Men-of-Color in Colonial America to their electoral disenfranchisement in the same era and into subsequent eras. This dynamism continued in the post–Civil War era when Congress, via its Four Military Reconstruction Acts in 1867–1868, electorally empowered the former slaves and shortly thereafter, in 1870 via the Fifteenth Amendment, empowered all of the other African American males living outside of the South and the Border States who had not yet acquired the right to vote.
A Dynamic History of Disenfranchisement Disenfranchisement (and its counterpart enfranchisement) as a central characteristic and feature of the dynamism that surrounds and activates the African American electorate did not begin—as the majority of history books would have one believe— after the collapse of Black Reconstruction (1866–1876) and shortly after the questionable Compromise of 1877.2 Moreover, disenfranchisement is not just a southern phenomenon. Colonial Virginia, as you will see, disenfranchised Free-Women-of-Color in 1699 and Free-Men-of-Color in 1723, while Antebellum New Jersey disenfranchised both groups in 1807. And numerous statewide referenda between 1800 and 1869 either disenfranchised the African American electorate or refused to enfranchise them. Thus, although the southern states of Virginia and South Carolina disenfranchised Free-Women-and-Men-of-Color during the Colonial Era, several states, North and South, disenfranchised them during the Revolutionary and Antebellum eras. Hence, when the South began the process after Reconstruction, they were following a procedure in which northern and midwestern states had already engaged.3 Due to their periodization methodology previous studies have failed to pick up these linkages and continuities and therefore never became aware of the dynamic characteristic of the African American electorate. Conceptualized dynamism is a unique aspect of this study.
Voting Rights Activism Distinct from Civil Rights Activism Hence, once one conceptualizes the dynamism inherent in the African American electorate’s trek through American history and politics, another unique characteristic and feature surfaces. Not just civil rights leaders and organizations have stepped forward against the suppression, intimidation, and disenfranchisement of African American voters, and against the refusal of the white majority to grant, consider, or even acknowledge
Introduction 3
the possible right to vote of these men and women. Other African American leaders and organizations have emerged with a singular focus on voting rights. There are and have been among the African American electorate a cadre of voting rights activists. There are individuals, men and women, and organizations that act either individually or organizationally to begin the protest and lobbying for the vote, to begin the protest and lobbying against disenfranchisement—and these have operated from Colonial America to the present. Perhaps most importantly, they have operated both separately from the traditional Civil Rights organizations as well as in conjunction with them. The National Equal Rights League (NERL), essentially a voting rights organization, was created by a civil rights organization, the Negro Convention Movement, in 1864. Or in the 1898–1908 period, the National Afro-American Council (NAAC) began legal activism against disenfranchisement.4 After that organization’s demise, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used the same approach and won an initial victory in 1915 against the grandfather clause and, in 1944, a victory against the White Primary law in Texas. By 1957, another rising civil rights leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference gave a voting rights speech at the Prayer Pilgrimage in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. King’s speech helped to generate both the 1957 Civil Rights Act and the 1960 Civil Rights Act; although both pieces of new legislation were called civil rights bills, they primarily dealt with voting rights. In 1965, King would lead another march in Selma, Alabama, which led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Secondly, prior to the 1965 Selma March, President John F. Kennedy and his staff met with most of the civil rights leaders at the White House and suggested that they work together via the Voter Education Project (VEP) of the Southern Regional Council to electorally empower the African American electorate in the South.5 With the advent of the VRA and its subsequent renewals, the VEP eventually closed its doors. But it was another prime example of the relationship and the distinction between civil rights leaders with their organizations on the one hand and their voting rights activism on the other hand, which demonstrated that the two things were not one and the same thing. This voting rights activism is and has been a fundamental feature and characteristic of the African American electorate longitudinally. And it has helped, as have civil rights organizations, to continue the dynamism, as have white groups and organizations in favor of African American suffrage, as well as presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Barack Obama. The history of African American voting rights activism is another unique aspect of this study.
innovations and creative lobbying and political and electoral protest vehicles that the African American electorate implemented and institutionalized in the American political process. African American voting rights did not just materialize out of thin air and/or overnight. Disenfranchisement did not just halt on its own and/or die a sudden and quick political or legal death. Systemic forces, which enacted and implemented these electoral and political realities, had to be confronted, contested, as well as politically and legally challenged. Nor did the systemic disenfranchisement forces halt because they met resistance from the African American electorate. They had to be challenged and confronted. This study makes clear that the African American electorate at numerous points in American electoral history had no alliances, few political friends, and/or barely any semblance of political goodwill from the white majority. Hence, they had to proceed alone, and their electoral protest results were, at many points in American history, considered minuscule or worthless. Few states, their political leadership, and/or academics or scholars recorded these efforts, and the identities of brave members of the African American electorate in these events were discarded along with their electoral efforts and the resulting empirical data. And much of the electoral data that has not been lost simply has slipped through the political and academic net, despite the fact that it reveals interesting stories of the African American electorate’s attempts to empower themselves and become either enfranchised or re-enfranchised. This study highlights oft-overlooked sources of data: political and electoral inventions like the NERL; state-based NERL chapters like the one in Boston led by newspaperman William Monroe Trotter, which lobbied Congress in 1920 against legislation sponsored by southern congressmen; the NAACP, which lobbied Congress in 1921 after African American women were denied their voting rights in Florida and elsewhere; independent political candidates, independent third parties, and minor African American political parties; satellite political parties like the South Carolina Progressive Democratic Party, the “Black and Tan” Republican parties, the Freedom Elections, the Freedom Vote and Freedom Candidates, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the National Democratic Party of Alabama; national major party convention seating challenges, congressional seating challenges; and the southern urban and rural areas of the nation that allowed neither slaves nor the segregated free African American electorate to vote. These omitted data sources carry a wealth of empirical registration and voting data on the African American electorate during periods when most scholars have taken for granted that this electorate could not or did not participate. This was a poor assumption.
The Role of Protest Organizations and Votes
At the party and the partisanship levels nationally, the Republican Party took up the mantle first (before, during, and after the Civil War) to support the African American electorate; only since the 1960s has the Democratic Party joined in to support this right for the African American electorate. Prior to the 1960s, the Democratic Party was fundamentally and nearly unalterably opposed to voting rights for African Americans. In fact, it is one of the
This lack of focus on the dynamism and its inherent African American voting rights activism longitudinally, together with the failure to conceptually separate the voting rights movement when necessary from the civil rights movement, have obscured another key aspect of the whole picture that we describe in this study. This critical omission rendered a huge number of political
Partisanship and the African American Electorate
4
Introduction
most distinguishing factors that defined the two major political parties for both the African American and southern white electorates over time. Although the Republican Party since the 1960s has not called for full disenfranchisement, as its party strength has grown in the South it has opposed the extension of the VRA, promoted felony disenfranchisement, and in other ways aligned itself against at least part of the African American electorate. To be sure, there have been a few periods of bipartisanship on behalf of this electorate, notably during the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA, but they have been brief. This major public policy difference between the Republicans and Democrats has had its greatest influence and impact in the South. The South and its White Supremacy Democrats led the fight for disenfranchisement. Recently, however, this struggle has seen dynamism as regionalism, and this type of dynamism has been transformed into an ideological variable and factor in the South, as well as elsewhere in the nation, as seen with the 2008 presidential election. This debate and dialogue about race in the historic 2008 election has generated a rising body of academic and scholarly literature.
Presenting Data over Time on the African American Electorate But looming over all of these characteristics, and emerging when one includes the dynamism surrounding the African American electorate, is the failure of the academic and scholarly community to focus on this electorate, especially in a period of hyperintense election data gathering during the discipline’s major effort to study and analyze electoral behavior. Launched with the publication in 1960 of The American Voter and the political behavioral movement in the political science discipline, the data gathering and analyses of both aggregate and survey-based voting data have generated a voluminous literature in political science,6 history, sociology, and political psychology.7 Yet, despite this huge research effort in this and other disciplines, the African American electorate was in the main passed over. There are only a few works on the African American electorate, voting rights, voting rights activism, voter registration, turnout, voting, voter intimidation and suppression, and the VRA. Essentially, studies, popular and scholarly, have focused on crises, crisis periods, and crisis legislation, such as the often-noted VRA. And in these crises-based studies there has been little data gathering, and almost none of the works attempted longitudinal data gathering. This study is one of the very first works to get beyond this major failure in the literature. This is not to say that limited and partial and scattered efforts have not been made. But there is little linkage and connectivity. And this has long been needed on such a continuing reality as the African American electorate’s sojourn in the American political experience. Thus, linkage and unity are unique to this study. To get beyond this failure in the popular and academic literature on the African American electorate, we began our research and data gathering in Colonial America and continued through to the present. Moreover, as noted above, this study turned to a variety of sources that heretofore had never been used, or were merely omitted due to bad assumptions and poor conceptualization. Some
of these omitted and bypassed research and data sources contain unique and rare data; other researchers often ignored efforts made by the African American voting rights activists, including their political and electoral inventions that were recorded but felt by many not to be significant enough to examine and link to a greater perspective. Here, we turned to fugitive works and sources to gather this bypassed empirical election data on the African American electorate for a greater empirical electoral portrait. And next our conceptualization sought to answer a question never asked in the voluminous literature on voting behavior and the VRA: what about the political and electoral context?
Beyond a South-Only Approach The literature on the African American electorate shows a great and general tendency: a focus almost always on the South. Although one occasionally finds a study that deals with Chicago, beginning with Professor Harold Gosnell’s pioneering Negro Politician in 1935, and a host of articles and some monographs on other northern urban areas such as Philadelphia, New York, and Detroit, most of these voting studies and studies of the VRA focus primarily on the South. This is a single political context and it can only provide a very narrow electoral and political perspective on the African American electorate. Perhaps even more important is the fact that the South was neither the only region of the country with slaves nor the only region where slaves were granted their voting rights during the same time period. Freedmen in the Border States (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia) received their voting rights via the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 (about three years after the freedmen in the South got theirs). But how did disenfranchisement proceed in the Border States? Are there parallels in terms of trends and patterns in these states with those in the South? Were there similarities and dissimilarities? Are there empirical data to help to draw comparisons and contrasts between these two different regions in regard to the African Americans residing there? Clearly, to simply leave out the Border States leaves out a significant part of the story of the African American electorate. And the very same question can and should be raised about the northern and midwestern states. Even more so, did the rise of African American elected officials elsewhere in the country have no effect on the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement movements in the South? Thus, to tell the story of the African American electorate from only a southern perspective is to tell the story in a one-dimensional manner, which inhibits a collective and holistic portrait of the African American electorate in America. Hence, another unique feature of this study is that it goes beyond this limited research to display the continual presence and influence of the political context variable on the African American electorate longitudinally.8
Methodology of This Study The methodology for this study derives from its conceptualization. Conceived of and designed as a longitudinal research study of the African American electorate that would be both comprehensive and systematic, even though the election data might be spotty, fragmentary, piecemeal, as well as elusive and fugitive, it was
essential that our methodology include case studies and be integrative in nature and scope. In the past, the dominant and hegemonic periodization approach has fractionalized even the limited registration and voting data on the African American electorate.
Periodization’s Focus on Isolated Events A perfect example of the prevailing approach is found in Steven Lawson’s two books: (1) Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969 and (2) In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965–1982. Although there is some overlapping in Lawson’s periodization approach, the two break points are (1) 1944, when the Supreme Court ruling in the Smith v. Allwright outlawed the White Primary as a disenfranchising technique, and (2) 1965, the year in which Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. Thus, Lawson’s study focused on pivotal events, like Supreme Court rulings, congressional legislation or reauthorization, the political inventions and innovations like the “Freedom Vote,” and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party national convention seating challenge, the southern and Border states disenfranchisement techniques or procedures, and African Americans’ capture of certain elective offices for the very first time. All of these political and electoral events constitute periodization. And because these events emerge as a fractionalized portrait of the African American electorate, they also allow the spotty, fragmentary, and piecemeal data to continue to prevail as the only available data extant on the African American electorate. But that was just the problem—periodization that obfuscated extant registration and voting data on the African American electorate, causing it to be omitted and remain fugitive. Clearly, a new methodology was and is needed.
Periodization Ignores the Pre–Civil War Time Period The second main epistemic problem with the periodization approach is there was no exploration of registration and voting data before the Civil War. The best data on the pre–Civil War period came from a minimalist research effort to provide a list of the colonies and states, which permitted Free-Women-andMen-of-Color to vote. Even this primary and dominant preoccupation and focus was quite limited and only came into view with the publication of Alexander Keyssar’s book The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, which first appeared in 2000, despite the existence of several scholarly journal articles and book chapters on this reality. Even in the most recent book-length study, Christopher Malone’s Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North, published in 2008, there is only an analysis of four of the six states that allowed Free-Men-of-Color to vote and no coverage of the states that allowed Free-Women-of-Color to vote. Hence, what one is left with is a very thin and truncated coverage of the African American electorate before the Civil War and very little or next to nothing on the huge number of statewide referenda on African American suffrage rights before, during, and after the Civil War. Said empirical data provide the reader with a starting point—the actual beginning in the Colonial Era—and provide continuity from this departure point through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and beyond. A linkage and
Introduction 5 relationship has been made, which distinguishes this study from all previous studies which rely heavily on periodization.
Periodization Ignores Government Reports and Archives The third problem with the periodization approach is the non-use and/or limited recovery of national, state, and local registration data that are embedded in Senate and House documents, state and local archives, as well as data recovered in master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. Much of this empirical information has simply been undisturbed and underexplored. Thus, it could not be linked and/or related to already known and currently used and reported data. An exception is the two volumes done on southern primaries and general elections by two different groups of authors. First, there is the compendia by Alexander Heard and Donald Strong, Southern Primaries and Elections, 1920–1949. The second and follow-up volume is by Numan Bartley and Hugh Graham, Southern Elections: County and Precinct Data, 1950–1972. But these two data compendia are not comparable, especially in terms of their information on the African American electorate.9 The first volume includes categories of data on the African American electorate and political candidates and disenfranchisement that do not appear in the second volume. Unique to the second volume is precinct data in addition to county-level data. Comparability in these two volumes would have been an immense and staggering contribution to a portrait of the African American electorate. As they are now constituted, one volume becomes even more important than the other. However, if the empirical data in these two volumes are merged and used with the study that appears in Lawrence Hanks’ 1990 book, The Struggle for Black Political Empowerment in Three Georgia Counties (Clay, Hancock, and Peach), at least one could develop a longitudinal analysis of these three counties from 1920 through 1980.10 As their separation now stands, here are three periodization studies that are unlinked and distinct. Such is the case with much of the extant data on the African American electorate, and this must be recognized and dealt with so that a more holistic portrait can be made.
Periodization Excludes the Freedmen’s Voting Data The third problem of periodization—limited recovery of national, state, and local registration data—brings us to the fourth problem in this previous methodological approach, the almost universal exclusion of empirical registration and voting data on the southern African American electorate after the Civil War, i.e., the freedmen, generated by the Senate and House of Representatives executive documents.11 The Four Military Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 empowered the military commanders in the field in the South to register the freedmen in ten of the eleven southern states (Tennessee was excluded because three days before the first of these four acts was implemented, the state’s new constitution granted voting rights to the freedmen) and to permit them to vote. In addition, committees in both houses of Congress required these military commanders to collect registration and voting data by race. These empirical
6
Introduction
compilations appeared in Senate Executive Document 53, 40th Congress, 2nd Session, pages 1–14, and in House Executive Document 342, 40th Congress, 2nd Session, pages 1–208. Embedded in these official government documents are the numbers of registered freedmen voters county-by-county in each of these ten southern states, the number who actually voted, as well as the number of non-voters. Similar data are available for white voters in each state, county by county. And today, there are scholarly publications of these initial registrants by race in Texas and North Carolina. But very few scholarly and academic works have made any use of these official documents in terms of mapping the nature, scope, and significance of these initial racial voters. A lone exception is Richard L. Hume and Jerry B. Gough, Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction. Nor has exploration of this initial data at the state level generated any major works on this southern African American electorate. Needless to say, some historical works have used the grand total of the freedmen registered in these ten states of the South vis-àvis the white electorate but little beyond that. In its place most historical studies used the official racial registration data kept in the state of Louisiana at the parish level from Reconstruction to the present time. This approach left out the other nine states, plus whatever data that were available on Tennessee. Thus, a partial portrait was drawn of the African American electorate in this period and through the Disenfranchisement Era until 1920, when African American women got the vote and joined those few freedmen who had not been stripped of their right to vote. Hence, this exclusion problem was exemplified by the general prohibition of official voting data inherent in both federal and state documents, with the lone exception of Louisiana. This led to questionable interpretations of freedmen voting and political participation in the Reconstruction Era. Unique to this volume is the use of those empirical data that allow continuity and linkage with the data before, during, and after the Civil War, as well as better quantitative assessment of the impact and influence of the techniques of disenfranchisement. And more importantly, it allows continuity and linkage with those data that were generated when African American women became enfranchised.
Longitudinal Data at the Group Level Therefore, once our conceptualization for this volume was developed as a longitudinal one, our integrative approach became to merge, link, and relationally combine all the known, recovered, and new data that we could find. More than thirty years of researching and data collecting for this project yielded the rich treasure trove of new registration, turnout, and voting data on the African American electorate that readers will find in this volume. To continue our longitudinal study even when empirical data no longer existed, as in the state of Louisiana, we have used a surrogate variable: the existence of African American majority counties along with the white majority counties. Examination of racial majority counties has allowed coverage across time and a continuous description of the African American electorate, particularly in presidential elections. Using homogenous county-level data made it possible to trace and evaluate the
African American electorate at the group level longitudinally. Since the county became our unit of political analysis, we could not and did not attempt to describe and explain the African American electorate at the individual level. Thus, the majority of our descriptions and explanations in this volume are at the group level simply because public opinion polls and surveys, especially the former, did not begin until the mid-1930s, while our analysis begins in Colonial America and proceeds to the present. Therefore, our portrait of the African American electorate in this volume is a group-level one and nothing else.
Integrating a Case-Study Approach Beyond our integrative approach for this volume is our casestudy approach. The research for this study did not always turn up longitudinal data. At times it turned up data in great detail and specificity. Hence, we did not discard this new and revelatory electoral information. This study uses these new data in a case-study manner. Embedded in several of our chapter narratives, alongside or in the absence of longitudinal data, one will find in-depth studies of unique and rare events like the Mississippi “Freedom Vote” in 1963 or the electoral revolt of the African American electorate in 1920 and 1921, when African American women joined with the remaining few African American males who had not been disenfranchised to vote for African American political candidates. Hence, the case-study approach allowed this volume to utilize the singular electoral events that happened in the African American community from time to time rather than to dismiss them as unsuccessful efforts. These were not really epiphenomena because in the African American suffrage struggle all of these unusual events originated in the creative aspirations of the African American voting rights activists and their meaningful and linked attempts to get the right to vote in America, successful or not. The case-study approach has helped to preserve these efforts.
Data Sources Our approach links demographic data to electoral data on presidential contests.12 We utilize several datasets of the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), combining them at the county- and election-year levels. Our intent is to provide the reader with a vivid view of the historical journey that has shaped the African American struggle for suffrage rights, to see not only the resistance to these aspirations but also the reactions that have made African Americans a part of the American experience. We began first by determining the population counts of slaves and Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color during colonial and pre-federal periods, from 1624 to 1790, in various colonies and states, using official data from the United States Census Bureau.13 The methods and data sources for this presentation of presidential elections are given in our appendix. We relied on Michael Dubin for county-level data covering the elections from 1789 to 1824, ICPSR datasets for elections from 1828 to 1988, and the Dave Leip Web site for all elections since 1992.14 The ICPSR Study No. 2896 is our primary source for determining the census population counts of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color, slaves,
and whites by age, gender, and county in the federal period from 1790 to 1870 and the racial majority counties, including component breakdowns by age and gender, in census data since 1870.15 Census data in the studies indicated above provide the group-level foundation for establishing how the partitioning and extent of slave and free populations affected congressional apportionment and representation in the Colonial and Antebellum periods. Census data further provide information on the eligibility of the electorate, including African Americans, based on gender and age in periods after the Civil War: from the initial election of several African Americans to Congress, to the decimation of the African American electorate in the Disenfranchisement Era, to the re-emergence of local and state-level African American legislators and officeholders marked by the Electoral Revolt of 1920 and the enfranchisement of African American women, and to the modern era of political re-enfranchisement with the Smith v. Allwright court decision, the passage and renewals of the Voting Rights Act, and the election of President Barack Obama. Grouping and associating the presidential election results with census data then extends this logical structure by constructing the evolutionary timeline for the political innovations and alignments within the African American electorate and reactions from without to it, especially in making group-level comparisons in and between the geographic regions, and in and between the racial majority counties. Overall, our use of census data from the Colonial and Revolutionary eras combined with that of the Antebellum and more recent eras allows this volume to situate our electoral and political data within the official demographic and geographical contexts of the nation from its founding to the present. And such a methodological and research approach keeps this rare data on the African American electorate within the national and state political contexts across all of the nation’s epochs. This is the dominant feature of this pioneering study.
Presenting the Data Finally, with our integrative and case-study data, there is the matter of presentation. To assist readers we have employed both descriptive and visual statistics for the presentation of our data. We have used not only the traditional tabular presentation method but the newer styled presentations so prevalent in this new media age with its visual technology. These new visuals will allow a greater descriptive analysis and hopefully more useful interpretations of the longitudinal data on the African American electorate, in terms of greater depth and specificity. Such a data-rich study with so much new data needs the kind of summarization that only graphic elements can provide. Embracing visualization technology as this volume does sets it apart from all of the other studies on the African American electorate up to this point in time. Using county-level data, newly found data, in both a longitudinal and case-study format, with a visualization presentation, all in a carefully written narrative thoroughly differentiates this volume from any other work on the African American electorate. We hope that our work sets the stage for new empirical data analyses and future approaches to reforms in the American electoral process.
Introduction 7
Notes 1. For a discussion of African American farmers’ political participation in the AAA Cotton referenda see Ralph Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR, Edited and with an Introduction by Dewey Grantham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 505–515. 2. On this point about Professor C. Vann Woodward’s concept of the “Compromise of 1877” see Allan Peskin, “Was There a Compromise of 1877?” in John Herbert Roper (ed.), C. Vann Woodward: A Southern Historian and His Critics (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), pp. 150–164. For another work on another one of Professor Woodward’s concepts that relates to the African American electorate see Hanes Walton, Jr., Josephine A. V. Allen, Sherman C. Puckett, and Donald R. Deskins, Jr., “Beyond the Second Reconstruction: C. Vann Woodward’s Concept of the Third Reconstruction in the South,” American Review of Politics Vol. 32 (Spring & Summer 2011), pp. 105–130. 3. For the most recent and updated study on disenfranchisement, with new data on the beginning and ending dates, see Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 4. See this new study, which focuses on the efforts of the NAAC that most earlier works simply ignored or omitted, R. Volney Riser, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890–1908 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010). And for the first major scholarly work on the NAAC, see Benjamin Justesen, Broken Brotherhood: The Rise and Fall of the National Afro-American Council (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008). 5. Pat Watters and Reese Cleghorn, Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: The Arrival of Negroes in Southern Politics (New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1967). 6. Jack Dennis, “The Study of Electoral Behavior,” in William Crotty (ed.), Political Science: Looking into the Future, Volume Three: Political Behavior (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), pp. 51–89. 7. For a pathbreaking work on a new subfield in this discipline see Tasha Philpot and Ismail White (eds.), African-American Political Psychology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 8. For a pioneering work on the political context variable in African American politics see Hanes Walton, Jr., African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 9. See Numan Bartley and Hugh Graham, Southern Elections: County and Precinct Data, 1950–1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). 10. See Lawrence J. Hanks, The Struggle for Black Political Empowerment in Three Georgia Counties (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). 11. One of the very few historical studies of the Reconstruction Era to make use of the quantitative voting data collected by Senate and House of Representatives committees is the recent work by Richard L. Hume and Jerry Gough, Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008). 12. Donald R. Deskins, Jr., Hanes Walton, Jr., and Sherman Puckett, Presidential Elections, 1789–2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming). 13. United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), Chapter Z. See specifically the Series Z tables 1–19 and 24–132, pp. 1168–1171. 14. Michael J. Dubin, United States Presidential Elections, 1788– 1860: The Official Results by County and State (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002). Data from Dubin were used to augment results up through the election of 1860 from the following ICPSR studies: for the presidential elections of 1828 to 1836 ICPSR Study No. 1, United States Historical Election Returns, 1824–1968 [Computer File] http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ ICPSR00001, accessed September 19, 2002; the elections of 1840 to 1972 were covered using Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, ICPSR Study No. 8611, Election Data for Counties in the United
8
Introduction
States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840–1972 [Computer File] http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08611, accessed December 26, 2002; and the data source for the elections of 1976 to 1988 was ICPSR Study No. 13, Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–1970 [Computer File] http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR00013, accessed December 5, 2002. Data for the elections of 1992–2000 were obtained from Dave Leip, U.S. Election Atlas, http://uselectionatlas.org/ myatlas.php, accessed April 26, 2004; for the 2004 election, results were accessed on November 21, 2005; and for the election of 2008, October 26, 2009.
15. Michael R. Haines, ICPSR Study No. 2896, Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–2000 [Computer File] http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02896, accessed April 28, 2005. For 2010 data see the Census Web site http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/ nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml. For book references of census data that identify racial majority counties from 1880 to 1930 see United States Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 1790 to 1915 (New York: Arno Press, 1968), pp. 776–797, and United States Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 1920–1932 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), pp. 683–762.
CHAPTER 1
The State of African American Election Data The African American Electorate in Colonial and Revolutionary America
10
Table 1.1 Voting Rights of Free-Men-of-Color in the Thirteen Original Colonies: Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum Eras
11
Map 1.1 States with Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color, 1855
12
Election Data: From National and State Collections to the Commercial and Scholarly Sources
13
Finding Historical Election Data for African American Candidates: Monroe N. Work, W. E. B. DuBois, and Ralph Bunche
15
Table 1.2 Seven Categories of Political Data and Statistics in the Negro Year Book, 1912–1952 17
The State of African American Election Data: A Summary
20
Conclusion on the State of African American Election Data
21
Notes 22
10
P
Chapter 1
opular elections have always been a central feature of the American Republic, and African American voters have, at least to a limited extent, participated in these elections throughout the country’s history. The extent of popular voting in federal elections has itself developed and expanded over the years. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the founding fathers created a democratic republic where one of the central elements was the right of citizens to vote for the president and the members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The appointment of U.S. senators was left to the legislatures of the thirteen states. Article I, Sections 1 and 2 of the Constitution set out the requirements for the election of members of Congress and the appointment of senators, while Article II, Section 1 sets out the requirements for election of the president. In the presidential election of 1800, two Democratic-Republican Party candidates, Thomas Jefferson and his vice presidential running mate Aaron Burr, ended up with the same number of electoral votes. One defect of the Constitution was that it did not distinguish between electoral votes for president and vice president, meaning that when states voted for the Jefferson-Burr ticket, both men received electoral votes. To prevent the reoccurrence of this situation, the Twelfth Amendment, ratified on June 15, 1804, requires that Electoral College electors cast separate ballots for president and vice president, thereby eliminating the possibility of a tie between these two positions and a repeat of the controversial thirty-six ballots that it took to finally break the deadlock. On April 8, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified; this took the power to elect senators away from the state legislatures, where deadlocks and corruption had prevented some senators from being appointed for upwards of two years, and gave it to the people.1 Thus, with these essential changes, popular elections became the true centerpiece of the United States. Nevertheless, constitutional changes to the electoral system did not alter the nature of the voting populace. New amendments had to be added over time to expand the electorate, which had originally consisted mainly but not exclusively of propertyowning white males. Long before the Constitutional Convention or even the Declaration of Independence eleven years before, each of the thirteen colonies created its own legislative body. For example, Virginia created the House of Burgesses in 1655 so elected representatives could help the Royal Governor run the colony. Each colony set formal qualifications for candidates running for seats in legislative bodies. The Virginia colony stipulated that all candidates for the House of Burgesses had to be “Persons of knowne integrity and of good conversation and of age one and twenty years,” and that each member of the electorate had to be a white “gentleman and freeholder [property owner].”2 In fact, all of the colonies modeled their suffrage requirements upon those in their English homeland, requiring that a member of the electorate be a “stakeholder” in society.3 Non-property owners were considered unfit to participate in colonial government, as they were thought to be beholden to the political views of their landlords. Property holdings supposedly gave citizens personal independence and related virtues that entitled them to political participation and power. Even in the Northwest Territory,
“the largest piece of terrain directly controlled by the federal government, citizens and aliens alike had to own fifty acres of land in order to vote.”4 Therefore, early in the colonial period (1610–1773), voting became a defining characteristic of American political life, and the colonies themselves set the criteria and formal qualifications of the electorate. As the historian Alexander Keyssar noted, “The Constitution adopted in 1787 left the federal government without any clear power or mechanism, other than through constitutional amendment, to institute a national conception of voting rights, to express a national vision of democracy.”5 In addition, “By making the franchise in national elections dependent on state suffrage laws, the authors of the Constitution compromised their substantive disagreements to solve a potentially explosive political problem,” which left the nation with “a long and sometimes problematic legacy.”6 States, both then and now, have retained the power to shape the electorate using various criteria—including race, sex, age, citizenship, criminal status, and class—to define who has the right to vote.
The African American Electorate in Colonial and Revolutionary America In Colonial America, “requirements for voting were far more numerous than at present and were related not only to age, residence, and citizenship, but also to race, sex, religion and the holding of property.”7 Of suffrage rights in this era (1610–1773), political scientist Robert Dinkins found that: Just as voting restrictions against religious minorities were not all encompassing, so too were those instituted on the basis of race. Suffrage laws excluding Negroes and Indians were far from universal. In the Southern colonies, where the majority of black, red and mulatto populations resided, disfranchisement came rather late, while farther north no statute ever eliminated nonwhites from the ballot.8 Table 1.1 provides empirical evidence for Professor Dinkins’ observation about the Colonial Era. No colony denied these voting rights from the outset, but three would eventually deny them, while ten never denied them in the Colonial Era. However, as the colonies transitioned into states during the Revolutionary Era (1774–1789), two states—South Carolina and Virginia—denied the right of free blacks to vote from the outset in their state constitutions; only one state, Maryland, would later deny the right; and ten states, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island, would never deny the right. Map 1.1 (p. 12) provides a snapshot of the national status as of 1855. Keyssar found that “by 1855, only five states (Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island) did not discriminate against African Americans, and these states contained only 4 percent of the nation’s free black population. Notably, the federal government also prohibited blacks from voting in the territories it controlled.”9 Recent historical evidence
The State of African American Election Data 11 Table 1.1 Voting Rights of Free-Men-of-Color in the Thirteen Original Colonies: Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum Eras Era
Colony
Denied from the Outset
Eventually Denied
Never Denied
Colonial Era (1610–1773)
Massachusetts
X
Royal
New Hampshire
X
Royal
Rhode Island
X
Self-governing
Connecticut
X
Self-governing
New York
X
Royal
Pennsylvania
X
Self-governing
New Jersey
X
Royal
Delawarea
X
Self-governing
Maryland
X
Self-governing
Virginia
X
Royal
North Carolina
X
Royal
South Carolina
X
Royal
Georgia
X
Royal
Total
0
3
10
Massachusetts
X
New Hampshire
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New Yorkb
Pennsylvania
New Jersey
Delawarea
Maryland
Virginia
X
a
Revolutionary Era (1774–1789)c
Antebellum and Civil War Eras (1790–1870)
Colonial Status
X
X X
X X
X X
X
North Carolina
South Carolina
X
X
Georgiaa
X
Total
2
2
9
Massachusetts
X
New Hampshire
Rhode Islandd
Connecticut
X
New York
X
Pennsylvania
X
New Jersey
X
Delawarea
X
Maryland
X
Virginia
X
North Carolina
South Carolina
X
Georgiaa Total
X X
X
X
3
5
5
Sources: Hanes Walton Jr., African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 16. The table has been upated with data from Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 349–353, Table A4. Data updates were found for Georgia and Delaware. Of Georgia upon statehood, Keyssar informs that "all secondary sources agree that blacks could not vote, but a very extensive research effort has not turned up a clear legal basis for that exclusion." (Keyssar, p. 353, footnote 5). In 1777 with the initial formulation of its state constitution Georgia disenfranchised African Americans, but later this exclusion was removed in revisions that were instituted in 1789 and 1798. a
b
New York, in several constitutional conventions, voted to restrict the voting rights of free blacks.
c
Formally beginning with the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
d
In Rhode Island African Americans were disenfranchised by statute in 1822 but re-enfranchised by the state constitution that was rewritten in 1843.
Louisiana
Arkansas
Missouri
Illinois
Wisconsin
Mississippi
Alabama
Tennessee
Kentucky
Indiana
Michigan
Ohio
Florida Florida
0
Georgia *
South South Carolina Carolina
North Carolina
Virginia
Pennsylvania
New York
Vermont
miles
100
200
Maryland
Delaware
New Jersey
Connecticut
Rhode Island **
Never Denied Denied and Reinstated Restricted
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Maine
(5) (1) (1)
0
100 miles
200
** In Rhode Island the suffrage rights of Free-Men-of-Color were denied by statute in 1822 but reinstated by the revised constitution in 1843.
* Though no evidence has surfaced that African Americans ever voted in pre–Civil War Georgia, there was also no exclusion of their suffrage rights after the year of Georgia statehood (1789).
Sources: Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 55 and 349–353, Table A4, and Adrian B. Ettlinger, The AniMap Plus County Boundary Historical Atlas, Version 3, Release 2, http://www.goldbug.com (Alamo, California: Goldbug Software, 1991–2008).
Texas
Indian Territory
Kansas Territory
Nebraska Territory
Iowa
Minnesota Territory
Map 1.1 States with Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color, 1855
provided by Professor Keyssar in his book The Right to Vote adds Georgia to the list of states that granted suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color. Georgia, in its state constitutions of 1789 and 1798, did not exclude Free-Men-of-Color from voting as they had excluded them during the Revolutionary Era (1777). Although they were not legally excluded by these state constitutions, no evidence has surfaced that Free-Men-of-Color actually cast ballots in state and local elections in Georgia.10 In addition to the five states (plus Georgia) where the right to vote remained on the eve of the Civil War, there were several states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey where the right of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color to vote had been rescinded. New Jersey denied the right to vote to African American females and males in 1807,11 Tennessee to African American males in 1834,12 North Carolina in 1835,13 and Pennsylvania in 1838.14 To date, none of the election statistics on the free blacks who could vote in the other eight states have surfaced in any systematic manner. Scattered throughout a few studies are some conjectures, hints, and an estimate for New York, but nothing else. In fact, prior to the Civil War, these data were not collected, much less maintained. Although state election data are thin and incomplete in this early period of national existence, some gaps in the information can be filled by information inferred from federal data. At the Constitutional Convention, the founding fathers adopted the Three-Fifths Clause for counting slaves as a way to determine the number of seats that slave-holding states would get in the House of Representatives as well as the number of electoral votes they would cast in presidential elections. It was not until the celebration of the bicentennial of the nation in 1976 that a document was uncovered from a delegate to the 1787 Convention that showed the actual impact of the Three-Fifths Clause, and accordingly, the slave vote in the congressional and presidential elections.15 This document, together with other original documents from the Constitutional Convention, showed that the Convention developed a consensus on how to count the slave population in each state so that the number of seats for each slave state in the House of Representatives could be determined. The first session of Congress after the Convention occurred was during 1788–1790—before the first national census was taken in 1790—and this first session was the year that the Three-Fifths Clause went into effect. Thus, with this estimated slave population data from the first session of Congress and the census slave population data for the second session of Congress and every ten years afterward, one can develop estimates of the slave “electorate” from the initial Congress in 1788 until the last antebellum session in 1860. The Three-Fifths Clause became a dead letter when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, abolishing slavery. Using this federal data, this study will examine the impact and influence of the non-voting slave population vis-à-vis the Free-Men-of-Color voting population. Such an effort has never before been undertaken. And in the end, sole reliance should not be placed upon state election data because state censuses in the Revolutionary Era were not coordinated, standardized, or consistent.16
The State of African American Election Data 13
Election Data: From National and State Collections to the Commercial and Scholarly Sources It is not only the data for the African American electorate that are thin in the years before and after the American Revolution; the data for the electorate as a whole are problematic. The individual colonies were in charge of collecting and maintaining election return data. Although Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution calls for the federal government to conduct a census of the population every ten years, it does not specify that this census collect election data, only population data. Thus, the collection and maintenance of election return data, even for federal offices, was left up to the states. Of these states’ collection and maintenance efforts, political scientist Walter Dean Burnham wrote: “The variation in the quality, extensiveness and general availability of such official reporting has been enormous throughout American political history, and remains so to the present day. Moreover, mass electoral politics in the United States goes back to a much earlier time . . . indeed, to a time in which social statistics were in their infancy.”17 He added: “Particularly before about 1840, reporting of the most essential political data was correspondingly primitive in vast parts of the country. . . .”18 Some colonies, and later states, stored their election data in their state archives’ manuscript returns collections. Very few states required election returns to be published in public documents, such as newspapers.19 Some states issued official manuals, registers, executive documents, state legislative journals, secretary of state reports, and executive minutes. However, in at least one state, Arkansas, there are no known manuscripts of election returns.20 Overall, there was no uniform or standard format for the maintenance and publication of national, state, or local election statistics. Hence, in this maze of sources and lack of standardization, information about the Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color electorate was, quite literally, lost, and the prevailing sentiment of later commercial publishers and scholars looking back on Colonial (1610–1773) and Revolutionary America (1774–1789) seemed to be that it was not worth untangling the knot of inconsistent documents. None of this plethora of documents was readily available to either the public or the scholarly community. But things were about to change. In 1811, the first commercial venture to provide presidential and other election data appeared, Niles’ Register (1811–1849), published in Baltimore and Philadelphia. This annual publication was quickly followed by another, The Whig Almanac and Politician’s Register (1838–1855), which later became known as The Tribune Almanac (1856–1914). The Whig/Tribune provided both the scholarly and lay communities with “county-level presidential coverage . . . (and) . . . extensive reporting at this level for other offices.”21 Next came the World Almanac, The Chicago Daily News Almanac, and the American Almanac. Although these commercial publications were limited and scattered, they set off scholarly activity intent on making sense of the data. Geographers were the first scholars to take the published election statistics and combine them with maps of the nation, states, regions, and districts. Fletcher Hewes and Henry
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Gannett’s Scribner’s Statistical Atlas of the United States, Showing Their Present Condition and their Political, Social and Industrial Development appeared in 1883, while Hewes’ The Citizen’s Atlas of American Elections followed in 1888. In 1932, historian Charles Paullin and geographer John Wright collaborated on the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. These pioneering works were followed by two others by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1920 and 1935 that the importance of geographic sectionalism in American electoral behavior and politics. Following these efforts by geographers and historians, political scientists entered the picture. In 1934, Edgar Robinson published The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, and Walter Dean Burnham in 1955 published the data for the earlier years with his Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892. Now scholars had countylevel election records for most years of the presidential elections. However, data were still missing. Writing in 2002, elections scholar Michael J. Dubin stated: “generally accepted compilations of the popular vote for presidential election date back to 1824. Curiously little is known about the election returns before then.”22 In launching his research to acquire these data, he “found that no definitive set of returns by county exists for the elections from 1824 through 1832.”23 The main reason for the missing presidential election data, as Dubin saw it, was as follows: The number and percentage of states that provided for the popular election of [presidential] electors changed with every election. In 1800, only five states provided for this type of election of [presidential] electors. . . . Not until 1820 did the trend move in an upward direction with 15 states providing for popular elections; 18 did in 1824; and by 1828, all but two chose [presidential] electors by popular vote.24 Put differently, the Constitution left it up to the states to determine how they wanted to choose presidential electors. Some states did it with popular voting, some let the state legislatures do it, while still others used a combination of these two methods. Eventually popular voting would come to dominate, but before 1836 this widely diverse set of procedures became such a barrier and obstacle that scholars and commercial publishers simply didn’t gather these data at all. For instance, South Carolina did not gather this type of data between 1788 and 1860. Dubin collected these data where they existed and made them available. Both prior to and following the commercial and scholarly works, federal agencies began to issue pamphlets and compendia with national election return data. The Bureau of the Census issued Vote Cast in Presidential and Congressional Elections, 1928–1944, and after each biennial election the clerk of the House of Representatives released reports like the Statistics of Presidential and Congressional Election of November 7, 1944 and Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 7, 1950. The Government Printing Office publishes the Congressional Directory for each session of Congress, which includes vote returns. Lastly, the Census Bureau’s Historical Statistics of the United
States: Colonial Times to 1970 and Statistical Abstract of the United States are generally available, as is the Federal Election Commission’s Federal Elections, 1982–2006: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives. Presently, there are a number of major reference works including the America Votes series, the Guide to U.S. Elections, Presidential Elections, A Statistical History of the American Electorate, and the Student’s Atlas of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1996. To make election return data available in the computer age, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) in the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan offers Data Set 0001, “United States Historical Election Returns, 1824–1968” and Data Set 0019, “State-Level Presidential Election Data for the United States, 1824–1972.” Thus, slowly over time, the systematic collection and retrieval efforts of many scholars have been quite successful, resulting in a set of historical election return data that is nearly comprehensive. This material has been made available for dissemination to scholars, academics, political consultants, and the general public. Much can now be found out about voting history in the American past, going back almost to the first elections in the new republic. But this gathering and recording and dissemination have essentially been an endeavor to capture the mainstream. Almost none of these data sources kept track of the African American electorate. Despite the acknowledged fact that race has been a major feature of America’s political life and process, these governmental, commercial, and scholarly compendia have not collected, recorded, and made available for dissemination the nature and scope of the African American electorate. As a consequence, knowledge and scholarship about the African American electorate that are based on empirical interpretations of this incomplete historical election return data are, at best, questionable, if not misleading. Until recently there was thought to have been only one African American who served as a publicly elected official before the Civil War. John Mercer Langston was elected to the post of township clerk in Lorain County, Ohio, in 1854. After the Civil War he would move to Virginia to become the first African American member of Congress from that state.25 However, in 1992 it was discovered that prior to the election of Langston another African American was elected to public office, in the state legislature of Vermont. Regardless of whether the number was one or two, the paucity of African American elected officials before the Civil War suggested even to skilled researchers like political scientist Harold Gosnell “that the direct political importance of the Negro prior to the Civil War was very slight.”26 Indeed, historians until recently considered taking notice of African American elected officials to be of little value in the collection and maintenance of election return statistics for African Americans prior to the Civil War. Despite the fact that the collection and maintenance of election return data gradually became easier, the use of social statistics improved, and the number of African Americans elected to political office increased after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, the tendency to omit, ignore, dismiss, and generally exclude records of African American voting during the Colonial,
Revolutionary, Antebellum, and Civil War eras continued apace. Simply put, African American voting records were not kept even after African Americans were more fully enfranchised and began holding public office in significant numbers during the Reconstruction Era.
Finding Historical Election Data for African American Candidates: Monroe N. Work, W. E. B. DuBois, and Ralph Bunche To extract election returns for African American voters—past or present—one needs a comprehensive list of African American elected officials for every state, and the years of their election and reelections. African American voters, because of race consciousness in the community, have always tended to vote for African American candidates in high numbers. Hence, the existence of these candidates always suggests that if the African American electorate could vote, they voted for candidates of their own race. Thus, where actual voting data do not exist and/or did not get collected, the presence of African American candidates allows researchers to pinpoint areas of possible and potential voters. Without a list of African American candidates and officeholders for purposes of cross-referencing and comparison, governmental collections, commercial compendia, and scholarly reports have little value for the study of the African American electorate. Sadly, no such list exists. There are several reasons why. Racial prejudice and white supremacy are the dominant factors that help to explain both the small number of colonies and later states that allowed Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color to vote and the small number of African Americans who held elected office during the Early Republic, as compared with the large numbers of officeholders during Reconstruction. Racial prejudice and the ideology of White Supremacy prevented widespread enfranchisement as well as a significant number of African American officeholders. One of the first scholars to address this issue was an African American named Monroe N. Work. Writing in the January 1920 issue of the Journal of Negro History, he described the problem and its relationship to regional, if not national, attitudes and sentiments: “No systematic effort has hitherto been made to save the records of the Negro during the Reconstruction period. American public opinion has been so prejudiced against the Negroes because of their elevation to prominence in southern politics that it has been considered sufficient to destroy their regime and forget it.”27 Work was not alone in understanding this reality. Howard Dodson, longtime librarian and curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, made the following remarks about the problem: “Until recently, little was known about black Reconstruction lawmakers. . . . Vilified as ignorant, lazy, illiterate buffoons and gross incompetents, black officials were characterized as unfit to vote, much less to hold elective office. . . . [Thus] they were denied their proper place in the history of our country. Ignored by historians, the vast majority of them remained faceless, voiceless men.”28 Eric Foner, the noted present-day scholar of African American elected officials in the Reconstruction Era, observed that “to
The State of African American Election Data 15 Reconstruction’s opponents, black officeholding symbolized the fatal ‘error’ of national policy after the Civil War. . . . The Democratic press described [state] constitutional conventions and [state] legislatures with black members as ‘menageries’ and ‘monkey houses’ that made a travesty of democratic government. . . .”29 Foner continued: “. . . some opponents of Reconstruction tried to erase black officials from the historical record altogether.” Soon after Democrats regained control of Georgia’s government, Alexander St. Clair Abrams, who compiled the state’s legislative manual, decided to omit black lawmakers from the volume’s biographical sketches. It would be absurd, he wrote, to record “the lives of men who were but yesterday our slaves, and whose past careers, probably, embraced such menial occupations as boot-blacking, shaving, table-waiting, and the like.”30 “These judgments,” noted Foner, “stemmed from a combination of racism and an apparent unwillingness to do simple research about black officeholders,”31 in this time period or before. He concludes by saying that “the lives of most black officials have remained shrouded in obscurity. Many disappeared entirely from the historical record after leaving public office,” if not before. Thus, “available sources are sometimes contradictory or manifestly inaccurate. It is even impossible to ascertain whether certain individuals were in fact black or white.”32 Work noted that the initial problem facing researchers interested in African American electoral, appointive, and participatory politics in the Reconstruction period was one of simple identification. He wrote: “It has been extremely difficult to determine the race of the members of the various Reconstruction bodies. The list of members as published in the Journals of the legislatures does not indicate the race.”33 Work indicated that a rare exception was the state of North Carolina. “The Negro members of the North Carolina General Assembly . . . were indicated by the figure 37 in the State Manual listing all persons who had been in the Assembly. Where no such information could be obtained from printed matter, it has been necessary to rely upon information obtained from individuals who participated in the Reconstruction”34 or from contemporaries who were still living at the moment. Work first attempted a comprehensive identification and listing of the African American members of Reconstruction Conventions and southern state legislatures in 1920. Another major attempt was not made until 1993, some 73 years later. And even this publication, Eric Foner’s Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction, despite the time and expertise that went into looking for these officials, is still incomplete. Work had begun this task of political identification long before his 1920 article. The publication in which Work collected, recorded, and disseminated his research on political identification and later electoral data was the Negro Year Book. Work, who took bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago, began his research at Georgia State College (later Savannah State College) in Savannah, Georgia, resigning on June 29, 1908, to take a job at the Tuskegee Institute, eventually to become head of the Department of Records and Research. When Booker T. Washington interviewed Work for the job at Tuskegee in his private railroad car on May 29, 1908, Washington indicated that
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he wanted Work to consider teaching a course on history and sociology. Washington was concerned that the many speeches he gave around the nation “sometimes contained errors with reference to dates, names, places, and figures. It seemed important to his friends that he correct these deficiencies.”35 Work had been recommended to him to provide this service, yet “Work did no formal classroom teaching during the thirty-seven years he was connected with the institution.”36 Rather, his time at Tuskegee was devoted to gathering and publishing research on the African American experience. The publication of the Negro Year Book largely came about as a result of Andrew Carnegie’s establishment and funding of the Committee of Twelve in 1904 to disseminate publicity relating to the Negro. Washington and his fellow committee members used most of their funding to publish and distribute pamphlets. By the summer of 1910, only $1,000 remained. “In July, Washington wrote Work about the possibility of compiling a yearbook of Negro progress to mark the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation in 1913.”37 Work responded positively. Whereas Washington had envisioned a pamphlet, Work wanted a book and told Washington that the income from the sale of the book “would replenish the fund, providing money for future projects.”38 Shortly thereafter, the Negro Year Book Publishing Company was formed with the Tuskegee Institute, with Work and University of Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park as joint owners. As Work envisioned the Year Book, it would be an annual encyclopedia that would provide “in a condensed form facts in regard to the present and past of the negro in America. It was a new and valuable attempt to register the progress of a race. The volume soon was used as a standard reference in public as well as in private libraries in the United States and abroad.”39 In fact, the “first edition was accepted with such enthusiasm that Monroe edited nine editions during his lifetime.”40 While the Year Book had no peers and quickly established itself as the dominant reference work in the field, “In 1928 it became necessary for Tuskegee Institute to assume the ownership of the Negro Year Book and pay its back debts.”41 While the rate of publication slowed, eleven editions appeared between 1912 and 1952. There is a simple reason for the lack of annual editions after the 1921–1922 edition: finances. There was never enough money to run the Tuskegee Department of Records and Research and meet the demands made on it. Work’s biographer and successor, Jessie Guzman, declared: “He was often beset with financial difficulties. More than once his work was threatened with curtailment because of lack of funds, and it was necessary for him to secure special grants for its continuation. . . . Between 1921 and 1938, mainly through his personal efforts . . . [several foundations] came to his rescue. . . .”42 Even with this help Work still did not have enough funds for an annual publication of the Negro Year Book. Thus, there are significant gaps in its publication. In addition to financial shortfalls, the Great Depression hit both the black community and its colleges very hard, which also contributed to the gaps in the annual publication of this one-ofa-kind reference work. Still, what editions did appear continued to carry excellent, if not the only, materials on African Americans
elections and politics. This body of political and electoral facts served everyone from scholars to laypeople. Table 1.2 summarizes the political identification features inherent in each of the eleven volumes of the Negro Year Book. Using an intensive content analysis of each volume, we were able to discern seven distinct categories of political, statistical, and electoral data. As shown at the top of the table, the first category, “Current Politics,” described all of those African American electoral and appointive candidates who won offices at the state and local levels for the years of that particular Year Book. All eleven editions of the Year Book carried this information. The second category, “Past Politics,” described “Negro Officeholders” during Reconstruction at the national, state, and local levels. Six and a half of the Year Books carried this information. The half-year is the 1941–1946 edition, the first edition not edited by Work, which carried only very limited and brief information about past officeholders. It devoted most of its coverage to current officeholders. This was a departure from the pattern created by Work. The third category, “Suffrage Rights,” described when and where African Americans could exercise their voting rights before the Civil War, after the Civil War, and during the Era of Disenfranchisement. Eight of the nine editions that Work edited carried this information. For some unknown reason, Work dropped this category starting with the 1937–1938 edition. However, this category was transformed into a discussion of poll taxes in the tenth edition and combined in the eleventh edition with a limited discussion of suffrage rights. Thus, ten of the eleven editions dealt with this electoral matter. The fourth category, “Civil Rights,” discussed and noted those civil liberties exercised by African Americans beyond mere voting rights, such as jury duty and accommodation in public transportation. And the fifth category, “Negro Officeholding,” carried information about the locations and terms of African American candidates in state and local positions, particularly in current election years. In this section, Work identifies both African American females and males. All eleven editions of the Year Book carried the fourth and fifth categories. However, only six of the eleven editions carried the sixth category, the number of “Negro Delegates” elected to the Democratic and Republican national conventions, where party nominees for the presidency and vice presidency were nominated. This information contains the names and states of each delegate. From this information, one can discern that African American party behavior was underway to different degrees in different places. Although this information was not published until the fourth edition, it was collected for the earlier years. In the two editions that Guzman edited, this vital party information was dropped. Finally, the seventh category, data on the “Negro Voting Age Population” by gender in each of the states from 1860 through 1950, is unique and quite insightful. These data appear to have been collected from the Bureau of the Census population studies. Work began compiling these data in the second edition, but the information was dropped entirely in the ninth edition, the last one that Work edited before his death. In the second through
The State of African American Election Data 17
Table 1.2 Seven Categories of Political Data and Statistics in the Negro Year Book, 1912–1952 Negro Delegates to National Conventions
Negro Voting Age Population
Year
Current Politics
Past Politics
Suffrage Rights
Civil Rights
Negro Officeholding
1912
X
X
X
X
1913
X
X
X
X
X
1914–1915
X
X
X
X
X
1916–1917
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
1918–1919
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
1921–1922
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
1925–1926
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
1931–1932
X
X
X
X
X
Xa
X
1937–1938
X
X
X
X
X
1941–1946
X
X
X
X
X
Xb
1952
X
X
X
X
X
b d
b
c c
Sources: Data adapted from all eleven editions of the Negro Year Book. a
This volume of the Negro Year Book offers a rich source of voter participation data.
b
In these years the Negro Year Book offers a limited amount of data.
c
In these years the Negro Year Book shifts from a historical discussion of suffrage rights to a focus on poll taxes.
d
In this year the Negro Year Book provides data on United Nations participation.
eighth editions, Work offered a detailed analysis of the voting age population in the African American community. When the eighth edition appeared just before the election of Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this suggested to both Roosevelt and the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover, the size, location, and potential significance of the African American electorate. Such an empirical message was also available to the mobilizers and party activists in the African American community, but in the next edition, the ninth, this unique information was dropped by Work. However, following Work’s departure, Guzman continued to amass this information, although not in the detail provided in the eighth volume. When seen collectively, the first three editions did not carry all seven categories, but the next five editions did. Beginning with Work’s last edition, the ninth one, the number of categories dropped back to five. Overall, six of the eleven editions have fewer than seven categories while five of the eleven editions carry all of the seven categories. Clearly, part of the reason that a majority of the volumes didn’t carry all of the categories is that in the initial volumes, Work had not developed all of the features and characteristics of African American politics that he wanted to display and reveal. In sum, it took a little time before this annual encyclopedia of the Negro matured and redirected itself. Despite all of its limitations, the Year Book stands as the only major reference work to describe the African American electorate in the Colonial, Revolutionary, Antebellum, Reconstruction, Disenfranchisement, and Modern American periods, albeit in a limited and partial manner. With these eleven volumes, one has
a point of departure for the serious study of the African American electorate. For even though limited, these eleven volumes with their multiple factual categories can, when these data are integrated, offer bold new insights into the nature, scope, and significance of African American political behavior in the American political process. These eleven volumes compiled by Work and Guzman are invaluable and nearly all that is needed to construct a holistic portrait of the African American electorate alone. But when the data in these eleven volumes are used as the groundwork and combined with other scarce data-based works, a whole new reality is possible. Work (and later Guzman) provided the foundation for this epistemological exploration. Despite the quality of these yearbooks, they have been very little used. Work’s biographer, historian Linda McMurry, indicates, “he became a virtually unknown figure after his death . . . [due in part] to his affiliation with Tuskegee . . . as that school became an object of contempt for many later twentieth century scholars.”43 She continues: “The focus of later scholars on the shortcomings of Washington and Tuskegee has obscured their successes,”44 one of which is clearly, the Negro Year Book. Secondly, with the rise of the “behavioralism revolution” in political science in the 1960s, with its focus on the individual and dismissal of political context, election return data took a backseat in the discipline’s research focus. Emphasis on psychological variables at the expense of the state and institutional variables left history out of the conceptualization of politics. Work’s yearbooks simply didn’t surface because data from polls and surveys displaced election returns data as the unit of analysis and measurement. Empirical and quantitative
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political science studies simply ignored and/or dismissed election return data. Finally, it is not just the political identification data that Work generated in the different editions of the Negro Year Book that is so invaluable to scholars, politicians, laypersons, and think tanks then and now; it is equally valuable to those he influenced to build upon his record and take the next steps. Chief among these collectors, recorders, and disseminators of the African American political experience was the first African American political scientist, Ralph Bunche.45 Yet in between Work and Bunche, one finds the contributions of W. E. B. DuBois, who served in part as a link between these two scholarly retrievers. Even before DuBois or Work, the American Negro Academy (ANA) made a limited, almost fleeting, effort as a retriever. The ANA was a learned society founded on “March 5, 1897 in Washington, D.C.” that held its last meeting on “December 28, 1928.”46 During its existence, the ANA “published twenty-two occasional papers on subjects related to the culture, history, religion, civil and social rights, and the social institutions of black Americans.”47 Among these occasional papers, which addressed the major issues of the day, four of the twenty-two papers (18.2%) dealt with disenfranchisement (number 6), the African American elective franchise (number 11), the lost ballot of African Americans in the one-party South (number 16), and the necessity of enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment (number 22).48 Unique among these four occasional papers was number 11, entitled “The Negro and the Elective Franchise.” It was more of a pamphlet with some six different articles, all of which had been written in 1905 by different scholars and men of distinction. Of these six papers, the one written by Professor Kelly Miller of Howard University, entitled “Migration and Distribution of the Negro Population as Affecting the Elective Franchise,” proved to be unlike the others because it included not only an argument but voting statistics as well. And it “was more significant for its statistical tables than for its arguments. The tables contained statistics on the growth of the black population from 1790 to 1900; on the number of blacks living in the South and in the North; on the number of black males of voting age in the northern states; and on the number of black males of voting age in the northern cities.”49 Thus, this paper by Professor Miller pointed to the importance of demographic census data as a tool to understanding potential black political power in the northern states—the destination for most African Americans migrating out of the South. And with this election data Professor Miller might have given the ANA a role in the African American community: promoting the collection of such data to measure the growth of African American political power in the North and the decrease of political power in the South. But it was a moment and role that got lost because it was not promoted as such. At best it was a harbinger of things to come for lone individuals like Monroe Work, W. E. B. DuBois, and others. This fleeting and indirect effort at promoting an effort to collect election data on the African American electorate did not get any support from the last occasional paper written on the subject by the ANA, which was issued in 1924. Entitled “The Challenge of the Disfranchised: A Plea for the Enforcement of
the 15th Amendment,” it devoted more attention to the issue of disenfranchisement but eschewed the need for simple election data collection, even though such data might have helped in motivating and activating the federal government to intervene in the South. This paper emphasized getting the federal courts involved. Thus, this last paper did not build on the lead proffered by Professor Miller. And this turned out to be one of the limitations of the ANA: its work on the disfranchisement of the African American electorate did not build on its groundwork efforts, at least at the statistical level. But after its demise, DuBois did see the necessity of collecting election data and did do so via the The Crisis magazine, which he edited from 1912–1934. Beginning in 1911 until his forced retirement from the NAACP and the editorship of the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine in 1934, DuBois reported all of the names and places of the newly elected African American officeholders at the local, state, and national levels in the United States.50 Despite the disenfranchisement of the African American southern electorate, in the northern, midwestern, western, and Border states African Americans were being elected to city councils, state legislatures, and eventually to Congress in 1928. DuBois’s major contribution is not the simple recordkeeping and the political identification of these pioneering African American political officeholders, but his use of these political successes to motivate and politically socialize the African American middle class into acquiring or regaining the ballot in the places where it had been denied. In addition, DuBois’s work popularized what Work and other African American historians and academics had offered essentially to the educated elite. Now those laypersons in the African American community could hear and read about the meaning, the output, and the influence of having the ballot. African American elected officials were not just theoretical; they were visible and real. Yet of all of the evaluations and assessments made of DuBois’s impact and influence, this aspect of his work is the least known. Nevertheless, Bunche would later gather this African American officeholding data from the DuBois compilations for the Myrdal study. This tabular list is at this writing the very best one in existence. Taking his PhD from Harvard University in 1934, Bunche founded and chaired the Government Department at Howard University. But unlike Work, he was politically involved in the Carnegie Foundation–sponsored study headed by Gunnar Myrdal that was released as a two-volume work, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Bunche was asked to join the study so as to prevent him from becoming the main critic of the study after it was released.51 Myrdal, when he asked Bunche to join the project and to travel with him around the South, commissioned him “to prepare four memoranda as working papers for the Myrdal study. In fact, of all of the forty-four research monographs prepared for the Myrdal study, ‘the most substantial’ and most important was Bunche’s ‘Political Status of the Negro.’ ”52 This memorandum “consisted of 1,662 typewritten pages,” and was “made up of 19 chapters, three appendices and a preface.”53 Bunche then subdivided these nineteen chapters into seven books. More importantly, the three appendices and thirty-three tables, charts, and graphs in “The Political Status of the Negro”
contained the political identification of African American elected officials past and present, some of which were taken from the sundry listings in Work’s Negro Year Book, while others were found by Bunche’s field researchers. However, one of the major tables in his study was a table containing all of the African American officeholders reported in The Crisis magazine from 1911 until 1934.54 Also unique to this research memorandum is the way that Bunche used his field researchers to get African American voter registration estimates, particularly in southern states and cities during the late 1930s. Prior to Bunche’s field work for the Myrdal study, a major pioneering effort was made by the white historian Paul Lewinson for his work Race, Class, and Party: A History of Negro Suffrage and White Politics in the South in 1932. Bunche’s attempt to find out about African American voter registration in the South after the Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1901) set him apart from Work.55 However, Work had based his facts on newspaper clippings and on information sent to him by interested volunteers, as well as responses from state and local government officials. In terms of this voter registration data alone, Bunche’s memorandum is a treasure trove and one of the only places this voter registration information can be found. Yet up to the point in time of this writing, this one-of-a-kind type of data had not yet been used in any systematic fashion. Nevertheless, it still exists, albeit in a fairly difficult format to access. Currently, this Bunche memorandum exists in two forms. First, the original memoranda exist on microfilm at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library in Harlem. A microfilm copy can be purchased from the Center.56 Secondly, an edited copy, with an introduction to the memorandum, has been published by historian Dewey Grantham, entitled The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR. Bunche’s memorandum, as Grantham admits in the section “A Note on the Editing,” has been reshaped, reorganized, restructured, divided, and combined in such a manner that some of the pioneering political identification, voter registration, and selected voting data are not included and/or are only partially included; in fact, when the edited volume is compared and contrasted with the original memorandum, they look like two very different documents. Researchers would be well advised to get the original, though limited access to the original memorandum has hampered and hindered its use. Recently, another of Bunche’s memoranda, “A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership,” has been published. However, this one does not suffer from the numerous problems that beset the first published work. The editor, historian Jonathan Scott Holloway, tells us in the section entitled “Note on Editorial Policy and Formatting” that “the content of the memo remains unchanged,”57 unlike the first memo. In it Bunche identifies national, state, and local African American leaders and politicians, along with their party affiliation. In fact, in his two appendixes as well as in the narrative of the book, Bunche uncovers African American leaders who are not found in any other source, making it quite useful for the years under analysis (1800–1939).
The State of African American Election Data 19 Lastly, Bunche in his published article, “Disenfranchisement of the Negro,” provides the reader with the electoral cost to the African American community of the southern Democratic Party’s legal policies to strip the African American electorate of its Fifteenth Amendment right to vote.58 It is a quite learned piece and notable for its insights into the rescission of voting rights. The other two unpublished memoranda are also useful to the study and analysis of the African American electorate and ought to be used in conjunction with the two published ones. Within a decade after his death, Work’s activities had influenced and motivated a new generation of African American scholars. In 1957, the Journal of Negro Education devoted a special edition to “The Negro Voter,” where a variety of African American and white scholars provided systematic analysis of the African American electorate in nearly all of the eleven states that constituted the Confederacy. They looked at voter registration, voter turnout, voting, and political participation. This volume built upon the publications of Work and Bunche. Although single scholars had followed in these leaders’ footsteps and used their groundwork, this special issue of the Journal brought a host of scholars together in one volume to explore and assess the African American electorate.59 Finally, there was one other influence: the federal govern ment. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, created in 1957, published a study of the African American electorate in its first official report, entitled Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1959. This report provided voter registration data in each of the eleven states that had constituted the Confederacy, using official as well as estimated registration data on the African American electorate. Following this official government report, the Bureau of the Census in its Current Population Reports (CPS), Series P–23, No. 14, gave the number of persons of voting age in 1960 and the votes cast for president in the elections of 1964 and 1960 by race.60 However, starting in 1964, the Bureau of the Census has released all of this information in Series P–20, No. 143. Thus, the Bureau of the Census in 1964, 174 years after the first Census, finally began collecting data on the African American electorate. This development was made possible by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. These government reports do help to supplement the compendia data and studies made available by scholars and research organizations. In addition to scholars and government agencies, at least one African American think tank and one southern civil rights organization were also indirectly influenced by Work’s vision. The first of these private sector organizations to appear was the Southern Regional Council (SRC). From the late 1940s through the 1960s, through its publication The New South and its Voter Education Project (VEP), the SRC published several articles and pamphlets on African American voter registration and voting before and after the reports by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Bureau of the Census. Moreover, it was the VEP that went into various southern states and conducted voter registration drives. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, published an annual Roster of Black Elected Officials from 1970 through 1993, as well as
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numerous monographs on different aspects of African American politics throughout the nation and in particular in the South. The annual Roster sought to identify every African American elected official in the nation. Prior to the Joint Center’s annual publication, the SRC-VEP issued such publications. With the rise of the annual Roster, the SRC-VEP publication ceased. Since the discontinuation of the annual Roster, the Joint Center’s newsletter, Focus, and its Web site attempt to continue the tradition of identifying African American elected officials throughout the nation. However, one major flaw with the Joint Center’s two publications is that neither included racial voter registration data nor the number of votes each African American candidate got in the primaries and general election vis-à-vis their opponents. Only their monographs on past Democratic and Republican national conventions contain the total number of African American delegates from each state. Indeed, these publications are the only places where such delegate information can be found. Previously, this information could be found only in the Negro Year Book. In other Joint Center publications, such as its monograph on Reverend Jesse Jackson’s run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984, there are some primary voting data. Other Joint Center publications on black state legislators and the Congressional Black Caucus contain useful quantitative information. While the publications of these two private organizations do not contain a substantial number of references to Work, they make use of his analytical techniques: (1) political identification at all levels of the political system—national, state, and local; (2) the study of African American delegates to the national Democratic and Republican conventions each presidential year; and (3) the presentation of votes and voting from the African American community in selected races and contests. Finally, these publications contain little analysis and/or interpretation of these voting data. This procedure came directly from Work, who always wanted the “facts”—in this instance, the “electoral facts”—to speak for themselves. Collectively, the data collection, recording, and dissemination launched by Work and Bunche and now enriched and enhanced by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Bureau of the Census and private organizations like VEP and the Joint Center make it quite possible to appraise and evaluate the African American electorate for patterns, trends, and tendencies in the American political process. Although these data sources still leave a lot to be desired, they have moved the nation and its people a long way from a troubled past of racial inequality. And they have made it a bit easier to make additional progress.
The State of African American Election Data: A Summary Emerging from our overview analysis is a sobering portrait of the state of African American election data. Said data, where they exist, are scattered, piecemeal, fragmented, and inconsistent. Historically, no one kept consistent, systematic, or comprehensive records. Although there were attempts, as the publications of Work attest, the lack of funding and national economic
downturns forced gaps into the collection, recording, and dissemination of election return data. But that was not the only problem. The White Supremacist ideology of past eras pervaded the mindset of archivists and the public alike and prevented the accurate recording and collection of electoral information about African Americas. Even many academics were similarly influenced and bitterly opposed to the archiving of such information. Historian Eric Foner takes one example, University of Georgia history professor E. Merton Coulter, and follows him through time. Foner begins by quoting Coulter’s 1947 work, The South During Reconstruction: “The Negroes were fearfully unprepared to occupy positions of rulership” and black officeholding was “the most spectacular and exotic development in government in the history of white civilization . . . [and the] longest to be remembered, shuddered at, and execrated.”61 Foner continues: As late as 1968, Coulter . . . described Georgia’s most prominent Reconstruction black officials as swindlers and “scamps,” and suggested that whatever positive qualities they possessed were inherited from white ancestors.62 Echoing the racially biased remarks of white ReconstructionEra politicians, Coulter declared without any hesitation that African American congressmen of the 1960s like Adam Clayton Powell, Charles Diggs, Robert Nix, and William Dawson were similarly unfit for office. Coulter’s book carrying these white supremacist remarks, Negro Legislators in Georgia During the Reconstruction Period, was published in 1968. No one knows how these ideas may have stymied and crippled the collection and archiving of data on the African American political experience. However, in the 1968 Georgia Official and Statistical Register, the African American senatorial candidate, attorney Maynard Jackson, was labeled in bold letters, as “Colored.”63 He was the first such candidate to run statewide in Georgia. Like money, ideology was a barrier to the archiving of African American election data. This failure to archive and disseminate data on the African American electorate is not just a southern problem, nor one solely of ideology. In some areas outside of the South the obligation to archive comprehensively has become little more than an afterthought to the election event. Though African Americans now constitute a significant part of the electorate in many major urban areas like Detroit, Michigan, and often have direct responsibility for the conduct of the election process, they may still fail to preserve election information in all of its available dimensions. African Americans are increasingly in a position to contribute significantly to a more complete understanding of themselves and other constituent electorates just by preserving the election return data records of their communities. This recordkeeping should include not only the various election reports of who won and who lost a given election in each precinct but also descriptions by election of precinct and district boundaries, enumerations of the population and registered voters by precinct, polling place locations, assigned precincts and relationships to other representation geographies such as school board and municipal, county, state, and congressional districts.
Moreover, outside of the South where such data are archived, the problem was and is simply the matter of racial identification. Where the data exist and have existed, usually the racial identification of voters and candidates is unrecognizable. No one without a comprehensive and systematic list knows if the elected officials are white, black, or otherwise. Lists of officeholders and their votes are undifferentiated except by party affiliation. This is a central weakness of existing archival data. Only occasionally are African Americans delineated from other racial and ethnic groups. Currently, even the best attempts at master lists have proven to be incomplete and/or inaccurate. Researchers faced with such a daunting task simply omit this variable and/or elected official from their study and interpretation. Thus, nothing is learned about the racial identities of voters and candidates. If one of the dominant characteristics of the data on the African American electorate is that only a smattering of archival data exists, the other characteristic is that a great deal of information has been lost. The data on Free-Men-andWomen-of-Color in Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum America do not exist in any comprehensive manner. This entire period, from about 1610 to 1870, is something of a mystery. In dealing with African American voter registration after the Civil War, J. Morgan Kousser used linear regression analysis to estimate the number of voters, simply because none of the southern states except Louisiana kept voting registration records by race.64 Hence, the data for this period from 1868 until the Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1908) are also shadowy and unknown. And in the period from 1901 until the work of Bunche in 1940 and the Civil Rights Commission Reports in the late 1950s, the data are scattered, unorganized, and in some instances uncollected. Since 1964 the data have been produced, but they too are fairly widely scattered. Simply put, in some periods the data are not there while in others they exist, but it requires a careful and systematic hunt to find the data and put them in a useable and accessible form. Thus, the current state of the data does not lend itself to easy access for researchers. Again, as noted above, one of the reasons that the existing data have not been gathered is the nature of research in contemporary political science. Survey and polling data are the keys to publication and career advancement. They have literally displaced aggregate election return data. Since the latter are collected for political units like states, congressional districts, counties, precincts, and wards, they cannot effectively speak to individual-level behavior, which is the area of focus in the premier academic journals in the discipline. Time spent collecting, recording, and using aggregate election data returns for analyses will not generate access to the discipline’s most prestigious journals and publications. Thus, such time is seen as wasted and poorly used. Hence, scholars in search of tenure cannot afford the time spent undertaking such collections despite the fact that such work is much needed. Therefore, the task of improving the state of African American election data goes undone. It is not a high priority nor is it a road to prestige and tenure.
The State of African American Election Data 21 In most cases, the task is simply left to the federal agencies, primarily the Bureau of the Census Current Population Reports Series P–20 that are currently organized to collect the racial registration and voting data, but such agencies are not concerned with the past. Hence, data on the past never get dealt with, and neither academic nor federal researchers are inclined to address the situation. We hope that this volume provides a long-overdue remedy to the lack of comprehensive African American election data, and that it will stimulate renewed interest in analyzing these data.
Conclusion on the State of African American Election Data Clearly, some data exist on the African American electorate in each of the different eras of the American political experience. Although not all data are easily accessible, they nevertheless exist in some form or another. Careful historical detective work and investigations have uncovered some of the more obscure information. Over the years, some of these data have been used to provide contextual background information on voter registration and voting behavior in the African American community. At other times selected bits of these electoral data have appeared in sundry reports of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Often, these reports have been generated to support requests for government intervention, particularly in the South, to support legislative efforts to eliminate the poll tax, white primaries, and other barriers to the voting rights of African Americans, which have been constantly under siege since the Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1908). The fragmentary data that exist require a more holistic assessment. There is a great need to move beyond the current incomplete and sparse political portrait of the African American electorate. The need for a more complete and well-rounded understanding means that these spotty areas of data must be linked so that continuity and a longitudinal frame of reference can be achieved. Previously, not only has the retrieval of this deficient data not taken place, but nothing has been done to connect the dots between the years of the incomplete data to unite them into a coherent whole. In fact, it is this disconnect between the different periods where data on the African American electorate exist that helps to sustain and perpetuate this fragmentary and uneven portrait. Thus, one of the central tasks of this study is to move beyond the simple retrieval of data and to link together data from different periods to create a holistic portrait. Yet the problem here is not simply one of retrieval and linkage. There is the matter of the indirect influence of the African American population during the years when they could not vote. Here inferential (derivative) data can be extracted from the techniques and procedures created to suppress the African American electorate, such as poll taxes, white primaries, and voting experiments like the cotton referendums for black and white farmers during the New Deal. These data show why these electoral barriers were created—namely, due to concern about the potential size of the black electorate in these areas—while
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the cotton referendums show us that blacks wanted to vote and how many took advantage of the opportunity. This participation flies in the face of assertions from southern white politicians that blacks were apathetic and not interested in voting or that they were not “mature” enough to vote on issues. Up to this point, we have discussed the limited existence of data for this electorate, but one must keep in mind the long periods where participation in the electoral process was prohibited by law. Election data from these periods are quite important in generating a complete portrait, and techniques must be employed so that some types of data can be generated to fill in the gaps. Since such election data do not exist and therefore cannot be retrieved, they must be generated indirectly from such factual records of these periods, such as the use of the Three-Fifths Clause in determining seats in the House of Representatives and electoral votes for the presidential candidates of each of the political parties; as well as the identification of “black belt” counties in presidential elections and the use of votes from these counties to suggest how the group, instead of individuals, voted during and after the Reconstruction Era. The existence of poll tax referendums can also be helpful. Another indirect resource would be testing V.O. Key Jr.’s thesis in Southern Politics that voter registration and voting in these same counties decreased with the rise in the size of the black population and increased with the decrease in the size of the black population. Harry Holloway’s thesis in The Politics of the Southern Negro that voter registration and voting was greater in urban areas than in rural areas can also be tested to reveal insights about this electorate. Finally, there are a few monographs released around the time of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, 1970, 1975, and 1982 that will help to fill in the gaps in the existing data. The point here is that inferential (derivative) data can be extrapolated from existing factual data about the American electoral process, both that designed to exclude as well as that meant to assist the African American electorate, particularly if such information is used in an imaginative and thoughtful manner. Rarely have such data been used, primarily because the lessthan-democratic operation of the electoral machinery is such an embarrassment to a proudly democratic nation. We hope that the combination of retrieval, linkage, and inferential data will establish for the very first time a comprehensive and systematic portrayal of the African American electorate. We also hope to set the stage through subsequent data analyses for useful insights about political participation and voting behavior of a racial group in a modern democratic society. And we hope that the insights generated via this book will, like all of the electoral data found in the sundry compendia and archives, serve policy makers, academics, scholars, politicians, and laypeople, as well as enrich and enhance the intellectual knowledge base of not only the United States but also the global community.
Notes 1. Karen O’Connor and Larry Sabato, American Government: Continuity and Change, 2008 Edition (New York: Longman, 2008), pp. 66–88. 2. John Kolp, Gentlemen and Freeholders: Electoral Politics in Colonial Virginia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 15. 3. Ibid., p. 40.
4. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 23. 5. Ibid., p. 25. 6. Ibid., p. 24. 7. Robert Dinkins, Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689–1776 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 28. 8. Ibid., p. 32. 9. Keyssar, p. 55. 10. Ibid., p. 353, footnote 5. Even a recent analysis concerning an African American slave who was literate and wrote pamphlets before and after the Civil War and became a Republican during Reconstruction in Georgia does not allude to and/or provide evidence of voting by FreeMen-of-Color in the state. See Clarence Mohr, “Harrison Berry: A Black Pamphleteer in Georgia During Slavery and Freedom,” Georgia Historical Quarterly Vol. 67 (Summer 1983), pp. 189–205. 11. Keyssar, p. 351. 12. Ibid., p. 352. 13. Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Political Parties (New York: Free Press, 1972), p. 22. 14. Ibid. 15. Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. xii. 16. See Chapters 3 and 4. 17. Walter Dean Burnham, “Printed Sources,” in Jerome M. Clubb, William Flanigan, and Nancy Zingale (eds.), Analyzing Electoral History (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981), p. 40. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., pp. 45–70. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., pp. 44. 22. Michael J. Dubin, United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2002), p. ix. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., p. xi. 25. William Cheek, “A Negro Runs for Congress: John Mercer Langston and the Virginia Campaign of 1888,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 52 (1967), pp. 14–34. 26. Harold Gosnell, Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 3. 27. Monroe N. Work, “Some Negro Members of Reconstruction Conventions and Legislatures and of Congress,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 5 (January 1920), pp. 63–125. Cited in Linda McMurry, Recorder of the Black Experience: A Biography of Monroe Nathan Work (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), p. 63. 28. Foner, p. vii. 29. Ibid., p. xi. 30. Ibid., p. xii. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., p. xiii. 33. Work, p. 63. 34. Ibid. 35. Jessie Guzman, “Monroe Nathan Work and His Contributions,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 34 (October 1949), p. 436; Vernon Williams, Jr., “Monroe N. Work’s Contribution to Booker T. Washington’s Nationalistic Legacy,” Western Journal of Black Studies Vol. 21 (Summer 1997), pp. 85–91. 36. Guzman, p. 437. 37. McMurry, p. 75. 38. Ibid. 39. Guzman, pp. 447–448. 40. Ibid., p. 447. 41. McCurry, p. 76. 42. Guzman, p. 446. 43. McCurry, p. 144. 44. Ibid., p. 146.
45. Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Southern Politics: The Influences of Bunche, Martin, and Key,” in Hanes Walton, Jr. (ed.), Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), pp. 19–38. 46. Alfred Moss, Jr., The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), pp. 1 and 288. 47. Ibid., p. 2. 48. Ibid., pp. 308–309. 49. Ibid., p. 155. 50. For a list of some of the sundry articles that appeared on these officeholders see W.E.B. DuBois (ed.), Selections from The Crisis (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1983). See also the endnotes for Chapter 19 of this volume. 51. Walter Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 111 and 129. 52. Ibid., p. 22. 53. Ibid. 54. Ralph Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR, Edited and with an Introduction by Dewey Grantham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 97, footnote 8. This extensive and
The State of African American Election Data 23 unique compilation of data was not included in the book. In fact, little use has ever been made of it. 55. Ralph Bunche, “Disenfranchisement of the Negro,” in Sterling Brown (ed.), The Negro Caravan (New York: Dryden Press, 1941), pp. 48–59. 56. Walton, “Black Southern Politics: The Influences of Bunche, Martin, and Key,” p. 36, footnote 14. 57. Ralph Bunche, A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership. Edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway (New York: New York University Press, 2005), p. xiii. 58. Bunche, “Disenfranchisement of the Negro,” pp. 48–59. 59. “The Negro Voter,” Journal of Negro Education Vol. 26 (Summer 1957). 60. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Population Characteristics P–20, “Voter Participation in the National Election, November 1966” (October 25, 1968), p. 5. 61. Foner, p. xii. 62. Ibid. 63. The Georgia Official and Statistical Register 1968 (Atlanta: Secretary of State, 1969), p. 153. 64. J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restrictions and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
CHAPTER 2
The Literature on the African American Electorate The Separation Phenomenon in the Reporting of Election Return Data
26
Examining the Suffrage Literature
27
Table 2.1 Constitutional Convention and Referenda Votes on Equal Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color in States and Federal Territories of the United States, 1790–1870
31
The Registration, Turnout, and Voting Data Literature
33
Table 2.2 Percent and Number of Registered Voters in Counties of Arkansas by Race, 1867
35
Map 2.1 Arkansas Counties with African American vs. White Voting Majorities, 1867
36
Table 2.3 Percent Ratio of Registered African American Voters to Eligible African American Voters in Arkansas, 1867–1990
37
Table 2.4 Number and Percent of Counties in Georgia That Reported Separately on Black Voters, 1944–1954
37
The Balance of Power Theory Literature
38
Conclusions on the Literature Concerning the African American Electorate
39
Notes 40
26
E
Chapter 2
xisting published scholarship on the African American electorate from Colonial times to the present is quite like the nature and scope of the election return data: spotty, scattered, and piecemeal. Most existing literature falls into two distinct categories: the first analyzes the question of suffrage rights, while the second analyzes and interprets African American voter participation. Neither of the categories is comprehensive or systematic in its coverage of the African American electorate, nor are both the only categories, just the major ones. The suffrage literature is focused heavily on the period from the Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1908) to the present. Also addressed in the modern literature is the matter of felony disenfranchisement, where state laws deny voting rights to former incarcerated persons who have been convicted of felony crimes. Such laws fall disproportionately on members of the African American community.1 In short, for many in the African American civil rights community, felony disenfranchisement means racial disenfranchisement. But while this literature is heaviest in the time frame of 1890–2007, suffrage literature—though spare and spotty—also exists for the Colonial, Antebellum, and Reconstruction periods of American political history. Both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections generated even more suffrage literature as scholars sought to analyze the treatment of African Americans in the contested Bush v. Gore election in Florida in 2000 and Bush v. Kerry in Ohio during the 2004 vote.2 In Florida, where Republican candidate George W. Bush won the state with 530 votes, there were a number of voting irregularities that disenfranchised more than fifteen percent of the African American voters. The United States Commission on Civil Rights held public hearings on this matter on January 11–12, 2001, and found that: (1) the state employed a private contractor to develop a “purge list” of ineligible voters and sent the “purge list” to each one of the county directors of elections; the list turned out to be highly inaccurate, and hundreds of eligible persons were wrongfully turned away on election day; (2) these voters not on the rolls had no mechanism for any type of appeal; (3) polling places closed too early, leaving hundreds in lines, unable to vote; (4) polling places were moved without voters in the area being notified; (5) spoiled ballots that were rejected outright were highest in African American precincts; (6) police were an intimidating presence near polling places in African American precincts; and (7) absentee ballots were denied some African American voters, and when other African American voters went to vote they were denied because records showed that they had been sent absentee ballots. The Commission found that all of these different techniques seriously disenfranchised members of the African American community in the 2000 presidential election.3 In 2004 voter irregularities appeared in the African American communities of Ohio. This time a report on the problems was produced not by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights but by the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan. Eleven members of the committee, all Democrats because the Republican members boycotted the hearing, investigated the problem of racial disenfranchisement in Ohio. Published by the Government Printing
Office in January 2005, the report pinpointed the negative role played by the Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, an African American who co-chaired the Bush-Cheney Reelection Campaign in Ohio. He deliberately misallocated the number of voting machines for the heavily African American precincts in the urban areas of the state, which, in turn, caused delays of three to four hours and left hundreds of voters unable to vote when the polls closed. In addition, there was illegal purging of the voter rolls. Finally, Republican monitors showed up at these urban precincts and challenged 97 percent of new African American voters, creating further delays. This is a process called “caging,” and it is illegal in the state.4 Events in both Florida and Ohio, in 2000 and 2004, respectively, continued the concern over the long-standing matter of racial discrimination in voting in presidential and state elections. The problems in Florida led Congress to pass new voter legislation to help states acquire electronic voting machines and, subsequently, to renew the Voting Rights Act (VRA), this time by a Republican Congress. The other main body of literature, voter participation literature, tends to focus primarily on those periods of American political history where African Americans registered, turned out, and voted in large numbers. The first period of high African American voter activity was during Reconstruction, in 1868–1876, while the period from the first Voting Rights Act in 1965 to the present has now been called the “Second Reconstruction.”5 While many in the academic and scholarly community object to and are opposed to the term “Second Reconstruction” and do not see the linkage, the vast literature on African American voting behavior in this period outstrips that on any other period in America’s political history. Although a few articles have appeared on voting behavior in the African American community both before and after the VRA in 1965, the promise for study in the future within this field is quite staggering given that more African Americans than ever are running for offices such as governor, senator, and president. In the past such positions were not contested by African American candidates as frequently as they are now.6 In point of fact, the growth potential for this literature is such that it may soon outstrip the suffrage literature and become the dominant body of work about the African American electorate. At the moment, though, study of the suffrage problem predominates.
The Separation Phenomenon in the Reporting of Election Return Data A problematic characteristic of voting literature, including that specific to African Americans, is created by the so-called separation phenomenon, the tendency to split institutional variables (registration and turnout data) from voting variables (the vote and election return data). This tendency brings with it a problem. Unlike the two aforementioned categories with their different foci, the separation phenomenon splits electoral variables that should be connected in order to craft a holistic portrait of any electorate, whether it be African American, white, Latino, or Asian. Only occasionally does one find a pamphlet or monograph that provides complete coverage, including voting age
population, voter registration, voter turnout (entire population) data, and election return data. Even those works that examine African American political candidates—votes cast for them or for their opponents in primaries, runoffs, and general elections—tend to miss some portion of the vital election data. This basic information, which can be found in different degrees of completeness in the Negro Year Book series, tends to be separated except for some selected electoral races.7 However, the separation of voting age population and voter registration data from actual election return data is the central characteristic of most compendia on the American electorate. In fact, the dominant method of reporting electoral information is to list the office, the candidates, the numbers of votes, and the percentages of the total vote that each candidate in that particular race received. Voter registration and turnout information are usually summarized in journalistic accounts. In an era when polling and surveys are the main tools used to predict and explain individual-level vote choice in elections, election return data are rarely used simply because they are collected for aggregate political units like precincts, wards, counties, legislative and congressional districts, and states. Thus, rarely are election return data used and/or reported in poll and survey-based analyses. Hence, separation is maintained in part by the methodological techniques and approaches used in studies. Separation is also maintained because state election manuals have traditionally simply reported offices, parties, candidates, votes, and sometimes the vote percentages received in elections. Voter registration and turnout information are not carried in these state manuals, registers, and reports in any standardized fashion. As the secretaries of state have transitioned to Web sites to replace print publications, some states have begun to provide additional information on registration and turnout, but again, it is not standardized. And most important, these Web site election return data do not go back far in time. Currently, most secretary of state Web sites only carry election data back to the 1990s, making it difficult to overcome the separation pattern. Here, separation was institutionalized by state governmental agencies, and when federal governmental agencies began their own reporting, they copied and continued the pattern set in place by colonial governments, antebellum state governments, and the Bureau of the Census’s Statistical Abstracts series. Separation was inherent in the pioneering academic and scholarly studies. Edgar E. Robinson’s The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932 and W. Dean Burnham’s Presidential Ballots, 1836– 1892 began the pattern in political science, followed by recent studies like Svend Petersen’s A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections and Michael Dubin’s United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860. A major exception to this separation approach is Jerrold Rusk’s A Statistical History of the American Electorate, published in 2001. Rusk’s unique volume sought to address the questions of voter registration and turnout with far more precision in terms of definition and measurement than had ever been done before. New election return data had been discovered for 1788–1860, along with new information on state constitutional law related to voting. Crucial among these new data were economic and property requirements that had not
The Literature on the African American Electorate 27 been taken into account when earlier scholars had conceptualized “voter turnout” and measured it. Rusk has written: Without accurate knowledge of economic criteria for voting (landed and personal property, taxpaying), the definitive history of the eligibility and vote turnout of early American state electorates is missing. There are good estimates for eligibility and voting turnout after this period. For the early period, however, recourse to mobilization values and comparison of these values across time in a state’s history may be the best way to gauge voter participation trends longitudinally, especially for the original thirteen states.8 Therefore, to get beyond the limitations of the voter registration and voter turnout concepts, Rusk used two new concepts to make voter turnout much more reliable and understandable in relationship to the suffrage laws of each state at any given time in America’s political history. The first concept is voter eligibility, which he defined as “the percentage of a state’s adult population that is legally allowed to vote according to a state’s suffrage laws at any given point in time. Empirically, its formula is E/A, where E refers to the number eligible to vote and A refers to the total number of adults in a state in a particular year.”9 He continued by noting that voter mobilization is: the percentage of people who actually voted in a particular political race in a state in any given year compared to the state’s entire adult population. . . . Empirically, the formula for voter mobilization is V/A, where V refers to the number of people who actually voted in a given political race in a particular election year and A is the number of adults in the total population in a state in that year.10 Thus, with these refined and precisely measured concepts that help to analyze voter turnout, Rusk could then more precisely estimate voter turnout as V/E. Therefore, with this pioneering volume, the separation phenomenon has come full circle and is now integrated in the literature, at least in this one volume. It is unclear whether others will follow this path. Yet at this moment, separation prevails and impacts the study of all portions of the electorate, including African Americans. Hence, in the small amount of literature that provides election return data on the African American electorate, one will find a separation of the institutional from the voting variables. And while it is essential to acknowledge this major characteristic in all of the literature on the American electorate, this study will, where possible, make adjustments and linkages so that a more holistic portrait can be developed.
Examining the Suffrage Literature There are two great periods covered by suffrage literature on the African American electorate. The first period, from 1800 to 1869, generated a literature about Free-Men-of-Color and the
28
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different statewide referenda that sought to expand or contract their suffrage rights in Antebellum America. (Although the 1869 date is slightly past the Antebellum period, Free-Men-of-Color in several northern states did not get the right to vote until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in March 1870.) The second period, from 1890 to 1964, dealt with the disfranchisement of the African American electorate and its possible restoration via the elimination of poll taxes and government intervention. Finally, beyond these two great periods covered by the literature, there has been a devolution in the focus of this literature from an all-encompassing perspective to a narrower one dealing first with poll taxes, then with minority vote dilution, and most recently with felony disenfranchisement. To be sure, other literature has surfaced over this long period of African American electoral politics. Such literature has been overshadowed by the various works concerning these two large eras in American political history. No matter the origin of the quantities of literature on the African American electorate, the study of this group of voters has been greatly improved by literature examining the statewide suffrage referenda and the narrower literature on the poll tax, vote dilution, and felony disenfranchisement. Embedded in this literature are newly discovered voter registration and election return data that will enhance and enrich what is available, so as to enable us to develop as complete and holistic a portrait of this group electorate as possible. For instance, in the recently discovered speech of Isaiah T. Montgomery, we have uncovered information concerning the number of African American registered voters in Mississippi in 1890 and the number left after the state constitutional convention. Outside of the South and before the Civil War, the numerous northern, western, and eastern statewide suffrage referenda provide us with some heretofore unknown insights and factual knowledge about the potential electorate and voting behavior of Free-Men-of-Color. Each of these bodies of suffrage literature gives us a better window on an electorate where few official records and holdings now exist. This literature will help us fill in the gaps and the missing data.
Suffrage Literature from Colonial America to the Fifteenth Amendment There is a paucity of literature on the African American electorate in Colonial America. The few articles and monographs that exist on suffrage rights in this era offer only a brief overview of the colonies that made suffrage rights available to this population. The pioneering article on this matter, S.B. Weeks’s “The History of Negro Suffrage in the South,” which appeared in the Political Science Quarterly in 1894, devotes just two and a half pages to the topic, while the initial monograph on the subject, Emil Olbrich’s The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860, which appeared in 1912, covered this period in one chapter. Both works stood for years as the authoritative word on the topic and were much quoted. Eventually, these works were superseded in 1978 by Robert J. Dinkin’s Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689– 1776. In 2000, all of these works were surpassed by Alexander Keyssar’s well-researched and comprehensive work The Right to
Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, which devotes a section of chapter 3 and more than two appendixes to the topic. Yet the coverage is not greatly detailed, nor could it be, given the spotty recordkeeping in that period. Once the time frame changes to the Antebellum Era, which saw the rise of state governments, the literature expands. Led by African American historian Charles Wesley’s two major scholarly articles, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of ConstitutionMaking, 1787–1865” and “The Participation of Negroes in AntiSlavery Political Parties,” both of which appeared in the Journal of Negro History, studies on the suffrage issue blossomed. More importantly, specialized articles appeared that explored the topic in New York,11 New Jersey,12 Pennsylvania,13 Maine,14 Rhode Island,15 Michigan,16 and Wisconsin.17 Three articles appeared on both New York and Pennsylvania, two on Wisconsin, and at least one each on the other states. Eventually, a book emerged on the African American suffrage struggle in New York not only because the state held three statewide referenda on suffrage rights for African Americans but also because in 1821 the state added a $250 dollar propertyholding qualification in order for Free-Men-of-Color to continue to vote in the state.18 To date, historian Phyllis Field’s The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era, which appeared in 1982, stands as the best suffrage work yet to surface. It precisely measured suffrage voting in three statewide referenda using electoral data gathered at the county level. Besides the unique New York situation, which has attracted scholarly attention, there is the matter of Pennsylvania. In the Quaker-dominated state, Free-Men-of-Color had not been denied suffrage rights, but in 1837–1838 a controversy arose when “A decision of the State Supreme Court declared that the Negro was not a freeman, and accordingly was not entitled to vote. In 1837, a candidate for office in Bucks County, who was defeated, claimed his opponent’s seat because Negroes had been permitted to vote for him and that such an action was contrary to the law. . . . In December the court decided that the election was legal. . . .”19 That same year, the state’s constitutional convention “discussed the question of Negro suffrage and decided on January 27, 1838, by a vote of 77–45 that the suffrage should be limited to whites. The constitution with this provision was ratified in October [1838].”20 On June 5, 1837, prior to the passage of this disenfranchisement amendment, two African American activists in Philadelphia, Frederick Hinton and Reverend Charles Gardner, held a mass meeting at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and wrote a letter to protest the disenfranchisement politics they anticipated at the convention. The title of this document is “Memorial To the Honorable, The Delegates of The People of Pennsylvania In Convention at Philadelphia Assembled.” Both men signed the document and “presented it to the convention in January 1838.”21 Occurring almost simultaneously with the Hinton and Gardner effort was another led by Free-Men-of-Color in Pittsburgh, who drafted their memorial entitled “Memorial of The Free Citizens of Color in Pittsburg, 1837 and Its Vicinity Relative To The Right of Suffrage Read In Convention, 8 July, 1837.”22 Then, several weeks later, after the disenfranchisement amendment was passed, Gardner spearheaded another mass
The Literature on the African American Electorate 29
meeting on March 14, 1838, at the First African Presbyterian Church, to draft an appeal petition “to dissuade Pennsylvania voters from ratifying the anti-black suffrage amendment.”23 This well-known historical document is entitled “The Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened With Disenfranchisement, To the People of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1838.”24 Neither of the two Memorials, which were addressed to the constitutional convention delegates, nor the Appeal, which was addressed to the white voters of the state, stopped the disenfranchisement amendment from being passed and ratified. Other protest petitions followed these, including in 1853 “The Memorial of Black Philadelphians and the Right to Vote,” which was addressed to the “Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania . . . [and] appealed to conscience, to good will, and to a spirit of justice.”25 Yet each of these memorials, pamphlets, circulars, and proclamations “failed in accomplishing . . . [their] purpose—restoring the right to vote.”26 Thus, “after 1838 no blacks voted until the state’s constitution was changed in 1873 to include all male citizens regardless of color.”27 As a result, it took more than thirty-five years for Free-Men-of-Color to regain their suffrage rights despite the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. Although this unique situation produced two original pamphlets, several articles, and a dissertation, no book-length study has surfaced. Nevertheless it is, like the New York suffrage efforts, an illuminating example of African American suffrage in Antebellum America. Besides this detailed literature on New York and Pennsylvania, a book published in 2008 analyzes the suffrage struggles in four states: New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.28 Although this is the first book-length study to attempt a detailed comparative analysis of these four suffrage struggles, it misses the three additional suffrage referenda in New York and elsewhere. This literature raises a major question: were there other state suffrage referenda for Free-Men-of-Color in this period of American political history? Political scientists Robert Dykstra and Harlan Hahn, in analyzing the suffrage referendum vote in Iowa in 1868, have answered the question in this manner: “Between Appomattox and the promulgation of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, proposals that would allow Negroes to vote became burning political issues in several Northern states.”29 They continued: Between 1865 and 1870 proposals for Negro suffrage were defeated in at least 14 Northern states. In addition, Colorado Territory jeopardized its admission to the Union in 1865 by a favorable referendum vote on a constitution restricting the franchise to “every white male citizen of the age of twenty-one and upward.” In New Jersey, the question of Negro suffrage was never submitted to a referendum, although the state legislators rejected it decisively by a vote in 1867, and by a subsequent resolution denouncing Negro enfranchisement.30 Historian William Gillette answered the same question from his analysis of the politics involved in the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment by noting the following:
Voters in the North, in referendum after referendum, rejected Negro suffrage by a generally substantial vote. . . . During 1865 five jurisdictions voted down Negro suffrage in popular referendums. . . . Unfortunately, there was no ground swell of popular support or any great decisive change in public opinion between 1865 and 1868 as registered in referendums on Negro suffrage. Instead, white Americans resented and resisted it.31 Gillette concluded after looking at how white historians had treated the African American voter in post–Civil War America by finding that: It has long been considered a commonplace fact that there was a sturdy, steady, and increasing progress toward enfranchisement of the Negro after 1865. In fact, this was not the case. Rather than witnessing inevitable progress and invulnerable principle, there were hard starts and abrupt stops. Indeed, it often appeared that for any step forward there were two steps backward.32 From 1800 to 1869, the very eve of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, the historical and factual record shows a host of statewide referenda in the North, Midwest, and East that went down to defeat almost every time. Two passed after the Civil War and just prior to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. In the one article that analyzes these suffrage fights in a longitudinal manner (numerous articles analyze these suffrage referendums in single states), historian Tom McLaughlin has written: An examination of the state referenda reveals that (1) proposals for black rights were defeated by northerners in nineteen of the twenty-two referenda; (2) each of the twelve northern states under study rejected a black rights measure at least once; (3) 63 percent of all votes cast in all referenda were against black advancement; (4) of the 668 counties, 507 [76 percent] voted against Black rights.33 Using a correlational analysis, McLaughlin was able to find some interesting relationships between political party variables and the African American suffrage vote. He asserted “the correlation between popular voting on black rights referenda and political party preferences show that nearly all (94 percent in 1836–1848; 98 percent in 1848–1860) of the counties which gave a majority to Democratic candidates in presidential elections also gave a majority vote against black rights.”34 But this major finding showed just the reverse for other political parties. Again, he remarked, “Although a majority of the Whig and Republican counties in Presidential elections (76 percent in 1836–1848; 66 percent in 1848–1860) voted against black rights, the great majority of votes favoring blacks in the twenty-two referenda were cast in those Whig and Republican counties.”35 Since McLaughlin’s article combines both suffrage and exclusion (anti-immigration) referenda in his count of twentytwo ballots, and since he begins his analysis in 1846, we have created our own Table 2.1 (p. 31) that only uses suffrage referenda
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and begins in 1790 and ends in 1869. Thus, by narrowing our focus and expanding the time period to capture those referenda and/or constitutional votes before 1846, we can offer a more systematic and comprehensive analysis of the African American suffrage referenda for the very first time. Table 2.1 shows that after the formation of the federal government, votes on equal suffrage rights for the Free-Men-andWomen-of-Color occurred in three different arenas: (1) state constitutional conventions, (2) statewide referenda, and (3) referenda in territories owned by the federal government. Of the new states to enter the Union that considered extending the right to vote to African Americans, only two, Vermont and Maine, approved this right, while thirteen states denied it. The state of New York had extended the right to vote to Free-Men-of-Color but instead of denying the right, they placed restrictions on it in 1811, 1814, and 1821. Tennessee, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, which had extended that right in the Colonial Era, voted to deny that right in their new state constitutions during the so-called Era of Jacksonian Democracy, when President Andrew Jackson espoused extending suffrage rights to the “common man.” Moving from state constitutions, some nine states decided to put the question to the people via statewide referenda. Five of these nine states—New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Iowa—held multiple statewide referenda. Counting both multiple and single referenda, some eighteen states held them. In these eighteen statewide referenda, only two states, Minnesota and Iowa, approved of granting voting rights to African Americans. And these approvals came just prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Referenda voting also occurred in some of the federal territories, such as Colorado, District of Columbia, and Nebraska. In each of these territories the right to vote was denied. Only in Nebraska did the referendum come close to passing. Combining the states with the territories, eighteen places held suffrage referenda and all of these referenda took place between 1846 and 1869. While this works out to nearly one state or territory referendum per year, only one territory allegedly approved of the right to vote for African Americans. It has been claimed that the Dakota territories voted to grant this right, but at present, there are no corroborating data. Table 2.1 provides us with some collective insight. Using the mean from the extant data for each of the three arenas, we can postulate that more than three-quarters of the white political elites in the state constitutional conventions strongly opposed giving equal suffrage rights, while three-fifths (60.1 percent) of the white electorate as a whole in the states opposed granting this right. Extrapolating again from the extant data, in the federal territories nearly 80 percent of the electorate as a whole opposed granting voting rights. Between the political elites and the electorate in statewide referenda, the electorate came closer to granting the right to vote than did elected state convention leaders, but in the territories where there were very few African Americans, there was very strong opposition. William Gillette summed up the matter by saying, “In retrospect, the postwar movement to enfranchise the Negro was neither steady nor progressive nor inevitable.”36 In the end, the Fifteenth Amendment was needed to rectify this appalling situation.
The Fifteenth Amendment was also needed outside the South, especially in the Border States of West Virginia and Delaware. On the dismal situation in Delaware, see Amy Hiller, “The Disfranchisement of Delaware Negroes in the Late Nineteenth Century”; Harold Hancock, “The Status of the Negro in Delaware After the Civil War, 1865–1875”; Harold Livesay, ”Delaware Negroes, 1865–1915”; and John Munroe, “The Negro in Delaware”; as well as the unique article by Charles Ambler, “Disfranchisement in West Virginia, Part I and Part II,” which contains the only extant official county-level African American voter registration data for 1869. Collectively, these articles provide historical data that strongly support the need for the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment.37
Suffrage Literature from the Era of Disenfranchisement to the Dawn of the Modern Civil Rights Movement The body of literature written on African American suffrage reaches its zenith around the time of passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and rise of Black Reconstruction, but it has never looked beyond the 1877 Compromise, which resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election. This compromise arranged for the remaining federal troops to be withdrawn from the South, and subsequent election events transformed the literature from one focused on suffrage to a new literature focused on fraud, violence, corruption, and intimidation against the African American electorate. This literature and the incidents described led not only to congressional hearings but also to proposed congressional legislation for the protection of African American suffrage rights in the South. On June 26, 1890, Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican from Massachusetts, introduced in the House of Representatives “a bill for federal supervision of federal elections. Although opponents of the bill skillfully labeled it a ‘Force Bill’— a term which some contemporary historians still use without the quotation marks—it clearly did not provide for the use of force.”38 According to historian Rayford Logan: In any election district where a specified number of voters petitioned the federal authorities, federal supervisors representing both parties were to be appointed. These supervisors were to have the power to pass on the qualifications of any voter challenged in a federal election. They also were to be given the power to receive ballots, which were wrongfully refused by local officers, and to place such ballots in the ballot box.39 “After a great deal of parliamentary maneuvering, a vote was taken on July 2nd. The bill managed to squeak through by the slim margin of 155 to 149, with 24 not voting. The bill was sent to the Senate on July 7th.”40 Such action “spurred Southern Democrats to take effective action designed to offset federal legislation in support of Negro suffrage.”41 Despite the fact that the Senate had not yet taken up the bill, the first southern state to take action was Mississippi. In fact, Mississippi’s actions were designed to preempt those of the Senate.
The Literature on the African American Electorate 31 Table 2.1 Constitutional Convention and Referenda Votes on Equal Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color in States and Federal Territories of the United States, 1790–1870
Referenda Votes in the Federal Territories
Votes of Statewide Constitutional Conventions Against Year State
Votes
Percent
Against
In Favor Votes
Percent
Outcome
In Favor
Year State
Votes
Percent
1865 Colorado
4,192
89.8%
476
10.2%
Denied
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Denied
1865 District of Columbia
7,333
99.5%
36
0.5%
Denied
1802 Ohio
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Denied
1866 Nebraska
3,938
50.6%
3,838
49.4%
Denied
1807 New Jersey
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Denied
1867 Dakotas
(.......... Data not found ..........)
Approved
1811 New York
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Restricteda
1868 Washington
(.......... Data not found ..........)
Denied
1814 New York
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Restricteda
1868 Idaho
(.......... Data not found ..........)
Denied
1818 Connecticut
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Denied
1868 Montana
(.......... Data not found ..........)
Denied
1819 Maine
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Approved
1821 New York
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Restricteda
1834 Tennessee
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Denied
1790 Vermont
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Approved
1799 Kentucky
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) Denied
1801 Maryland
1835 North Carolina
66
52.0%
61
48.0%
Denied
1838 Pennsylvania
77
63.1%
45
36.9%
Denied
1847 Illinois 1849 California 1850 Indiana 1851 Ohio 1857 Oregon Totals
137 94.5% 8 5.5% (........................... Votes not given ...........................)
Denied Denied
122
99.2%
1
0.8%
Denied
66
84.6%
12
15.4%
Denied
(........................... Votes not given ...........................) 468
78.7%
127
Denied
21.3%
Referenda Votes in the States Against Votes
1846 New York
224,336
72.4%
85,406
27.6%
Denied
1860
345,791
63.6%
197,889
36.4%
Denied
1869
282,403
53.1%
249,802
46.9%
Denied
1847 Wisconsin
Percent
In Favor
Year
Votes
Percent
Outcome
14,615
65.9%
7,564
34.1%
Denied
1849
4,075
43.6%
5,265
56.4%
Approvedb
1857
45,157
58.6%
31,964
41.4%
Denied
1865
55,454
54.3%
46,629
45.7%
Denied
1850 Michigan
32,026
71.4%
12,840
28.6%
Denied
1868
110,582
60.7%
71,733
39.3%
Denied
1870
50,598
48.3%
54,105
51.7%
Approved
1857 Iowa
49,387
85.3%
8,489
14.7%
Denied
1868
81,119
43.5%
105,384
56.5%
Approved
1865 Minnesota
14,838
54.9%
12,170
45.1%
Denied
1867
28,759
51.2%
27,461
48.8%
Denied
1868
29,906
43.2%
39,322
56.8%
Approved
211,405
84.9%
37,548
15.1%
Denied
33,489
55.2%
27,217
44.8%
Denied
1862 Illinois 1865 Connecticut 1867 Kansas
19,600
65.1%
10,529
34.9%
Denied
1867 Ohio
255,340
54.1%
216,987
45.9%
Denied
1867 New Jersey
(…………. No referendum held ………….)
Deniedc
1868 Missouri Totals
74,053
57.3%
55,236
42.7%
1,962,933
60.1%
1,303,540
39.9%
Denied
Totals
15,463
78.0%
Votes
4,350
Percent
Outcome
22.0%
Sources: Adapted from Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912); William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969); Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982); John Mohr (ed.), Radical Republicans in the North: State Politics During Reconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); and Richard Curry (ed.), Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962). Referendum data for Kansas in 1867 and for Missouri and Iowa in 1868 are from The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1967). In addition, the following articles were consulted: Michael McManus, “Wisconsin Republicans and Negro Suffrage: Attitudes & Behavior, 1857,” Civil War History Vol. 25 (March, 1979), pp. 36–54; John Rozett, “Racism and Republican Emergence in Illinois, 1848–1860: A Re-evaluation of Republican Negrophobia,” Civil War History Vol. 22 (June, 1976), pp. 101–115; Ronald Formisano, “The Edge of Caste: Colored Suffrage in Michigan,” Michigan History Vol. 56 (Spring 1972), pp. 19–41; Marion Thompson, “Negro Suffage in New Jersey, 1776–1875,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 33 (April, 1948), pp. 168–224; Charles Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution Making, 1787–1865,” in his Neglected History (Ohio: Central State College Press, 1965), pp. 41–55; S. B. Weeks, “The History of Negro Suffrage in the South,” Political Science Quarterly Vol. 9 (December, 1894), pp. 671–703; and Alice Hahn, “The Exercise of the Electoral Franchise in Iowa in Constitutional Referendum: 1838–1933” (master’s thesis, Drake University, 1933). Calculations by the authors. a
Outcome in favor of African American suffrage but with property, tax, or other restrictions.
The governor of Wisconsin set aside the referendum outcome that actually favored suffrage after claiming that he did not understand the results. Later, the state supreme court upheld the outcome that had been rendered by the electorate. b
The New Jersey legislature decided against allowing a state referendum, deliberating instead within their body to directly withhold suffrage rights from African Americans. c
On August 12, 1890, some six weeks after the bill’s passage in just the House of Representatives, the Mississippi Constitutional Convention met in Jackson to revise their state constitution to disenfranchise as much of the African American electorate as possible. Of the 134 convention members, only one, Isaiah T. Montgomery, was African American. Montgomery’s position, stated in his convention speech, seemingly endorsed and approved of the convention’s final document that disenfranchised the African American electorate in the state. Logan says: Montgomery favored, in October, a bill that would disfranchise 123,000 Negroes and 12,000 whites, leaving a total Negro vote of about 66,000 and a white majority of more than 40,000. Montgomery perhaps sincerely believed that relations between the races would be improved and that as Negroes increased in knowledge and property, they would be allowed to vote.42
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In his further evaluation of Montgomery’s speech, Logan found that “Montgomery’s speech naturally won the approval of the Democratic press in Mississippi and in the nation as a whole. Even [former President] Cleveland praised it.”43 The former president and several Republican senators seemingly had forgotten “the act of Congress, approved February 23, 1870, by which Mississippi had been ‘readmitted’ to the Union.” One of the fundamental conditions of readmission—as for other Confederate states—was the pledge that the state constitution should never be ‘so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen, or class of citizens of the United States, of the right to vote, who are entitled to vote by the Constitution (of 1868) herein recognized, except as punishment for such crimes as are now felonious at common law.’44 For Logan, Montgomery’s presence and speech enabled the collapse of suffrage rights for the African American electorate in Mississippi. However, long before Logan arrived at his evaluative position, numerous others—including contemporaries of Montgomery—had arrived at evaluative positions that were much harsher than his. The harshest declared Montgomery to be an “Uncle Tom” who conspired to destroy suffrage rights in the state, and later the South, for his race. The eminent African American political scientist and third African American to become president of the American Political Science Association, Matthew Holden, Jr., who also happens to be a native Mississippian, began a search for the actual convention speech because, except for a few excerpts, an original copy had not surfaced. Holden put it thusly: The speech is very hard to get. A Web search is useless. . . . Those who are accustomed to the old-fashioned paper searches are no better off. . . . [T]he Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported substantial portions (September 18, 1890) . . . [but] seemed to have omitted most, if not all, the historical and philosophical explanation that Montgomery put forth. The Memphis Appeal (September 16, 1890) also reported on the Convention in a way that refers to Montgomery’s presence. After much search, I have found a copy published in the New York World, September 30, 1890 . . . [and later] I was privileged to find another copy that had been published in a souvenir program for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Mound Bayou.45 Using the entire speech, Holden discovered that previous existing excerpts had been taken out of context and that they offered a portrait of Montgomery’s actions that did not correlate with the entire speech. Hence, in a larger and forthcoming monograph entitled The World and Mind of Isaiah T. Montgomery: The Greatness of a Compromised Man, Holden argues persuasively that when the entire speech is analyzed and placed in the political context of the times, Montgomery’s action was one of “strategic surrender,” because this was the only possible option left to him given the determination to eliminate the
suffrage rights and political power of African Americans in the state’s legislature and local governments.46 However one views Montgomery’s speech, “on October 22, 1890, the convention adopted a report of the state judiciary committee that it was unnecessary to submit the proposed changes to the people. The convention approved the new [state] constitution on November 1, 1890.”47 The new provisions for disenfranchising certain members of the electorate included that the state government “imposed a poll tax of two dollars, excluded voters convicted of certain crimes, and barred from voting all those who could not read a section of the state constitution, or understand it when read, or give a reasonable interpretation of it.”48 In his annual message on December 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, only indirectly mentioned Mississippi’s action but proposed no new action. Just over three months prior to the president’s remarks, the senate Republican majority, acting on the very day of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention, set aside the Lodge Bill that the House of Representatives had passed to discuss instead the Tariff Bill, which took up the rest of the congressional session. The consideration of a silver bill drew higher priority from some Republicans, and the Lodge Bill was set aside again.49 With the passage of the silver bill on January 14, 1891, “the contest on the Elections bill had to be resolved.” A Republican motion to reconsider the Lodge Bill “resulted in a tie vote, 33 to 33, which Vice President (Levi P.) Morton broke with an affirmative vote.”50 A Democratic filibuster began that lasted until January 20, when an attempt at cloture began. The Democrats had maneuvered for two days to prevent cloture when help arrived from several silverite Republicans. One of them proposed consideration of an apportionment bill. It was approved by a vote of 35 to 34, and the Lodge Bill was set aside for the final time. A recent scholar using the unopened papers of the Lodge Bill senate Floor Manager, Republican Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, found that the bill was defeated in the Senate due to its being “postponed in behalf of the tariff legislation, crippled by the controversy over silver, damaged by its association with cloture, the Federal Election Bill of 1890–1891 suffered the final humiliation of being sacrificed to a bill to which neither party had pledged it opposition, nor its honor.”51 This Senate defeat of the federal election supervision bill combined with the failure of the president to take any additional action sent a signal to the other southern states. Historian C. Vann Woodard, in his chapter on the “Mississippi Plan as the American Way,” describes how the success of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention in nearly eliminating suffrage rights for the African American electorate became the model that all of the southern states copied between 1891 and 1901.52 The new state constitutions that emanated from that model circumvented the Fifteenth Amendment and disenfranchised African Americans. After this period from 1888 to 1908, aptly called the Era of Disenfranchisement, a new suffrage literature emerged. Debates, discussions, dialogues, and arguments about the loss of suffrage rights for the African American electorate in the South abounded in most major newspapers and nationally known monthly magazines, as well as in leading literary magazines and academic journals. Some defended disenfranchisement, objected to disenfranchisement, or cried for a middle ground,
while other articles suggested a brighter future for African American voters that loomed out of sight but just over the political horizon. In this period a voluminous literature on suffrage arose. We know about the nature and scope of this literature owing to the eleven volumes of the Negro Year Book series that kept track of all published articles in a cumulative, comprehensive, and systematic manner. Nearly every edition of the Year Book carried a listing of all of the articles published on African American suffrage in each year of that edition’s cycle. Beginning in 1914 and moving through the last edition in 1952, one will find a full listing of articles on suffrage in the bibliography of each volume. No other publication carried such a comprehensive listing. At this writing, the diverse arguments and proposals in this large body of suffrage literature still have not been analyzed. But by the early 1940s Congress was starting to take notice and act. Beginning in 1940, the suffrage literature was displaced and transitioned into a new literature on poll taxes. The main reason for this transition and narrowing of the focus was that Congress was now seeing an increasing introduction of bills to ban and/or eliminate the poll tax in the South. The NAACP, along with a number of African American activists, had persuaded several congresspersons that one of the ways to solve the perpetual suffrage problem was to introduce anti-poll tax legislation. Frederick D. Odgen’s 1958 book The Poll Tax in the South is excellent on this topic and the huge number of congressional bills introduced to resolve the matter. Two other useful works on the topic in this period include Rayford Logan’s 1940 book The Attitudes of the Southern White Press Toward Negro Suffrage, 1932–1940 and Raymond Lloyd’s 1952 White Supremacy in the United States: An Analysis of Its Historical Background, with Especial Reference to the Poll Tax. These books offer previously unseen and unnoticed data on the poll tax referenda and votes. Additional election return data can be found in Alexander Heard and Donald Strong’s 1950 book Southern Primaries and Elections, 1920–1949, and some of these data offer previously unknown information on the African American electorate. These poll tax bills continued to come forth until the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which tried to address the lack of voting rights through legal action. The 1960 Civil Rights Act strengthened the federal government’s power in dealing with the loss of voting rights. Eventually, Congress passed and the states ratified the Twenty-Fourth Amendment on January 23, 1964, which abolished poll taxes in federal elections. With this action, the second great period of literature dealing with the suffrage rights of the African American electorate ended.
Felony Disenfranchisement Literature In the struggle for the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its subsequent renewals, this suffrage literature reemerged. But during the renewal phases it was carefully and narrowly focused on matters of minority vote dilution, including examination of those techniques and procedures that emerged not to disenfranchise the African American electorate but only to diminish and decrease the impact and influence of the Act. Currently, the limited suffrage literature now being published focuses on felony disenfranchisement. Numerous southern states have enacted
The Literature on the African American Electorate 33 legislation to restrict or eliminate voting rights for members of the electorate who have been sent to jail for felony crimes. Such laws disproportionately affect African Americans. Even after serving their time, former felons face major challenges in getting back their right to vote. Such legislation may presage the future of suffrage rights literature.
The Registration, Turnout, and Voting Data Literature Besides the legal and constitutional literature on the suffrage rights of the African American electorate, there exists another body of literature on the voter participation of this electorate, consisting of voter registration, turnout, and behavior records, and the related election return data. As noted earlier, in Colonial and Revolutionary America, this literature is scattered, piecemeal, and sketchy. It improves in Antebellum and Reconstruction America, declines in the Era of Disenfranchisement, and slowly increases during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, data collection on the African American electorate improves and increases significantly because these laws require the federal Bureau of the Census to collect and disseminate it, which they do with their CPS P–20 series. Prior to the role mandated by law for the Bureau of the Census, the 1957 Civil Rights Act created the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), which produced several hearings and reports beginning in 1957 that collected voter participation information on the African American electorate. Thus, we need to ask what is the state of the literature on voter participation dealing with the period before—in fact, well before—the arrival of the USCCR and the Bureau of the Census? The collection and reporting of such voter participation data were left to interested scholars and academics; interested organizations like the Southern Regional Council and its Voter Education Project (VEP); the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, under the leadership of W.E.B. DuBois; Tuskegee’s Monroe N. Work and his Negro Year Book series; the Carnegie Foundation’s Gunnar Myrdal study led by Ralph Bunche; some state agencies; and a few issues of the early encyclopedia, The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year, 1868– 1872. There is not much literature here concerning the period predating the USCCR and the Census Bureau, even less for the Antebellum and Revolutionary periods, and hardly anything at all for Colonial America. However, persistence and systematic research over more than thirty years have uncovered some voter participation data going back to 1867, the beginning of Black Reconstruction. In 1990, a letter was discovered, Senate Executive Document Number 53 of the 2nd Session of the 40th Congress, responding to a Senate Resolution of December 6, 1867, which stated: Statement of the number of white and colored voters registered in each of the States subject to the reconstruction acts of Congress, the number of white and colored voters voting for and against the calling of a [state constitution] convention, the number of white
34
Chapter 2
and colored voters who failed to vote either for or against the calling of a convention, and, as far as practical, the number of white and colored persons disfranchised and rendered incompetent by the reconstruction acts to vote for a [state constitution], and the number of white persons entitled to be registered but who did not apply for registration.53 Nearly simultaneously with the publication of the Senate Executive Document 53 covering the initial registration and voting of the African American electorate in the South in 1867–1868 was the publication of House Executive Document 342 that also covered the very same issue. However, coming a bit later than the Senate document, the House document gives updated voter registration and voting data for the African American electorate in the same years. Despite the existence of the official voter registration data contained in these official federal documents, the data had not surfaced in books or articles on presidential or congressional reconstruction studies, nor in the sundry state reconstruction books and articles. There data are even missing in the historical works of African American historians and political scientists. In fact, these unique Senate and House documents have been almost universally neglected and omitted, and this neglect or omission is not due to a question of accuracy or validity. Corroborating statelevel voter registration data for the same year have been found in the Texas State Archives, where there are individual registration certificates from every county of the state in existence in 1867, and in the North Carolina State Archives.54 A recent scholarly study on Georgia found that “voter registration lists on microfilm at the Georgia Archives document the decline of black voting both before and after disfranchisement” in the state; but except for a few footnote references in the book Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920, this rare racial voter registration data has not surfaced.55 The American Annual Cyclopaedias of 1867 and 1868 further corroborate the Senate and House documents and provide voter registration data for other southern states at this time.56 Hence, the widespread under-usage of the data in the documents cannot be due solely to its potential inaccuracies. Part of the explanation may be that the government volumes listing all of the congressional documents had no index for these years and, therefore, all of the volumes had to be gone through page by page, often item by item, to make these discoveries. Recently, the availability of both a published series and an online source allowed easier access to such important documents. Using this Senate data, another study was undertaken of the African American and white electorates in Arkansas in the crucial year of 1867 to create a map of the counties with African American and white majorities. For the first time a longitudinal analysis of voter registration by race in the state from 1867 through 1990 was also obtained.57 Table 2.2 provides the actual numbers and percentages of African American and white voters in 1867. In three counties in Arkansas, African American voters made up 72 to 77 percent of the electorate; while in five other counties African Americans made up 62 to 68 percent of registered voters; and in two other counties 51 to 57 percent of the electorate was African American.58
Map 2.1 (p. 36) shows exactly where these ten African American–majority counties were located. Likewise the map shows us the geography of all of the counties and the proximities of white majoritarian counties to the African American ones. Such information gives us further insight on how these counties voted in congressional and presidential elections. This is the first time that this information has been published at the scholarly level for ten of the eleven southern states. (Although Tennessee was excluded from congressional Reconstruction we have also added data on the African American electorate in that state.) The rest of the southern states will be discussed in detail in Chapter 14. Finally, in Table 2.3 (p. 37) one can see in a longitudinal manner the relationship of the African American voter registration to the voting age population (VAP) in the state.59 Through time one can see the changing ratio of registered African American voters to eligible voters in the state. In 1944 the Supreme Court, in the famous Smith v. Allwright case, outlawed the White Primary in Texas, and other state level cases were victorious, so that the White Primary barrier was basically but not completely gone by the late 1940s. Since the unveiling of the Arkansas information on the African American electorate, similar studies on the electorates in Georgia and Texas have been made.60 Therefore, using the model approach employed in these three states, this volume will produce and examine, where similar data exist, voter participation data on all of the former Confederate states. Prior to Bunche’s data collection and reporting studies on the voter participation of the electorate, another pioneering academic work was that of Paul Lewinson, Race, Class, and Party: A History of Negro Suffrage and White Politics in the South, published in 1932. In his appendix, Lewinson lists estimates of the number of registered voters for each of the southern states. He sent a questionnaire to southern registrars and knowledgeable observers to collect this information. Instead of listing similar information in a separate section, Bunche distributed his analyses of voter participation throughout his 1,660-page narrative for Myrdal. Hence, it needs to be retrieved from the various pages of the narrative in order to capture a comprehensive listing. In addition to the voter participation data, Bunche and his student Robert Martin collected voting data from the southern cotton and tobacco referenda provided for by the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) during the 1930s. In these referenda African American and white farmers voted on crop allotments. Of this rural voting behavior, Bunche observed: Not since Reconstruction days has any numerous group of Negroes had the opportunity to cast the independent ballot that is cast by Negro cotton farmers in the cotton marketing quota referenda. Most significantly, many thousands of Negro cotton farmers each year now go to the polls, stand in line with their white neighbors and mark their ballots independently without protest or intimidation, in order to determine government policy toward cotton production control.61 Scholars have largely overlooked this unique intervention by the federal government in southern voting practices, even though
The Literature on the African American Electorate 35
Table 2.2 Percent and Number of Registered Voters in Counties of Arkansas by Race, 1867
Free-Men-of-Color
County
Percent of Total Voters
Number of Voters
Chicot
77%
894
Phillips
74%
2,681
White Percent of Total Voters
Number of Voters
Total Number of Voters
23%
268
1,162
26%
955
3,636
Jefferson
72%
2,738
28%
1,048
3,786
Desha
68%
592
32%
281
873
Arkansas
68%
1,030
32%
495
1,525
Crittenden
67%
505
33%
245
750
Lafayette
62%
962
38%
583
1,545
Pulaski
62%
2,402
38%
1,494
3,896
Little River
57%
426
43%
327
753
Monroe
51%
551
49%
525
1,076
Hempstead
48%
1,195
52%
1,307
2,502
St. Francis
47%
484
53%
544
1,028
Union
46%
798
54%
922
1,720
Ashley
46%
604
54%
710
1,314
Quachita
45%
870
55%
1,084
1,954
Mississippi
40%
193
60%
292
485
Columbia
36%
740
64%
1,313
2,053
Drew
35%
577
65%
1,079
1,656
Woodruff
34%
354
66%
673
1,027
Dallas
34%
337
66%
668
1,005
Prairie
32%
512
68%
1,071
1,583
Sevier
32%
261
68%
567
828
Cross
31%
184
69%
415
599
Calhoun
30%
184
70%
422
606
Clark
29%
464
71%
1,112
1,576
Bradley
29%
368
71%
908
1,276
Jackson
25%
283
75%
849
1,132
Poinsett
18%
39
82%
172
211
Sebastian
17%
203
83%
1,012
1,215
Van Buren
17%
148
83%
746
894
Crawford
17%
148
83%
746
894
Yell
14%
131
86%
831
962
Conway
14%
146
86%
934
1,080
Pine
13%
76
87%
489
565
Franklin
13%
107
87%
740
847
Hot Spring
12%
102
88%
723
825
Pope
11%
94
89%
771
865
White
11%
155
89%
1,279
1,434
Johnson
10%
73
90%
682
755
9%
140
91%
1,455
1,595
Independence
Craighead
7%
42
93%
523
565
Perry
7%
23
93%
295
318
Randolph
7%
59
93%
848
907
Saline
6%
42
94%
712
754
Montgomery
5%
27
95%
491
518
Washington
4%
84
96%
1,834
1,918
Lawrence
4%
43
96%
971
1,014
Izard
4%
31
96%
763
794
Scott
3%
17
97%
557
574
Fulton
3%
9
97%
297
306
Marion
2%
9
98%
382
391
Madison
1%
10
99%
709
719
Benton
1%
11
99%
998
1,009
Greene
1%
5
99%
922
927
Polk
0%
1
100%
392
393
Newton
0%
1
100%
425
426
Searcy
0%
1
100%
574
575
Carroll
0%
0
100%
767
767
Totals
35%
23,166
65%
43,197
66,363
Source: Hanes Walton, Jr., Re-election: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 93–94.
it was a major precursor to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Most of the scholars who saw its importance were African American, but the existence of this material greatly helps one to understand the nature and significance of the African American electorate, particularly in rural areas. Appearing in 1960, shortly after the studies of Lewinson and Bunche and Martin, is a rare state compilation, Joseph Bernd’s Grass Roots Politics in Georgia: The County Unit System and the Importance of the Individual Voting Community in Bi-Factional Elections, 1942–1954. “This study uses . . . segregated voting data collected on the black electorate in the state of Georgia from 1944 until 1964.” Because some of Georgia’s 159 counties required blacks to vote in separate voting precincts and to have their votes counted and reported separately “[Bernd] carefully and persistently collected this aggregate voting data.”62 Table 2.4 (p. 37) reveals the number of counties reporting separated black votes as well as the number of counties that reported that blacks voted. The Bernd study also showed the actual number of blacks voting in the Democratic primaries and referenda elections from 1946 to 1954. Later Bernd followed up on this work by using a secret FBI file compiled on the Georgia electorate during the 1946 gubernatorial election. The resulting article, “White Supremacy and the Disenfranchisement of Blacks in Georgia, 1946,”63 analyzed the number of blacks and whites purged from the registration rolls and the number of votes captured by the winner of each of the Georgia counties where purges of the voting rolls took place. Another Georgian, historian Numan Bartley, collected similar data on the city of Macon, Georgia, for the same time period.
36
Chapter 2
Map 2.1 Arkansas Counties with African American vs. White Voting Majorities, 1867
CARROLL
BENTON
FULTON
BOONE
SHARP
MARION
NEWTON
SEARCY STONE
CRAWFORD FRANKLIN
POPE
LOGAN
SEBASTIAN
INDEPENDENCE JACKSON
VAN BUREN
JOHNSON
CLEBURNE
CONWAY CONWAY
MISSISSIPPI
POINSETT
CRITTENDEN
WOODRUFF
YELL
ST. FRANCIS
PERRY
PRAIRIE LONOKE
LEE
PULASKI
GARLAND
MONROE SALINE
MONTGOMERY
PHILLIPS
POLK
JEFFERSON
HOT SPRING HOWARD
CRAIGHEAD
CROSS
WHITE FAULKNER
SCOTT
GREENE
LAWRENCE
IZARD
MADISON
WASHINGTON
CLAY
RANDOLPH
BAXTER
ARKANSAS
GRANT
PIKE CLARK DALLAS
SEVIER
LITTLE RIVER
HEMPSTEAD
CLEVELAND
LINCOLN DESHA
NEVADA OUACHITA
DREW
CALHOUN BRADLEY MILLER LAFAYETTE
COLUMBIA UNION
ASHLEY
CHICOT
County with an African American voting majority
Source: Hanes Walton, Jr., Reelection: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 95.
Although he did not publish these data in the 1975 book he coauthored with Hugh D. Graham, Southern Politics and the Second Reconstruction, he did discuss them with and later send an entire copy of his file to one of the authors of this study. Such invaluable information provides both state- and city-level data on the African American electorate that had not previously surfaced but appear in this volume. However, the election return data collected for the Bartley and Graham volume eventually made it into a continuity compendium. This work, Southern Elections: County and Precinct Data, 1950–1972, was designed to update the Heard and Strong compendium, Southern Primaries and Elections, 1920–1949.64 And this volume contains some limited election return data on the African American electorate that do not exist elsewhere.
Following these works on Georgia, there appeared in 1987 Lawrence Hanks’ The Struggle for Black Political Empowerment in Three Georgia Counties. In the appendix to this unique volume African American political scientist Hanks collected forty-two tables of rare and fugitive registration, black elected officials, and election return data on African American political participation that do not surface anywhere else.65 In 2003, civil liberties attorney Laughlin McDonald wrote A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, which provided a comprehensive overview of the suffrage struggle in the state and a very rare look at the African American electorate in a very small, all African American township, Keysville, Georgia.66 And in 2010 Pearl Ford edited the volume African Americans in Georgia: A Reflection of Politics and Policy in the New South, which offered empirical data on voter suppression in the presidential election of Barack Obama in 2008.67
The Literature on the African American Electorate 37
Table 2.3 Percent Ratio of Registered African American Voters to Eligible African American Voters in Arkansas, 1867–1990
Year
Number of African Americans of Voting Age
Number of African American Registered Voters
Percent Ratio of African American Registered Voters to African Americans of Voting Age
1867
N/A
23,166
N/A
1900
87,157
N/A
N/A
1910
111,523
N/A
N/A
a
1920
124,062
17,240
13.9%
1930b
257,130
5,100
2.0%
1940
270,995
4,000
1.5%
1946
245,013
5,000
2.0%
1947
240,685
47,000
19.5%
1950
227,691
N/A
N/A
1952
220,353
61,413
27.9%
1956
205,676
69,677
33.9%
1957
202,007
64,023
31.7%
1958
198,338
64,023
32.3%
1959
194,669
72,604
37.3%
1960
191,000
73,000
38.2%
1961
191,300
68,970
36.1%
1963
191,900
77,714
40.5%
1964
192,200
81,178
42.2%
1970
194,000
153,000
78.9%
1980
217,000
128,467
59.2%
1990
195,000
99,060
50.8%
Source: Hanes Walton, Jr., Re-election: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 103. The actual vote for the African American gubernatorial candidate is used in place of registration data. a
Voting data from Paul Lewinson, Race, Class, and Party: A History of Negro Suffrage and White Politics in the South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), p. 218. b
Earlier, there were three major voter participation compilations from the Southern Regional Council and its VEP. First, there is Luther Jackson’s notable 1948 article, “Race and Suffrage in the South since 1940,” in the journal New South. It offers voter participation information on all of the southern states in the 1940s. Two monographs by Margaret Price followed this: The Negro Voter in the South in 1957 and The Negro and the Ballot in the South in 1959. In 1967 there would arrive a book-length study, Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: The Arrival of Negroes in Southern Politics. “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” was the theme song for several Negro-voting leagues in the South at this time, which the authors of the book, Pat Watters and Reese Cleghorn, visited in the course of researching their book. Needless to say, other studies appeared, but many did not carry factual voter participation data in full detail. They used selected voting data to make their arguments and advance their theses. However, the Watters and Cleghorn book launched a new approach. This book, which had several tables on the voter participation of the African American electorate in the South, spawned a series of similar works, which included several tables on the
Table 2.4 Number and Percent of Counties in Georgia that Reported Separately on Black Voters, 1944–1954
Year
Number of Counties
Number of Counties Reporting the Black Vote Separately
Number of Counties Reporting That Blacks Voted
Percent of Counties Reporting That Blacks Voted
1944
159
0
0
0
1946
159
12
10
6.3%
1948
159
12
11
6.9%
1950
159
11
8
5.0%
1952
159
15
14
8.8%
159
11
10
6.3%
12.2
10.6
6.7%
1954 Mean
Source: Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Voting Behavior in the Segregation Era, 1944–1964,” in Hanes Walton, Jr. (ed.), Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), pp. 123–125.
electorate’s voter participation. These new works included historian Steven F. Lawson’s Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969 (1976) and In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965–1982 (1985); and David Garrow’s Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (1980). These works were aided by the passage and the success of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This genre of books has tables, many of which rely on earlier compilations, updated to show different aspects of voter participation in the African American community. Instead of mere data collecting and reporting, these works provide analyses and interpretations of the voter participation data. Then, Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965–1990, edited by Chandler Davidson and Bernard Grofman, brought this genre of works full circle, as it sought to prove the successful impact and influence of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The book used the increased number of African American elected officials in some eight states, as well as the increases in African American voter registration, to provide proof of the success of this public policy and to laud its effectiveness. To generate registration and election data, several of the chapters had to use inferential and derived data in their equations to produce estimates where gaps existed in the official data. The result is the very best book written to date on the impact and influence of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its three subsequent renewals in 1970, 1975, and 1982. It is a work without peer but not without limitations.68 The limitations of Davidson’s and Grofman’s work are that it was written during the first term of the William J. Clinton presidential administration, and it omits Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee. The experiences of Arkansas’s African American electorate offer contrary evidence to their thesis that this public policy has been a great success in the South, especially given the more than six voting rights suits brought against Clinton during his five terms as governor of Arkansas. Literally nothing is said about Arkansas in the Quiet Revolution. Nor are Florida or Tennessee discussed, both of which have had very few African American elected officials and even fewer statewide officials.69 Beyond
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the state-by-state analyses, there is a chapter on voter registration among the African American electorate. The registration data are not new but are corrected for four states where data permit correction for the overestimation of black registration.70 Nevertheless, this voter registration data is essentially recent data and not past historical data. A few additional works have not been previously mentioned because, while they are not compilations in and of themselves, they do offer interpretations and analyses that provide some unique tabular data that support their contentions. Two studies on the city of Tuskegee, Alabama, reflect upon the question of racial gerrymandering, including Charles V. Hamilton’s Minority Politics in Black Belt Alabama (1960) and Bernard Taper’s Gomillion Versus Lightfoot: The Tuskegee Gerrymander Case (1962). Next, there is a work on how black votes count in the state of Mississippi by Frank R. Parker, Black Votes Count: Political Empowerment in Mississippi after 1965 (1990), and two works on minority vote dilution, Chandler Davidson (ed.), Minority Vote Dilution (1984), and Bernard Grofman and Chandler Davidson (eds.), Controversies in Minority Voting: The Voting Rights Act in Perspective (1992). Each of these studies offers some tabular data on voter participation in the African American community, though much of it has appeared elsewhere before. However, what is new and different are some of the innovative interpretations that abound in these volumes, although many of these interpretations, where they are based on quantitative and qualitative data or both, in the end rest upon incomplete and inadequate data compilations. Such interpretations mainly serve to prove the point that more data need to be compiled on their subject, the African American electorate.
The Balance of Power Theory Literature The nature of theory-based literature also requires a few observations. Since the African American electorate has always been a minority in presidential electoral politics (some writers have argued permanently so), how can this minority have any influence and impact, once they acquire the vote, to achieve some of their public policy objectives? Beginning with the African American journalist T. Thomas Fortune just before the turn of the twentieth century, there has been the idea that the African American electorate could play a “balance of power” electoral strategy in presidential elections in order to influence the outcomes and achieve the public policy goals that the community needed. Although numerous other African American leaders over the years continued to advance this theory, it was not developed into a full-fledged statement and strategic vision until the arrival of NAACP publicist Henry Lee Moon’s Balance of Power: The Negro Vote in 1948. Moon asserted that African Americans should wait and see how the white electorate divides between presidential candidates and then vote in a bloc fashion to determine the winner. Afterwards, the winner could be made to acknowledge the power of the African American electorate and the debt owed to them for his or her election victory. To provide evidence and support for this theory, the Moon volume offers numerous tables of voting data to show how this theory
had played out in the past for the electorate. Much of the tabular evidence came primarily from the urban areas in the North, East, and Midwest. Moreover, in the 1948 presidential election, President Harry Truman’s political advisor Clark Clifford cited the Moon book in a memorandum that advised the President to use this strategy to win the very close 1948 election.71 Truman, acting upon Clifford’s advice, desegregated the armed services, put a civil rights plank in the Democratic platform, and created a Committee on Civil Rights that produced a report recommending civil rights legislation for African Americans. The theory became a model national strategy with potential for use at state and local levels as well.72 Such a new and bold theory with serious possibilities and consequences created its own literature. Another major book in this genre, Chuck Stone’s Black Political Power in America, appeared in 1968, when liberal Democratic candidate and vice president Hubert Humphrey, with solid African American support, lost to conservative Republican and former vice president Richard Nixon. An African American journalist, Stone laid bare all of the weaknesses and shortcomings inherent in the balance of power theory, namely that the white electorate did not always divide their vote. When they vote as a bloc, as they did in 1968, the power of the black vote could not overcome it. Stone then discarded the theory and offered a new one with accompanying election return data to prove and support his case. Simply put, this new attack brought forth new data about the African American electorate. The presidential elections in 1980 and 1984 bore out Stone’s critique. Former California governor Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, swept into office despite nearly complete electoral opposition from the African American electorate. To help rectify this situation, Jesse Jackson entered the 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential primaries, seeking to win the party nomination. He lost both times, but with a far better showing the second time around. One of his campaign managers, African American political scientist Ronald Walters, later wrote about the campaigns and revisited the balance of power theory in the process. Like Stone, Walters found the theory wanting and essentially weak because most African American voters were trapped in the Democratic Party. Walters, like Stone, sought to show them how to extricate themselves from this captive position and become a truly independent lever in national presidential politics. He set forth his case in his book, Black Presidential Politics in America: A Strategic Approach. When the 1965 Voting Rights Act came up for renewal in 2006, Walters followed up his popular initial study with another entitled Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics. Both of these books, like the prior works by Moon and Stone, offered tabular data on voter participation in the African American community to critique the balance of power theory and support the case for a new approach. Each work offers some limited new voter registration data as well as voting data that have been collected but not widely reported in leading magazines and journals. And usually the data in these works spawn some interesting interpretations but not very much new, raw, and unknown electoral data.
Overall the literature of theory-based data is related to that of voter participation data in that both literatures generated new interpretations of black political power and, at times, some very clever insights. Missing for the most part is discovery of any new electoral data, but this was not their intent. Both literatures are intended to advance commentary, explanation, and discussions and debates. Most works in these genres accomplish these goals in a very significant fashion.
Conclusions on the Literature Concerning the African American Electorate The three basic categories of literature tell us much about where new and promising election return data on the African American electorate can be found so that a holistic portrait can be constructed and developed. First, the suffrage literature from the Antebellum period and the voter participation data from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s are most promising. These literatures tell us how and where potential new discoveries of election return data might surface and how new models of this data can help one to develop longitudinal analyses. These literatures further suggest that new information can be crafted from this original material, and that more data can be derived from this recently located information. Such new points of departure in the collection and reporting of this data can potentially create new avenues for further explorations. Much potential information is embedded in this material, and the new information may lead to new interpretations and analyses. Second, we now know where the literature is unpromising and highly overlapping and repetitive. This literature is primarily the volumes that have emerged from the debate and discussion over the renewals and efforts to repeal the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as well as those studies which preceded the Act that focused on the Era of Disenfranchisement and the legal success made through the Supreme Court’s 1944 decision Smith v. Allwright. It is what one might categorize as progress in voting rights literature. Inherent in this literature is a frequent rehashing of the victories at the Supreme Court over the grandfather clause, the White Primaries, the poll taxes, and other barriers, as well as the attainment of the 1957 and 1960 voting rights legislation. It tends to depict a linear progress model of African Americans gaining suffrage rights after they were denied in the Era of Disenfranchisement. But linearity, as some of the forthcoming chapters will show, does not come close either to describing or to explaining the sojourns of the African American electorate. In contrast to the stale literature referred to above, new and recent works shed new light on these issues. For example, Professor Richard Franklin Bensel’s The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century inventively and creatively used the House of Representatives Hearings on Contested Elections to tell us about voters at the ballot box between 1850 and 1868. Since many of the initial southern African American members of Congress were challenged in their election to the House, such a work is very useful.73 Professor Michael Perman’s book Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 provides a greater and better explanation of this concept by extending the
The Literature on the African American Electorate 39 period rather than using the traditional periodization, 1890– 1901.74 Adding to the superb insights generated by Professor Perman is the recent state study of Alabama by Professor R. Volney Riser, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights, Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890–1908.75 Although this book does not have any registration and voting data, it covers African American voter rights activists in Alabama that worked through, with, and beyond the Afro-American Council to halt disenfranchisement via legal efforts before the rise of the NAACP and its use of the legalism strategy. And finally, Richard Hume and Jerry Gough’s book Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction used the voter registration and voting of 1867 mandated by the four Military Reconstruction Acts to give us a new understanding of how these first-time African American registrants and voters elected individuals to the state constitutional conventions and the southern state legislatures during Reconstruction. Moreover, this is one of the very first scholarly works to combine and use data from both the Senate and House Executive Documents to explain political and voting behavior of the political neophytes, the freedmen.76 Such works allow current and future scholars to use this newly uncovered data to develop better and more precise insights and findings than previous scholars and academics. Thus, what will differentiate this study is the presentation of new election return data and voter participation data, together with fresh analyses that cover the well-known topics. Research time should not be spent in cluttered places and dead-end roads. Such literature that rehashes the “progress” theme prior to the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its renewals should be given low priority in this and future research. Finally, there is a body of literature that has gone without discussion and review here but that might offer clues and tips leading to other unknown literature. This “minor” literature, which this study will review, might yet make or lead to some interesting breakthroughs. For instance, our five years of research on African American senatorial candidates from 1870 to 2006 has already produced new election return data, as has similar research on African American presidential candidates.77 Then there is the election return data of African American candidates who ran on third-party tickets for federal offices, such as president, senator, and representative. They also ran for a variety of statewide offices like governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. Most of the books on the endless array of third parties do not provide these data, but a few do provide some political identification. Yet there is no comprehensive list, only a partial listing. Hanes Walton, Jr.’s The Negro in Third Party Politics pioneered in this area, and his subsequent work has expanded it.78 Thus, in the end, this type of information embedded in our category of “minor” literature is somewhat promising and intriguing. So it is not always the major categories of the literature that hold promise, for in the end some contributions can be made and found in the minor literature. This study plans to make use of a portion of all of the literature that has come our way, albeit in different ways, but before closing there is one more statement about the literature that must be made.
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This literature review has been focused almost entirely upon aggregate election return data and group, rather than individual, voting behavior. This is exactly what most compilations contained. Nevertheless, voting participation studies have evolved from the aggregate-based studies to the studies that are now based on commercial and academic polls and surveys. From these new data sources, several major books on the African American electorate have arrived. One of the first sprang from social psychologist James S. Jackson’s National Black Election Surveys (NBES) at the Institute of Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan. Jackson collected data for the 1984, 1988, 1993, and 1996 election years, and a new survey promises studies for the 2004 election year. The first book to appear from these academic surveys was Patricia Gurin, Shirley Hatchett, and James Jackson’s Hope and Independence: Blacks’ Response to Electoral and Party Politics (1990). Next to come was Michael Dawson’s Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (1994),79 followed by two major works by Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (1994), which was enlarged in a second edition, and Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their Representatives in the U.S. Congress (2003). The first three books cover the two Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988, as well as the Reagan Revolution and its impact and influence on the voting behavior of the African American electorate, while the last book looks at how African Americans constituents view their congresspersons. These and several other studies using academic surveys and focus group data have created a contrasting portrait of African American voters and their participation and have broken away from the usual reliance on election return data. An especially good example of this type of study is Professor Lisa Nikol Nealy’s exceptional gender-based book, African American Women Voters.80 Thus, this budding literature is separate and distinct from the aggregate election return data-based studies. Hopefully, the day will come when both of these data sources can be used together and become interactive. But before that can happen, the election return data need to be collected and reported.
Notes 1. Hanes Walton, Jr., and Simone Greene, “Voting Rights and the Million Man March: The Problem of Restoration of Voting Rights for ExConvicts,” African American Research Perspectives Vol. 3 (Winter 1997), pp. 73–78. See also Aman McLeod, Amelia Gavin, and Ismail White, “The Locked Ballot Box: The Impact of State Criminal Disenfranchisement Laws on African American Voting Behavior and Implications for Reform,” Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 11:1 (2003), pp. 67–88. 2. See Katharine Seelye, “Senators Hear Bitter Words on Florida Vote,” New York Times, June 28, 2001, p. 1. 3. United States Commission on Civil Rights, Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2001), pp. 6–24. See also the Commission’s appendix book, Voting Irregularities in Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election: Appendix (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2001). 4. U.S. House of Representatives, Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio: Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005). For a paperback copy of the report see Congressman John Conyers and
Anita Miller, What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005). 5. See Numan Bartley and Hugh Graham, Southern Politics and the Second Reconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). For the latest discussion see Richard Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 1–25. The concept of the Second and Third Reconstruction was developed by Yale University historian C. Vann Woodward. See his article, “The Political Legacy of Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro Education Vol. 26 (Summer 1957), pp. 231–240. For a detailed analysis of his two concepts see Hanes Walton, Jr., Josephine A. V. Allen, Sherman C. Puckett, and Donald R. Deskins, Jr., “Beyond the Second Reconstruction: C. Vann Woodward’s Concept of the Third Reconstruction in the South,” American Review of Politics Vol. 32 (Spring 2001), pp. 105–130. 6. Hanes Walton, Jr., and Robert C. Smith, American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom, 4th Edition (New York: Longman, 2008), pp. 10–15. 7. Monroe Work, “Total Number Males and Females Voting Age in Southern States in 1920,” Negro Year Book, 1921–1922 (Tuskegee, AL: Negro Year Book Publishing Company, 1922), p. 42 for data on the voting age population, p. 44 for votes cast, and pp. 181–182 for officeholders. 8. Jerrold Rusk, A Statistical History of the American Electorate (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001), p. 38. 9. Ibid., p. 37. 10. Ibid. 11. Phyllis Field, “Republicans and Black Suffrage in New York State: The Grass Roots Response,” Civil War History 22 (June 1975), pp. 136–147. 12. Marion Wright, “Negro Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776–1875,” Journal of Negro History Vol. XXXIII (April 1948), pp. 168–224. 13. David McBride, “Black Protest Against Radical Politics: Gardner, Hinton, and Their Memorial of 1838,” Pennsylvania History Vol. XLVI (April 1979), pp. 149–162. See also Maxwell Whiteman, A Memorial to the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by the Colored Citizens of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Rhistoric Publications, 1969) and “Appeal of Forty Thousand, 1838” in Herbert Aptheker (ed.), A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (New York: Citadel Press, 1959), pp. 176–186; Roy Akari, “Black Suffrage in Bucks County: The Election of 1837,” Bucks County Historical Society Journal (Spring 1974), pp. 28–39; and Eric L. Smith, “End of Black Voting Rights in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History Vol. 65 (1998), pp. 279–299. 14. Edward Schriver, “Antislavery: The Free Soil and Free Democratic Parties in Maine, 1848–1855,” New England Quarterly (March 1969), pp. 82–94. See also, James Adams, “Disfranchisement of Negroes in New England,” American Historical Review 30 (April 1925), pp. 543–547. 15. J. Stanley Lemons and Michael McKenna, “Re-enfranchisement of Rhode Island Negroes,” Rhode Island History 30 (February 1971), pp. 3–13. 16. Ronald Formisano, “The Edge of Caste: Colored Suffrage in Michigan, 1827–1861,” Michigan History 56 (Spring 1972), pp. 19–41, and Willis Dunbar with William Shade, “The Black Man Gains the Vote: The Centennial of ‘Impartial Suffrage’ in Michigan,” Michigan History 56 (Spring 1972), pp. 42–57. 17. Michael McManus, “Wisconsin Republicans and Negro Suffrage: Attitudes and Behavior, 1857,” Civil War History 25 (1979), pp. 36–54. See also Leslie Fishel, Jr., “Wisconsin and Negro Suffrage,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 446 (Spring 1963), pp. 160–197. 18. Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). 19. Charles Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution Making, 1787–1865,” Journal of Negro History 32 (April 1947), p. 162. 20. Ibid., p. 163. 21. David McBride, “Black Protest Against Radical Politics: Gardner, Hinton, and Their Memorial of 1838,” Pennsylvania History Vol. XLVI (April 1979), p .156. 22. Ibid., p. 150.
23. Ibid., p. 157. 24. Ibid., pp. 149–150. 25. Whiteman, p. i. 26. Ibid. 27. McBride, p. 158, footnote 44. 28. Christopher Malone, Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North (New York: Routledge, 2008). 29. Robert Dykstra and Harlan Hahn, “Northern Voters and Negro Suffrage: The Case of Iowa, 1868,” Public Opinion Quarterly 32 (Summer 1968), p. 201. See also G. Galin Berrier, “The Negro Suffrage Issue in Iowa, 1965–1968,” Annals of Iowa 39 (Spring 1968), pp. 241–260. 30. Dykstra and Hahn, p. 203. For some additional studies on suffrage referenda votes see Edgar Toppin, “Negro Emancipation in Historic Retrospect: Ohio: The Negro Suffrage Issue in Post Bellum Ohio Politics,” Journal of Human Relations 11 (Winter 1963), pp. 232–246; and Victor Howard, “Negro Politics and the Suffrage Question in Kentucky, 1866–1872,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 72 (April 1974), pp. 111–133. 31. William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), pp. 25 and 27. 32. Ibid., p. 167. 33. Tom McLaughlin, “Grass-Roots Attitudes Toward Black Rights in Twelve Nonslaveholding States, 1846–1869,” Mid-America: An Historical Review 56 (July 1974), p. 177. 34. Ibid., p. 180. 35. Ibid. 36. Gillette, p. 45. 37. On Delaware, see Amy Hiller, “The Disfranchisement of Delaware Negroes in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Delaware History Vol. 13 (October 1968), pp. 124–154; Harold Hancock, “The Status of the Negro in Delaware After the Civil War, 1865–1875,” Delaware History Vol. 13 (April 1968), pp. 57–66; Harold Livesay, “Delaware Negroes, 1865–1915,” Delaware History Vol. 13 (October 1968), pp. 87–123; and John Munroe, “The Negro in Delaware,” South Atlantic Quarterly Vol. 56 (Autumn 1957), pp. 428–444. On West Virginia, see Charles Ambler, “Disfranchisement in West Virginia, Part I” Yale Review Vol. 14 (May 1905), pp. 38–59; and his “Disfranchisement in West Virginia, Part II,” Yale Review Vol. 14 (August 1905), pp. 155–180. 38. Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson, New Enlarged Edition (New York: Collier Books, 1965), p. 71. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., p. 74. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., p. 75. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Matthew Holden, Jr., “What Answer?”: Speech in Support of Franchise Committee Report, Mississippi Constitutional Convention, 1890 by Isaiah T. Montgomery (Charlottesville, VA: Isaiah T. Montgomery Studies Project, 2004), p. 7. 46. Matthew Holden, Jr., The Reputation of Isaiah T. Montgomery: The Greatness of a Compromised Man (Itta Bena, MS: Occasional Paper for the Delta Research and Cultural Institute, Mississippi Valley State University, 2008). 47. Logan, p. 76. 48. Ibid. 49. Bess Beatty, A Revolution Gone Backward: The Black Response to National Politics, 1876–1896 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 119–120. 50. Logan, p. 80. 51. Richard Welch, Jr., “The Federal Election Bill of 1890: Postscripts and Prelude,” Journal of American History Vol. 52 (December 1965), pp. 521–522. 52. C. Vann Woodard, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951).
The Literature on the African American Electorate 41 53. U.S. Senate, “Letter of the General of the Army of the United States Communicating In Compliance with a resolution of the Senate of December 5, 1867, a statement of the number of white and colored voters registered in each of the States subject to the reconstruction acts of Congress, with other statistics relative to the same Subject,” Senate Executive Document Number 53, 40th Congress, 2nd Session, May 13, 1868 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1868), p. 1. See also U. S. House, House Executive Document Number 342, 40th Congress, 2nd Session, with similar statistical data. 54. See the 1867 Texas Registration list of Colored and White Voters in either book format or on file in the Texas State Archives. For the book/computer disk see Donald Brice and John Barron, An Index to the 1867 Voters’ Registration of Texas (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 2000); and for the file that is available in the Archives, see Jean Carefoot, Guide to Genealogical Resources in the Texas State Archives (Austin: Archives Division, Texas State Library, 1984), pp. 95–97. Besides Texas, North Carolina is the only one of the ten southern states to have a file on its 1867 voter registration list. See Frances H. Wynne, North Carolina Extant Voter Registration of 1867 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1992). This book contains a selected reporting of African American voter registration by county. Such publications of single-state African American voter registration data in 1867 are currently not yet available for the other nine southern states of the old Confederacy. 55. John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), p. 214; see also pages 97 and 103 for footnotes that offer additional information on these microfilms in the State Archives. See also Dewey Grantham, “Georgia Politics and the Disenfranchisement of the Negro,” Georgia Historical Quarterly Vol. 32 (March 1948), pp. 1–21. 56. See The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Independent Events of the Year 1868 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1869) and a similar volume for 1869. 57. Hanes Walton, Jr., Reelection: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 93–94. 58. Ibid., p. 95. 59. Ibid., pp. 97–98. 60. See Hanes Walton, Jr., Pearl K. Dove, and Josephine A. V. Allen, Remaking the Democratic Party: Lyndon B. Johnson as a NativeSon Presidential Candidate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013). 61. Quoted in Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Southern Politics: The Influences of Bunche, Martin, and Key,” in Hanes Walton, Jr. (ed.), Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), p. 29. 62. Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Voting Behavior in the Segregation Era, 1944–1964,” in Hanes Walton, Jr. (ed.), Black Politics and Black Political Behavior: A Linkage Analysis (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), pp. 123–125. 63. Ibid., p. 130. 64. Numan Bartley and Hugh Graham, Southern Elections: County and Precinct Data, 1950–1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1978). 65. Lawrence Hanks, The Struggle for Black Political Empowerment in Three Georgia Counties (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). 66. Laughlin McDonald , A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 67. Keesha Middlemass, “Racial Politics and Voter Suppression in Georgia,” in Pearl Ford (ed.), African Americans in Georgia: A Reflection of Politics and Policy in the New South (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010), pp. 7–24. 68. Hanes Walton, Jr., “Review of Quiet Revolution in the South,” Georgia Historical Quarterly Vol. 79 (Summer 1995), pp. 516–518. 69. See DeWayne Wickham, Bill Clinton and Black America (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002). 70. James Alt, “The Impact of the Voting Rights Act on Black and White Voter Registration in the South,” in Chandler Davidson and
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Bernard Grofman (eds.), Quiet Revolution in the South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 376. 71. Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Presidential Participation and the Critical Election Theory,” in Lorenzo Morris (ed.), The Social and Political Implications of the 1984 Jesse Jackson Presidential Campaign (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 44–64. 72. Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 189–195. 73. Richard Bensel, The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 74. Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 75. R. Volney Riser, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890–1908 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010).
76. Richard Hume and Jerry Gough, Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008). 77. Walton and Smith, pp. 161 and 167. See also Hanes Walton, Jr. and Robert Starks, “African American Lawyers in the United States Senate: The Election of Barack Obama in 2004 and the 2008 Presidential Race” (forthcoming). 78. Hanes Walton, Jr., and Marion Orr, “African American Independent Politics on the Left: Voter Turnout for Socialist Candidate Frank Crosswaith in Harlem and New York,” Souls: Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 7 (Spring 2005), pp. 19–33. 79. Hanes Walton, Jr., “Black Group Interest as Individual Intent: The Empirical Black Politics of Michael Dawson: A Book Review Essay,” The Black Scholar 25 (Winter 1995), pp. 48–51. 80. Lisa Nikol Nealy, African American Women Voters (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009).
CHAPTER 3
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 The Demography of African Americans in Colonial America
45
Table 3.1 Numbers of Censuses During the American Colonial Period, 1624–1773
47
Table 3.2 African American Populations and Population Growth in Regions of Colonial America, 1610–1770
48
Figure 3.1 African American Share of Population in Colonial Virginia, 1610–1770
49
Figure 3.2 African American Share of Population in Colonial Maryland, 1610–1770
49
Figure 3.3 Distribution of African American Population in Colonial America Regions, 1610–1770
49
Table 3.3 Population by Census or Estimate During the American Colonial Period, 1624–1773
50
Figure 3.4 Percent Change in White and African American Populations, Seventeenth-Century Colonial America
54
Figure 3.5 Percent Change in White and African American Populations, Eighteenth-Century Colonial America
54
Potential African American Voters in Colonial America
54
Table 3.4 African American Populations of “Voting Age” in Colonial America, 1624–1625 to 1773
55
Table 3.5 Voting Rights, Population, and Population Change of African Americans in the Thirteen Original Colonies in the Colonial Era
56
Table 3.6 “Voting Age” African American Populations in Maryland, 1704–1755
58
Table 3.7 Taxable and Untaxable African American Populations in Maryland, 1704–1755
58
Table 3.8 Estimated African American Electorate by Colony, 1703–1773
59
Table 3.9 Local-Level Population Censuses and Enumerations of African Americans, 1624–1773
60
Table 3.10 Settlement-Level Demography for Virginia, Census of 1624
61
Table 3.11 County-Level Demography of Slaves in Massachusetts, Census of 1754
62
Table 3.12 County-Level Demography of Massachusetts, Census of 1764
63
Table 3.13 County-Level Demography of Connecticut, Census of 1756
63
Table 3.14 County-Level Demography of New Hampshire, Census of 1773
64
Table 3.15 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1708
64
Table 3.16 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1748–1749
64
Table 3.17 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1755
65
Table 3.18 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1726
66
Table 3.19 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1738
66
Table 3.20 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1745
67
Table 3.21 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1704
67
Table 3.22 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1710
68
Table 3.23 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1712
68
Table 3.24 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1712
69
Figure 3.6 African Americans as Percentage of Total Population in New York, 1703–1773
69
44
Chapter 3
Table 3.25 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1703
70
Table 3.26 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1712
70
Table 3.27 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1723
71
Table 3.28 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1731
71
Table 3.29 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1737
72
Table 3.30 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1746
72
Table 3.31 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1749
73
Table 3.32 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1771
73
Table 3.33 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1771
74
Figure 3.7 African Americans as Percentage of Total Electorate in New York, 1703–1773
74
Figure 3.8 African American Men as Percentage of Male Electorate in New York, 1703–1773
74
Figure 3.9 African American Share of Taxable Population in North Carolina, 1754–1773
75
Table 3.34 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1754
75
Table 3.35 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1755
75
Table 3.36 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1756
76
Table 3.37 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1765
76
Table 3.38 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1766
77
Table 3.39 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1767
77
Conclusions on the African American Electorate in the Colonial Era
78
Notes 78
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 45
D
ata and information on politics in the Colonial Era, 1610– 1773, are thin, scattered, and fragmented, particularly as they relate to African American political participation. Previous scholarship has focused on legal suffrage rights in this era. This chapter will for the first time establish African American electoral behavior in Colonial America and provide a foundation for the study and analysis of racial political participation prior to the Revolutionary and Antebellum eras in America. Since the thirteen colonies were each governed separately, Colonial America lacked a central government to collect and archive records in a comprehensive fashion. Hence, each of the colonies had to collect and archive its own records about registration and voting behavior. Such record keeping evolved slowly and gradually over time. Shortly after they were founded, each of the colonies began passing laws that set forth the rules and guidelines about who could and could not vote. Thus, rules and regulations concerning suffrage rights became law, and voting results began to be preserved in a fairly continuous fashion. Recordkeeping of voting was initially documented in pollbooks. John Kolp wrote in 1998 about these pollbooks: One hundred years ago, a New England historian discovered in the records of colonial Virginia a peculiar set of documents called Pollbooks. Frequently found in county deed and record books and occasionally in private papers, pollbooks report the voting behavior of individual adult male freeholders in elections for the provincial legislative assembly, the House of Burgesses. They not only include a listing by name of all persons voting for each candidate but often the total votes appear at the bottom followed by the signatures of the county sheriff and clerk attesting to the document’s accuracy and authenticity. Concentrated in the fifty-year period before the American Revolution, these surviving colonial pollbooks have long puzzled historians, for it has never been perfectly clear what they reveal about the political culture of this critical era in Virginia’s and America’s past.1 These books—along with other colonial documents like county deeds, wills, tax records, executive journals, as well as laws and statutes—serve as the primary sources of voting records in Colonial and Revolutionary America. Where gaps in these records exist, secondary sources such as newspapers, individual diaries, personal papers “both in printed and in manuscript form,” as well as pamphlets, broadsides, political memoirs, and the clipping files of early libraries provide useful semi-official election data.2 Needless to say, these different sources were not uniform or standardized. Dates of elections and methods of collecting and recording results were not consistent among the colonies, or even sometimes within them, making a comprehensive portrait nearly impossible.3 Even more in flux than the electoral processes themselves were the laws of different colonies concerning whether FreeMen-of-Color could vote.4 During the Colonial Era, suffrage laws continually changed for the free population of African
Americans.5 Any reconstruction of the African American electorate must begin with the demography of African Americans in Colonial America, particularly the dualism of that demography. Historian John Hope Franklin described the origin of this duality. He stated: “the twenty Africans who were put ashore at Jamestown in 1619 by the captain of a Dutch frigate were not slaves in a legal sense. . . . These newcomers, who happened to be black, were simply more indentured servants. They were listed as servants in the census counts of 1623 and 1624. . . .”6 Under Judeo-Christian teaching then in place, indentured servants were supposed to be freed in seven years. Thus, by 1626 these twenty African Americans had become Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color, and in some of the thirteen colonies Free-Men-of-Color had the right to vote. Hence, these individuals represent the beginning of the first category Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color of the African American population. Eventually, all of the thirteen colonies would have Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color. Franklin described the second category in the African American population thusly: “the actual statutory recognition of slavery in Virginia came in 1661. The status of blacks already there was not affected if they had completed their indenture and were free.”7 He continued: “the Virginia slave code, borrowing heavily from practices in the Caribbean and serving as a model for other mainland codes, was comprehensive if it was anything at all.”8 Thus, in America’s first colony, Virginia, there developed, almost from its inception, two African American populations, one free and one slave. This, too, became the model for other colonies. Maryland was the second colony to institute slavery. Franklin described the date and process there: While slavery in Maryland was not recognized by law until 1663, it came into existence shortly after the first settlements were made in 1634. As early as 1638 there was reference to slavery in some of the discussion in the legislature, and in 1641 the governor himself owned a number of slaves. . . . The law of 1663 was rather drastic. It undertook to reduce to slavery all blacks in the colony even though some were already free, and it sought to impose slave status on all blacks born in the colony regardless of the status of their mothers. It was not until 1681 that the law was brought in line with established practices by declaring that black children of white women and children born of free black women would be free.9 Laws in the original colonies allowed both slave and free populations to grow through the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum eras. This dual population was counted in the official censuses from 1790 to 1860. When slaves were finally set free in 1865 via the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, this dualism in the population ended.
The Demography of African Americans in Colonial America In 1976 the Bureau of the Census prepared a two-volume, bicentennial edition of the Historical Statistics of the United States:
46
Chapter 3
Colonial Times to 1970. Volume two (or Part 2) had a final section entitled “Colonial and Pre-Federal Statistics.” This was Chapter Z, and in the Series Z 1–19 there appeared a table with the “Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610–1780.”10 These population data cover the 170-year period encompassing both the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, but primarily those years before the official U.S. Census started in 1790. Table Z 1–19 contains both white and African American population information. This table shows that in the 1620 census data from Virginia, twenty Africans were counted in the Virginia population. In 1909, the Bureau of the Census had issued a compilation entitled A Century of Population Growth. This contained a considerable amount of material on American population before 1790. Chapter I of this volume, entitled “Population in the Colonial and Continental Periods,” summarized the information available for the area and offered official enumerations for seven of the original thirteen states: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. In these tables population was grouped not only into local subdivisions but also into other demographic categories, including age, gender, race, and servile or free status.11 By the 1930s demographic scholars and historical researchers had unearthed not only additional census data for the seven colonies but also for the other six original colonies that had not appeared in the 1909 volume. These new data were assembled in a single volume: American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790.12 For the analyses presented in this chapter and in Chapter Four, the two census studies and Evart Greene and Virginia Harrington’s academic study were used to construct tabular data on the dual African American populations in the Colonial and Revolutionary eras and to derive from those populations the number of potential African American voters and their locations.
Censuses Taken in the Colonial Era The 1909 Census publication reveals the total number of censuses taken in the Colonial and Revolutionary eras. Table 3.1 lists the statistics of the Colonial Era. It offers the total number of censuses for all of the colonies in the Colonial Era, broken down over time by fifty-year cycles from 1600 until the eve of the Revolutionary Era in 1773. Table 3.1 also delineates this information by region and by individual colonies, illustrating that the majority of censuses took place in the 1700s, primarily in the Middle and New England colonies. Very few censuses were conducted in the Southern Colonies. In fact, it was in the Middle Colonies of the early 1700s where over a third (34.5%) occurred, followed by the New England Colonies with 10.3%. New York alone, with ten censuses during the Colonial Era, counts for over a third (34.5%) of the total. After New York is Rhode Island with four (13.8%), New Jersey with three (10.3%), and Connecticut, Delaware, and New Hampshire with two (6.9%) each. Several colonies—Pennsylvania in the Middle Colonies, and Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina in the Southern Colonies— conducted no censuses. Of the southern region, Virginia had one census, and that was in the very beginning of the Colonial Era. Delaware’s two censuses came in the same period. The initial one
was simply a list with no demographic categories and the second census was only for one county, Kent. These restrictions severely limit their usefulness for this study.
The African American Population by Region Table 3.2 reveals the African American populations, their percentages and their percentage of change (used here as the population growth) in the four regions of the country during the Colonial Era, 1610 to 1770. Although Virginia, one of the Southern Colonies, was the first to have an African American population, which arrived in August, 1619, in the Middle Colonies in 1640 and 1650 African Americans composed a larger proportion of the total population. However, that region later saw their numbers grow at a rate much smaller than the Southern Colonies. Not only is the growth rate in the South higher, the actual African American population is greater beginning in 1660. This growth rate in both percentages and actual numbers of African Americans results in a rank-ordered grand total in 1770 that renders the African American population as follows: (1) Southern Colonies with 343,208, (2) Border Colonies with 66,318, (3) Middle Colonies with 34,929, and (4) New England Colonies with 15,367. Moreover, while New England had a greater number of colonies than all other regions, it was the region where African Americans represented the smallest proportion of the total population.
African American Population Growth in Maryland and Virginia Two things stand out in Table 3.2 (p. 48). First, the Border (i.e., Maryland and Kentucky) and Southern colonies had the two largest populations of African Americans and eventually the largest percentages. Secondly, the southern region in the decade between 1680 and 1690 more than tripled its African American population. Thus, within two decades after Virginia and Maryland instituted legal slavery, both of their respective regions (Virginia in the South and Maryland as a Border Colony) began periods of high population growth. This population growth occurred in both of the two categories, free persons of color and slaves. By disaggregating the demographic data from a regional to an individual colony basis, it is possible to focus on the two individual colonies where high population growth occurred. Figures 3.1 and 3.2, for Virginia and Maryland, respectively, show how the population growth in each of these colonies accelerated. Figure 3.1 (p. 49) shows that the African American population percentage in Virginia grew steadily, with only a pause in 1730, peaked in 1750, and slowly declined from this peak between 1750 and 1780. Figure 3.2 (p. 49) shows that the African American population in Maryland peaked three times, 1660, 1710, and 1750, but continued to rise instead of declining. Returning to our regional analysis in a comparative manner, in the southern region the African American population reached a peak of 42.3%, while in the Border Colonies it peaked at 30.4%. African American populations in both Virginia and Maryland exceeded these regional percentages. Figure 3.3 (p. 49) reveals the total distribution of the African American populations in the four regions during seventeen different
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 47 Table 3.1 Numbers of Censuses during the American Colonial Period, 1624–1773
1624–1649 Colony
1650–1699
1700–1749
Percent
Number
Number of Censuses in Colonial Era
1750–1773
Percent
Number
Percent
Number
Percent
Number
Percenta
Number
New Hampshire Massachusetts Maineb Rhode Island Connecticut Vermontc
3
10.3%
2 1 1 1 2 1
6.9% 3.4% 3.4% 3.4% 6.9% 3.4%
2 1 1 4 2 1
6.9% 3.4% 3.4% 13.8% 6.9% 3.4%
New England Colonies Subtotal
0
0
3
10.3%
8
27.6%
11
37.9%
New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware
1 2
3.4% 6.9%
7 3
24.1% 10.3%
2
6.9%
10 3 0 2
34.5% 10.3% 0.0% 6.9%
Middle Colonies Subtotal
0
3
10.3%
10
34.5%
2
6.9%
15
51.7%
1
3.4%
1
3.4%
1
3.4%
1
3.4%
Maryland Border Colony Subtotal
0
0
Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia
1
3.4%
Southern Colonies Subtotal
1
3.4%
0
0
0
Total Censuses of All Colonies
1
3.4%
3
10.3%
14
48.3%
11
6.9% 2
6.9%
1 0 0 0
3.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
1
3.4%
37.9%
29
100%
Source: Table “Censuses Prior to 1790,” A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth, 1790–1900 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), p. 4. a
All percentages are of the total number of censuses for all colonies in the Colonial Era (29).
b
As part of a census of Massachusetts.
c
As part of a census of New York.
decades, 1610–1770, showing that the population in the Southern Colonies eventually outstripped all other regions in the Colonial Era. Initially it was the Middle Colonies and New England that had the largest African American populations, but after the 1660s they gave way to the Southern and Border colonies. It is precisely these latter colonies, with the exception of Tennessee and North Carolina, that did not provide African American suffrage. Besides Virginia and Maryland, one can see population acceleration and decline in other individual colonies in the Colonial Era. In Table 3.3 (pp. 50–53), by using both colonial censuses and population estimate data, it is possible to provide demographic data for the four colonies listed in Table 3.1 where no pre-federal censuses have been found. It illustrates the African American and white populations in Pennsylvania and in all of the Southern Colonies, including Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, heretofore missing. As the above narrative indicates, recently uncovered Delaware censuses are now available with limited data. Hence, Table 3.3 offers demography data for all of the thirteen original colonies and two territories, the Wabash valley (traversing parts of Indiana and Illinois) and Michigan, in the Colonial Era. Such data provide a nearly complete portrait of the African American population during this time period.
Population Change during the Seventeenth Century Figure 3.4 (p. 54) provides a visual representation of the percentages of population change in the white and African American populations during the seventeenth century using the tabular data in Table 3.3. In 1620, the end of the first decade of our data analysis, the white population was dominant, but within a decade the African American population showed the greatest percentage change. This peaked in 1640, and the rate of change, with each group having a larger base, declined for both whites and African Americans. Only thereafter, in the decade ending in 1670, did the white population growth rate exceed that of African Americans.
Population Change during the Eighteenth Century Figure 3.5 (p. 54) extends use of the same tabular data in Table 3.3, revealing population changes in eighteenth century America, and indicating that in every decade African American population growth outstripped that of whites in the original thirteen colonies and in the two territories of Tennessee and Kentucky. In fact, in the seventeen decades of the Colonial Era, the white population grew faster only in the decades prior to 1620, 1670, and 1730.
102
1,796
13,679
22,832
15,136
51,896
68,462
86,961
92,763
115,094
170,893
217,351
289,704
360,011
449,634
581,038
1620
1630
1640
1650
1660
1670
1680
1690
1700
1710
1720
1730
1740
1750
1760
1770
15,367
12,717
10,982
8,541
6,118
3,956
2,585
1,680
950
470
375
562
380
195
0
0
0
African American
2.6%
2.8%
3.1%
2.9%
2.8%
2.3%
2.2%
1.8%
1.1%
0.7%
0.7%
3.7%
1.7%
1.4%
0.0%
0.0%
0
0
20.8%
15.8%
28.6%
39.6%
54.7%
53.0%
53.9%
76.8%
102.1%
555,904
432,904
296,459
220,545
146,981
103,084
69,592
53,537
34,841
14,915
7,454
-33.3% 25.3%
5,476
4,301
1,930
350
Total
34,929
29,049
20,736
16,452
11,683
10,825
6,218
3,661
2,472
1,480
790
630
515
232
10
0
0
African American
Populationse
47.9%
94.9%
African Percent American Change Percent in African of Total American Population Population
6.3%
6.7%
7.0%
7.5%
7.9%
10.5%
8.9%
6.8%
7.1%
9.9%
10.6%
11.5%
12.0%
12.0%
2.9%
20.2%
40.1%
26.0%
40.8%
7.9%
74.1%
69.8%
48.1%
67.0%
87.3%
25.4%
22.3%
122.0%
220.0%
African Percent American Change Percent in African of Total American Population Population
Middle Coloniesb
0
0
0
218,299
162,267
141,073
116,093
91,113
66,133
42,741
29,604
24,024
17,904
13,226
8,426
4,504
583
Total
66,318
49,004
43,450
24,031
17,220
12,499
7,945
3,227
2,162
1,611
1,190
758
300
20
0
0
0
African American
Populationse
30.4%
30.2%
30.8%
20.7%
18.9%
18.9%
18.6%
10.9%
9.0%
9.0%
9.0%
9.0%
6.7%
3.4%
35.3%
12.8%
80.8%
39.6%
37.8%
57.3%
146.2%
49.3%
34.2%
35.4%
57.0%
152.7%
1400.0%
African Percent American Change Percent in African of Total American Population Population
Border Coloniesc
792,835
553,820
373,217
279,221
174,000
126,075
104,284
74,984
64,546
50,226
39,359
28,020
18,731
10,442
2,500
2,200
350
Total
343,208
235,036
161,252
101,000
56,000
41,559
28,118
19,249
11,145
3,410
2,180
970
405
150
50
20
Middle Colonies = New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
Border Colonies = Maryland and Kentucky.
Southern Colonies = Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.
African American is the term used for Negro and mulatto populations.
c
d
e
New England Colonies = Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
b
a
0
African American
Populationse
43.3%
42.4%
43.2%
36.2%
32.2%
33.0%
27.0%
25.7%
17.3%
6.8%
5.5%
3.5%
2.2%
1.4%
2.0%
0.9%
0.0%
46.0%
45.8%
59.7%
80.4%
34.7%
47.8%
46.1%
72.7%
226.8%
56.4%
124.7%
139.5%
170.0%
200.0%
150.0%
African Percent American Change Percent in African of Total American Population Population
Southern Coloniesd
Source: “Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168.
0
Total
1610
Year
Populationse
New England Coloniesa
Table 3.2 African American Populations and Population Growth in Regions of Colonial America, 1610–1770
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 49 Figure 3.2 African American Share of Population in Colonial Maryland, 1610–1770
50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
Percent of Total Population
35%
25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 70
60
17
50
17
40
17
30
17
20
17
10
17
00
17
90
17
80
16
70
16
60
16
50
16
40
16
30
16
20
16
16
Year
16
10
20 17 30 17 40 17 50 17 60 17 70
10
17
00
17
90
17
80
16
70
16
60
16
50
16
40
16
30
16
20
16
16
16
30%
0%
10
Percent of Total Population
Figure 3.1 African American Share of Population in Colonial Virginia, 1610–1770
Year
African American Percent of Population in Virginia
African American Percent of Population in Maryland
Source: Adapted from Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168.
Source: Adapted from Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168.
Figure 3.3 Distribution of African American Population in Colonial America Regions, 1610–1770 100%
Population Distribution by Region (Percent)
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1610
1620
1630
1640
1650
1660
1670
1680
1690
1700
1710
1720
1730
1740
1750
1760
1770
Decade Southern Colonies
Border Colonies
Middle Colonies
New England Colonies
Source: Adapted from Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168.
50
Chapter 3
Table 3.3 Population by Census or Estimate during the American Colonial Period, 1624–1773
Colony
Year
Reference [source note number]: page numbers
New Hampshire
1715
[2]: 4, 71.
Population
9,650
9,500
150
General estimate of 1715.
1721
[2]: 71.
Population
9,000
8,850
150
Computed white population.
1730
[2]: 71.
Population
10,200
10,000
200
Computed total population.
1737
[2]: 71.
Population
11,000
10,800
200
Computed white population.
1754
[2]: 72.
Population
80,000
79,450
550
Computed white population.
1761
[2]: 72.
Taxables or Polls
9,146
8,868
278
As given by estimates, population-to-poll ratio = 4:1.
1767
[1]: 1170.
Census
52,720
52,087
633
Census of 1767.
1767
[2]: 72, 74–79.
Census
52,700
52,067
633
Census of 1767: computed white population.
1767
[3]: 149–150.
Census
52,720
52,087
633
Census of 1767.
1773
[1]: 1170.
Census
73,097
72,423
674
Census of 1773.
1773
[2]: 73.
Census
72,766
72,092
674
Census of 1773.
1773
[3]: 150–154.
Census
73,097
72,423
674
Census of 1773.
1715
[2]: 4, 14.
Population
96,000
94,000
2,000
General estimate of 1715.
1718
[2]: 15.
Population
94,000
90,800
2,000
White population = Total population (94,000) minus # slaves “mostly Negroes” (2,000) and minus # Indians (1,200).
1735
[2]: 15.
Population
144,308
141,708
2,600
Tot. pop. = 4 x # whites 16 yrs or older (35,427).
1736
[2]: 15.
Militia
123,000
120,000
2,000
White population = 4 x ratable male polls, given as 30,000.
1751
[2]: 15.
Population
122,000
120,000
2,000
Estimate based on 20,000 militia given for 1728.
1754
[3]: 156–157.
Census
2,712
Census of 1754: slave population. White/total not available.
1763–1765
[2]: 16-17, 21.
Census
241,024
235,810
5,214
Census of 1765.
1763
[2]: 16.
Population
200,000
197,779
2,221
Computed white population.
1764–1765
[1]: 1170.
Census
223,841
216,700
4,891
Census of 1764-1765.
1765
[2]: 17.
Population
250,000
243,000
5,500
Computed white population.
1773
[2]: 17.
Population
300,000
292,500
6,000
Computed white population.
1708
[1]: 1171.
Census
7,181
2,432
426
Census of 1708: white males.
1708
[2]: 62.
Census
7,181
426
Census of 1708: 1,015 freemen; 1,362 militia; 56 white servants; 426 black servants. White total not available.
1708
[3]: 162.
Census
7,181
6,755
426
Census of 1708: computed white population.
1715
[2]: 4, 62.
Population
9,000
8,500
500
General estimate of 1715.
1730
[1]: 1171.
Census
17,935
15,302
1,648
Census of 1730.
1730
[2]: 62–63, 66.
Census
17,935
15,302
1,648
Census of 1730.
1748
[1]: 1171.
Census
34,128
29,755
3,101
Census of 1748.
1748
[2]: 63, 66.
Census
34,128
29,755
4,373
Census of 1748: computed total population.
1748
[2]: 63, 66.
Census
32,773
28,439
3,077
Census of 1748.
1748
[2]: 63, 66.
Census
34,128
29,755
3,101
Census of 1748.
1748
[3]: 162.
Census
17,935
15,302
1,648
Census of 1748.
1755
[1]: 1171.
Census
40,536
35,839
4,697
Census of 1755.
1755
[2]: 63, 67.
Census
40,636
35,939
4,697
Census of 1755, “4,697 blacks and Indians, chiefly Negroes.”
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Populations Enumeration Type
Total
White
African American
Comments
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 51
Colony
Year
Reference [source note number]: page numbers
Connecticut
1715 1730 1754 1756 1756 1756 1762
[2]: 4, 49. [2]: 49. [2]: 49–50. [1]: 1169. [2]: 50, 58–61. [2]: 50. [2]: 50.
New York
1698 1698 1703 1703 1712–1714 1712 1715 1723 1723 1723 1731 1731 1731 1737 1737 1737 1746 1746 1746 1749 1749 1749 1754 1756 1756 1756 1771 1771 1771
New Jersey
Populations Enumeration Type
Total
White
African American
Population Population Population Census Census Census Population
47,500 100,000 138,500 130,612 129,994 129,994 146,520
46,000 70,000 135,000 126,976 126,975 128,212 141,000
1,500 1,000 3,500 3,019 3,109 3,587 4,590
General estimate of 1715. Total population as given by estimates. Computed total population. Census of 1756. Census of 1756: computed total population. Census of 1756. Computed total population.
[1]: 1171. [3]: 170. [1]: 1171. [2]: 90, 94–95. [1]: 1171. [3]: 181. [2]: 4, 90. [1]: 1171. [2]: 96. [3]: 181. [1]: 1171. [2]: 90, 97. [3]: 181. [1]: 1170. [2]: 90, 98. [3]: 182. [1]: 1170. [2]: 91, 99. [3]: 182. [1]: 1170. [2]: 91, 100. [3]: 182. [2]: 91. [1]: 1170. [2]: 91, 101. [3]: 183. [1]: 1170. [2]: 91, 102. [3]: 183.
Census Census Census Census Census Census Population Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Population Census Census Census Census Census Census
18,067 18,067 20,665 20,665 22,608 22,608 31,000 40,564 40,564 40,564 50,286 50,289 50,286 60,437 60,436 60,437 61,589 61,589 61,589 73,348 73,448 73,348 85,000 96,760 96,775 96,590 163,348 168,007 168,017
15,897 15,897 18,282 18,282 16,979 16,979 27,000 34,393 34,393 34,393 43,055 43,058 43,055 51,496 51,495 51,496 52,482 52,482 52,482 62,756 62,756 62,756 74,000 83,242 89,233 83,242 143,474 148,124 148,124
2,170 2,170 2,258 2,383 2,425 2,425 4,000 6,171 6,171 6,171 7,231 7,231 7,231 8,941 8,941 8,941 9,107 9,107 9,107 10,592 10,692 10,592 11,000 13,548 13,542 13,348 19,874 19,883 19,893
Census of 1698. Census of 1698. Census of 1703. Census of 1703. Census of 1712–1714. Partial census of 1712. General estimate of 1715. Census of 1723. Census of 1723. Census of 1723. Census of 1731. Census of 1731: computed white population. Census of 1731. Census of 1737. Census of 1737: computed white population. Census of 1737. Census of 1746. Census of 1746: computed white population. Census of 1746. Census of 1749. Census of 1749. Census of 1749: computed total population. Computed white population. Census of 1756. Census of 1756. Census of 1756. Census of 1771. Census of 1771. Census of 1771.
1715 1726 1726 1726 1737–1738 1738 1738 1745 1745 1745 1754 1754 1755
[2]: 4, 106. [1]: 1170. [2]: 106. [3]: 184. [3]: 184. [1]: 1170. [2]: 106, 110. [1]: 1170. [2]: 106, 111. [3]: 184. [2]: 107. [2]: 107. [2]: 107.
Population Census Population Census Census Census Census Census Census Census Population Population Population
22,500 32,442 32,446 32,442 46,676 46,676 47,369 61,403 61,383 61,403 81,500 78,500 81,500
21,000 29,861 29,861 29,861 42,695 42,695 43,388 56,797 56,777 56,797 80,000 73,000 80,000
1,500 2,581 2,581 2,581 3,981 3,981 3,981 4,606 4,606 4,606 1,500 5,500 1,500
1772
[2]: 108, 112.
Census
71,023
67,710
3,313
Comments
General estimate of 1715. Census of 1726. According to estimate. Census of 1726. Census of 1737–1738. Census of 1738. Census of 1738. Census of 1745. Census of 1745. Census of 1745. Computed total population. Computed total population. Floor estimate of total population based on black population from 1,500 to 1,800. Census of 1772. (Continued)
52
Chapter 3
Table 3.3 (Continued)
Colony
Year
Reference [source note number]: page numbers
Pennsylvania
1715 1721 1730 1754 1766
[2]: 4, 114. [2]: 114. [2]: 114. [2]: 115. [2]: 116.
Population Population Population Population Population
Delaware
1665–1697
[4]: 32.
Taxables or Polls
1684
[4]: 135–141.
Taxables or Polls
117
1704 1710 1710 1712 1715 1719 1732 1748 1754 1755 1755 1755 1756
[1]: 1169. [1]: 1169. [2]: 124. [1]: 1169. [2]: 4, 125. [2]: 125. [2]: 125. [2]: 125. [2]: 125. [1]: 1169. [2]: 125–126. [3]: 184. [2]: 126.
Census Census Census Census Population Population Population Population Population Census Census Census Population
1761
[2]: 126.
1624–1625 1624 1625 1648 1671 1708 1712 1715 1743 1749
Maryland
Virginia
North Carolina
Populations Enumeration Type
Total
White
African American
45,800 65,000 49,000 206,000 180,000
43,300 60,000 45,000 195,000 150,000
2,500 5,000 4,000 11,000 30,000
Comments General estimate of 1715. According to estimate. According to estimate. According to estimate. According to estimate.
List of land owners by name, but not by gender, age, or race.
103
14
Kent County only. Freeholders, family members, household servants, and freemen by name; numbers of Negroes.
34,912 42,741 42,741 46,151 50,200 80,000 96,000 130,000 148,000 153,505 153,564 153,505 154,188
30,437 34,796 34,796 37,743 40,700 55,000 75,000 94,000 104,000 108,193 107,208 108,193 107,963
4,475 7,945 7,945 8,408 9,500 25,000 21,000 36,000 44,000 45,312 46,356 45,312 46,225
Census of 1704. Census of 1710. Census of 1710. Census of 1712. General estimate of 1715. Census of 1755. Census of 1755. Census of 1755.
Population
164,007
114,332
49,675
[1]: 1171. [2]: 136. [2]: 143. [2]: 136. [2]: 136. [2]: 139. [2]: 139. [2]: 4, 139. [2]: 140. [2]: 140.
Census Census Census Population Population Taxables or Polls Militia Population Population Taxables or Polls
1,227 1,275 1,227 15,300 40,000 30,000 24,102 95,000 130,000 135,000
1,202 1,253 1,202 15,000 38,000 18,000 12,051 72,000 88,000 85,000
23 22 23 300 2,000 12,000 12,051 23,000 42,000 40,000
1754 1755 1756
[2]: 140. [2]: 150–151. [2]: 140.
Population Census Taxables or Polls
284,000 103,407 293,472
168,000 43,329 173,316
116,000 60,078 120,156
1770
[2]: 141.
Taxables or Polls
447,008
259,402
187,606
Census of 1698. Census of 1698. Census of 1698. Estimated “tithables.” Estimated white militia equal to Negroes. General estimate of 1715. “135,000 souls: 85,000 tithables, 40,000 being blacks.” Census of 1755; computed total population. Estimated from 4 times white tithables and 2 times Negro tithables. Estimates based on numbers of tithables.
1715 1732 1752 1754 1756 1761 1765 1766
[2]: 4, 156. [2]: 156. [2]: 157. [2]: 157. [2]: 157–158. [2]: 158. [2]: 158. [2]: 158–159.
Population Population Population Population Taxables or Polls Taxables or Polls Taxables or Polls Taxables or Polls
11,200 36,000 30,000 90,000 25,737 34,000 45,912 48,610
7,500 30,000 20,000 70,000 12,069 22,000 28,542 16,183
3,700 6,000 10,000 20,000 13,668 12,000 17,370 12,923
General estimate of 1715. Estimated taxables. Estimated taxables. Estimated taxables. Estimated taxables.
1767
[2]: 159.
Taxables or Polls
51,044
17,700
12,382
Estimated taxables.
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 53
Colony
Year
Reference [source note number]: page numbers
South Carolina
1699 1703 1708 1715 1720 1737 1741 1742 1745 1749 1751 1754 1755 1756
[2]: 172. [2]: 172-173. [2]: 173. [2]: 4, 173. [2]: 174. [2]: 174. [2]: 174. [2]: 174. [2]: 174. [2]: 174. [2]: 175. [2]: 175. [2]: 175. [2]: 175.
1763 1765
Populations Enumeration Type
Total
White
African American
Population Population Population Population Population Militia Population Militia Population Population Population Population Population Militia
62,500 7,150 9,580 16,750 21,000 27,000 45,000 54,500 50,000 64,000 65,000 80,000 110,000 22,500
12,500 3,800 4,080 6,250 12,000 5,000 5,000 5,500 10,000 25,000 25,000 40,000 25,000 5,500
50,000 3,000 4,100 10,500 9,000 22,000 40,000 49,000 40,000 39,000 40,000 40,000 50,000 17,000
[2]: 175. [2]: 175.
Population Population
105,000 125,000
35,000 40,000
70,000 85,000
1769 1770 1773
[2]: 175. [2]: 175, 176. [2]: 176.
Population Militia Population
125,000 115,000 175,000
45,000 10,000 65,000
80,000 75,178 110,000
1751 1753 1753 1754 1755 1760 1761 1765 1766
[2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181. [2]: 181.
Population Population Population Population Population Population Population Population Population
2,120 3,447 3,861 7,000 6,500 9,578 9,700 11,300 17,750
1,700 2,381 2,261 5,000 3,000 6,000 6,100 6,800 9,950
420 1,066 1,600 2,000 3,500 3,578 3,600 4,500 7,800
1773
[2]: 182.
Population
33,000
18,000
15,000
Illinois Country
1726 1732 1750 1763 1765 1766 1772
[2]: 186. [2]: 187. [2]: 187. [2]: 187. [2]: 188. [2]: 188. [2]: 189.
Population Population Population Population Population Militia Population
409 672 1,460 970 2,950 0 1,500
280 388 1,100 670 2,050 300 900
129 165 300 300 900 230 600
Wabash Valley, Indiana
1767
[2]: 190.
Population
400
10
17
Michigan Territory (Detroit)
1765
[2]: 191.
Population
799
701
60
Georgia
Comments Four Negroes to one white man. General estimate of 1715. White fighting men. (White) provincial militia. Estimated population of white militia and Negro males 16 years and older. 30,000 to 40,000 whites. White population estimate based on 7,000 to 8,000 militia; 80,000 to 90,000 Negroes. White militia. Negro population estimate deemed excessive. White population estimated in range from 9,900 to 10,000. White “fencible” men.
Sources: [1] “Table Series Z 24–132: Population Censuses Taken in the Colonies and States During the Colonial and Pre–Federal Period: 1624–25 to 1786,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 1169–1171. [2] Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932). [3] A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 149–185. [4] Ronald Vern Jakson and Gary Ronald Teeples (eds.), Early Delaware Census Records, 1665–1697 (Bountiful, UT: Accelerated Indexing Systems, 1977), pp. 1–32, and Jeffrey L. Schieb, “A 1688 Census of Kent County, Delaware,” Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine Vol. 37 (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1991), pp. 135–141.
54
Chapter 3
140%
15% 66%
34%
35% 54%
98% 55%
11% 83%
87% 168%
101% 200%
468%
552%
Percent Change in Population
1000% 900% 800% 700% 600% 500% 400% 300% 200% 100% 0%
895%
Figure 3.4 Percent Change in White and African American Populations, Seventeenth-Century Colonial Americaa
1610 1620 1630 1640 1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 Decade White
African American
Source: Adapted from Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780," Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168. a
Includes the Original Thirteen Colonies, plus Tennessee and Kentucky.
33%
36% 38%
41%
58% 24%
30%
Primary Source Data on Voting Age
40%
40%
39%
50%
36% 32%
53%
61%
60%
29%
Percent Change in Population
70%
65%
Figure 3.5 Percent Change in White and African American Populations, Eighteenth-Century Colonial Americaa
20% 10% 0%
1710
1720
1730
1740
1750
1760
1770
Decade White
African American
Source: Adapted from Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780," Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168. a
New Jersey and New Hampshire. Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Virginia each had one year of gender data. One year of gender data is available for Maine, although Maine was not one of the original thirteen colonies but initially a province of Massachusetts that did not join the federal system until 1820. Notably, five of the original colonies are missing from Table 3.4: Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Gender data by census were not collected for them in the colonial and pre-federal periods. Thus, said data existed only for eight of the thirteen original colonies, and only sporadically. When the Bureau of the Census published this material in its bicentennial edition of Historical Statistics, other extant data were not yet discovered or may simply have been omitted from Table Z 24–132. Hence our analysis must rely upon this data, which do provide specific information on Free-Menof-Color, that category of the African American demography that could vote. Occasionally, some of the colonies allowed women to vote. Virginia was the first to allow women, including Free-Women-of-Color, the legal right to vote between 1626 and 1699. Thus, in the final analysis, the data in this table show the principal number of African American males who potentially could have been in the electoral pool of voters. As to the matter of definition, the African American population should be read to include both Negro and mulatto populations.
Includes the Original Thirteen Colonies, plus Tennessee and Kentucky.
The Colonial Population by Race and Gender The colonial and pre-federal statistics provide much more than the total populations by region and individual colony. Table Z 24–132 in the historical statistics volume provides population breakdown by gender for some years, as well as information about the age distributions of the white and African American populations in Colonial America. Table 3.4 shows that not all of the colonies kept gender data on the African American population during this time frame. New York kept a significant amount of this data, as did
The colony of New York provides the richest series of data across time in the Colonial Era. Table Z 24–132 of Historical Statistics provides not only some gender data but also age data for five of the eight colonies. Of those five colonies, three demarcate their age data at “16 and over,” while another distinguishes its data at age “20 and over.” New York, in 1723, simply had “adult” and “non-adult” age categories. Thus, the age of sixteen tends to predominate as the possible voting age in these colonies. However, in the colony of New York in 1731 and 1737, census data of age start at “10 years and over.” Presumably ten year olds did not vote, and since other voting data for New York are available, it can be estimated that the population potentially eligible to vote was at or near the age of “16 and over.”
Potential African American Voters in Colonial America The total demography in Table 3.2 as well as the gender data in Table 3.4 provide for the first time an empirical look at the potential African American electorate in Colonial America. Matching up this demographic data with those colonies that legally allowed African Americans the right to vote provides some sense of how many Free-Men-and-Women-of Color had the potential right to cast ballots. Besides this basic empirical demographic and gender data on the Colonial Era, there are two other unique features. First, census data were collected for Maine when it was a province of Massachusetts. Table 3.4 shows that in this territory during the years 1764–1765, there were 344 African Americans, 192 males (55.8%) and 152 females (44.2%). And like the first
7,181 17,935 34,128 40,536
1708
1730
1748
1755
Rhode Island
73,348 96,790 163,348
1749
1756
1771
57,596
58,040
1701
1699
23
45,312
8,408
7,945
4,475
4,606
3,981
2,581
19,874
13,548
10,592
9,107
8,941
7,231
6,171
2,425
2,258
2,170
3,019
4,697
3,101
1,648
426
344
4,891
674
633
Number
1.9%
29.5%
18.2%
18.6%
12.8%
7.5%
8.5%
8.0%
12.2%
14.0%
14.4%
14.8%
14.8%
14.4%
15.2%
10.7%
10.9%
12.0%
2.3%
11.6%
9.1%
9.2%
5.9%
1.6%
2.2%
0.9%
1.2%
11
23,746
2,588
2,208
1,435
10,623
7,570
5,696
4,857
4,948
4,334
3,364
1,334
1,174
2,387
192
2,824
379
384
Number
Males
10
20,179
2,018
1,773
1,146
9,251
5,978
4,896
4,250
3,993
2,897
2,807
1,091
1,084
2,310
152
2,067
295
249
Number
Females
16
16
16
16
16
16
16
c
c
‘Adult’
16
16
‘Adult’
“Voting Age”b
21,189
2,357
1,502
11,404
7,488
5,973
4,927
6,265
4,785
3,996
1,581
1,409
2,542
Number
13.8%
5.0%
4.6%
7.0%
7.7%
8.1%
8.0%
10.4%
9.5%
9.9%
7.0%
6.8%
6.3%
11,696
1,359
872
6,209
4,290
3,317
2,893
3,551
2,932
2,186
900
707
1,277
Number
7.6%
2.9%
2.7%
3.8%
4.4%
4.5%
4.7%
5.9%
5.8%
5.4%
4.0%
3.4%
3.2%
Percent of Total Population
Males
8,646
998
630
5,195
3,198
2,656
2,034
2,714
1,853
1,810
681
702
1,265
5.6%
2.1%
1.9%
3.2%
3.3%
3.6%
3.3%
4.5%
3.7%
4.5%
3.0%
3.4%
3.1%
Percent of Total Population
Females
Number
African American Population of Voting Age Percent of Total Population
Total
In this table, African American includes Negro and mulatto populations.
Age is derived from age strata in source data.
Demographic demarcation at 10 years of age.
a
b
c
Source: Adapted from “Table Series Z 24–132: Population Censuses Taken in the Colonies and States During the Colonial and Pre-Federal Period: 1624–25 to 1786,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 1169–1171. Calculations by the authors.
4,909
1634
153,505
1755 1,227
46,151
1712
1624–1625
42,741
1710
Virginia
34,912
1704
Maryland
122,003
1772
61,403
61,589
1746
1745
60,437
1737
46,676
50,286
1731
1738
40,564
1723
32,442
22,608
1712–1714
1726
20,665
1703
New Jersey
18,067
1698
New York
130,612
1756
Connecticut
21,857
1764–1765
Maine
73,097 223,841
1773
1764–1765
1767
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
52,720
Year
Colony
Total Population
Percent of Total Population
Total
African American Populationa
Table 3.4 African American Populations of “Voting Age” in Colonial America, 1624–1625 to 1773
56
Chapter 3
federal territories, such as Indiana, wherein Congress restricted African American suffrage and only white males could vote, Massachusetts blocked Free-Men-of-Color from voting in Maine. However, once it became a state, Maine never blocked them from voting, even up through the Civil War. A second unique feature is that Maryland, at least for one year in the Colonial Era, broke down its census data on African Americans by free male and female as well as by slave male and female. There was a mulatto breakdown as well. If data such as Maryland’s existed for all thirteen colonies it would be possible to quickly and accurately estimate the proportion of the African American population in Colonial America who were potential voters. Such information would provide us with a comprehensive and systematic portrait of African American voters in this era. Although we are lacking this type of empirical data for almost all of the colonies, a case study of the unique Maryland data will be the first of its kind. A unique feature of the Maryland data is that the data tell us that each of these African American demographic populations had taxes levied upon them. This means that these Free-Menand-Women-of-Color had acquired enough real and personal property in the colony to become taxpayers and thereby qualify as societal “stake-holders,” a qualification that was the main basis
for voting in Colonial America. These data, although limited to a single year, demonstrate that in Maryland, and probably in the rest of the thirteen colonies, some free African Americans satisfied the qualification of holding property as a basis for voting.
The Colonies That Gave African Americans the Legal Right to Vote Table 3.5 lists the original thirteen colonies and shows those which provided legal voting rights for Free-Men-of-Color. None of the thirteen colonies initially denied suffrage rights to African Americans. As time passed during the 163-year Colonial Era (1610–1773), only three of the thirteen colonies, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, changed their statutes to deny suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color. The other ten colonies did not deny suffrage rights based on color but rather upon the condition of property ownership. Suffrage rights in this era rested upon the ideology and concept of the voter as “a stakeholder in society,” which was the dominant requirement. Although there were other qualifications, the property qualification was the most pervasive, and each one of the colonies set its own requirements for property held in terms of acres owned and, later, valuation in dollars.
Table 3.5 Voting Rights, Population, and Population Change of African Americans in the Thirteen Original Colonies in the Colonial Era Voting Rights of Free African Americans 1770 Estimated Totala Population
Percent Total Population Increaseb (1760–1770)
1770 Estimated African American Population
1770 African American Percent of Total Population
Percent African American Population Increaseb (1760–1770)
Denied from the Outset
Denied by 1770
Never Denied
New Hampshire
62,396
59.6%
654
1.0%
9.0%
Massachusetts
235,308
16.1%
4,754
2.0%
4.1%
Rhode Island
58,196
28.0%
3,761
6.5%
8.5%
Connecticut
183,881
29.1%
5,698
3.1%
50.6%
New York
162,920
39.1%
19,112
11.7%
17.0%
New Jersey
117,431
25.2%
8,220
7.0%
25.2%
Pennsylvania
240,057
27.2%
5,761
2.4%
30.7%
Delaware
35,496
6.8%
1,836
5.2%
5.9%
Maryland
202,599
24.9%
63,818
31.5%
30.2%
Virginia
447,016
31.6%
187,605
42.0%
33.5%
North Carolina
197,200
78.6%
69,600
35.3%
107.4%
South Carolina
124,244
32.1%
75,178
60.5%
31.1%
Georgia
23,375
144.0%
10,625
45.5%
197.0%
Totals
0
3
10
2,090,119
32.4%
456,622
21.8%
40.3%
Colony
Source: “Table Series Z 1–19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168. a
Total population = white population + Negro (African American) population.
b
Percent population increase or decrease = (population in 1770 – population in 1760)/population in 1760.
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 57
As Alexander Keyssar wrote, “The linchpin of both colonial and British suffrage regulations was the restriction of voting to adult men who owned property. On the eve of the American Revolution, in seven colonies men had to own land of specified acreage or monetary value in order to participate in elections; elsewhere, the ownership of personal property of a designated value (or in South Carolina, the payment of taxes) could substitute for real estate.”13 In all of the colonies that provided the legal right to vote to Free-Men-of-Color, they also had the right to purchase property and the obligation to pay taxes on their real estate. They did so in each and every one of the thirteen colonies. Thus, with the data in Table 3.5 that pinpoint the exact colonies where Free-Men-of-Color had legal suffrage rights, the demography of total population and male population within these specific colonies can be combined to structure a portrait of potential voters via estimations based on the known male and free male populations from the “Colonial and Pre-Federal Statistics.” Table 3.5 provides estimates showing that several of the Southern Colonies—including South Carolina, where African Americans constituted 60.5% of the population, Georgia with 45.5%, Virginia with 42.0%, North Carolina with 35.3%, and Maryland with 31.5%—did not deny African Americans suffrage rights despite their large proportions and population growth. This is just the opposite of what would later happen during the Reconstruction Era, 1868–1877, when states with large African American populations moved to disenfranchise them. The conclusion, at least from the demographic data, is that neither colonies with large African American populations nor those with large increases in the African American population pursued the diminution of legal suffrage rights. Thus, neither the population size nor population increase resulted in either outright or eventual denial of suffrage rights during colonial times. Even Virginia, which became one colony of the three to deny this right, did not do so until 1699 for Free-Women-ofColor and 1723 for Free-Men-of-Color.
Colony-Level Election Data: The Colonial Maryland Free and Taxable African American Population A case study of Colonial Maryland is possible, and instructive, due to the historical statistics from their census materials. Table 3.6 (p. 58) reveals that during the year 1755 when the African American population was nearly 30% of the total population, the Free African American population was just over 0.5% and stood at 1,817 individuals. The slave population was 43,495 (or 97.8% of the total African American population), and males in the slave population outnumbered females. Hence, because Maryland did not prohibit Free-Men-of-Color from exercising their suffrage rights, some 895 were of voting age and eligible to cast ballots if they were also male and also passed the economic requirement of being “taxable.” Table 3.7 (p. 58) further breaks down the year 1755 data into two categories of “taxable” and “untaxable” populations, showing that a large plurality of Free-Men-and-Women-ofColor was considered “taxable” and therefore likely paid taxes. More than 40% of this group, or 742 out of 1,817 individuals,
were eligible under the law to be potential voters in the colonial elections. Table 3.7 also reveals that 100% of the large “taxable” slave population in the colony that year, some 19,600 persons, was of the voting age. Of this number 11,270 were male, and they were eligible to vote just as were the Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color or even as the free white men (23,386). The voting age taxable slave population would have constituted 7.3% of the total population or 32.5% of a voting age male electorate. Because the “male” question and the “taxable” question were tallied separately, we do not know exactly how many FreeMen-of-Color were of voting age and taxable, as opposed to Free-Women-of-Color who could not vote even if of voting age and taxable. But the data we do have allow us to estimate their numbers. Males constituted 57.5% of the voting-age African American population; if they also constituted 57.5% of the free population, then approximately 427 of the 742 free and taxable African Americans in Maryland in 1755 were male and therefore could vote. Males constituted 53.5% of the total African American population; if they also constituted 53.5% of the free population, then approximately 396 of the 742 free and taxable African Americans could vote. Even more conservatively, if males were 50% of the free and taxable African population, they would have numbered 371 voters. These unique census data from Maryland give us both an empirically based glimpse and a suggestive clue about the potential voters in this single colony during the Colonial Era. The data tell us about the property holding that the Free-Men-andWomen-of-Color had in this time frame and how these taxable property owners were “stakeholders-in-society,” rendering them as potential voters. Historian William Gillette in his analysis of newspaper and scholarly sources about potential African American voters noted that journalistic works had a consensus of about “onesixth” of the African American population, while scholars used a consensus of about “one-fifth” of the African American population.14 Using the only colony where detailed data exist, Maryland in 1755, we have estimated that the number of voters was probably between 371, or 20.3% of the colony’s free African American population, and 427, or 23.5% of the colony’s free African American population. In other words, our rare findings, which Gillette does not analyze, confirm the basic validity of the rule of thumb that Gillette uses—if one calculates the percentage by dividing the number of voters by the total free African American population. If one divides the number of voters by the entire African American population, including the slave majority, the percentages are much lower. The low-end estimate (371) of the number of voters is only 0.8% of the total African American population in 1755 and 1.5% of the male African population, while the high-end estimate (427) is only 0.9% of the total African American population that year and 1.8% of the male African American population. The difficulty of estimating the African American electorate in other colonies is that they did not record how large their free African American population was, but only their total African American population, broken down into male and female. Therefore, we have used the consensus figure of “one-fifth” or 20% of the African American male population for each of the
34,912
42,741
46,151
153,505
1704
1710
1712
1755
23,746
Number
20,719
Number
Female
1,817
Number
Free
43,495
Number
Slave
45,312
8,408
7,945
4,475
Number
29.5%
18.2%
18.6%
12.8%
Percent c
Total
21,189
Number
13.8%
Percent
Total
11,696
Number
7.6%
Percent
Male
8,646
Number
5.6%
Percent
Female
895
Number
0.6%
Percent
Free
African American Population of Voting Agea, b
20,294
Number
13.2%
Percent
Slave
Voting age was 16. Age is derived from the strata of age in the source data.
Percent of total state population.
b
c
34,912
42,741
46,151
153,505
1704
1710
1712
1755
45,312
8,408
7,945
4,475
Population
29.5%
18.2%
18.6%
12.8%
Percent of Totalb
21,189
Number
13.8%
Percent of Totalb
742
Total
742
Number
0.5%
Percent Of Totalb
Of Voting Age
Free
1,075
Total
153
Number
0.1%
Percent Of Totalb
Of Voting Age
Untaxable
African Americana
19,600
Total
19,600
Number
12.8%
Percent Of Totalb
Of Voting Age
Taxable
Slave
23,895
Total
694
Number
0.5%
Percent Of Totalb
Of Voting Age
Untaxable
The population of African Americans includes Negro and mulatto populations.
Percent total state population.
Voting age was 16. Age derived from the age strata in the source data.
a
b
c
Source: Adapted from “Table Series Z 50-59: Population Censuses Taken in the Colonies and States During the Colonial and Pre-Federal Period: 1624–25 to 1786,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 1169–1171. Calculations by the authors.
Total Population
Year
Population of Voting Agec
Taxable
Table 3.7 Taxable and Untaxable African American Populations in Maryland, 1704–1755
African American population includes Negro and mulatto populations. A group of 847 African Americans is not broken down by gender.
a
Source: Adapted from “Table Series z 50–59: Population Censuses Taken in the Colonies and States During the Colonial and Pre-Federal Period: 1624–25 to 1786,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1975). pp. 1169–1171. Calculations by the authors.
Total Population
Year
Male
African American Populationa
Table 3.6 “Voting Age” African American Populations in Maryland, 1704–1755
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 59
colonies with census data with the exception of New Jersey. New Jersey allowed Free-Women-of-Color to vote until 1807, so we used the total African American population there as our base. Placing these data in Table 3.8, our resultant estimations have been placed in the last two columns. In making estimations for this time period for these other colonies, one must understand that the extant census data for the slave and free populations are not broken down as in Maryland but combined. Such a limited breakdown forces us to drop the 40% standard found in the Colonial Maryland data and use a 20% standard to determine our estimations for the other colonies. The patterns and trends in both numbers and percentages are very clear. Maryland, a Border State, has the largest number and percentage of potential Free-Men-of-Color voters. New York and New Jersey follow Maryland, particularly through years
prior to 1755 in numbers and percentages of potential voters. Then in the New England area, there is Rhode Island followed by Massachusetts. And given the numbers and percentages, the possible electoral impact and influence of these potential voters would be as “balance-of-power” voters, if concentrated in township and district elections, simply because their numbers are likely too small to affect statewide elections. In close local and district elections these potential voters had a chance for electoral impact and influence.
County-Level Election Data in the Colonial Era In addition to state-level data there are Colonial Era demographic data at the county and township levels. Heretofore, this countyand township-level data have not been used in the study of African American politics and history in the Colonial Era. The
Table 3.8 Estimated African American Electorate by Colony, 1703–1773 African Americana Population Total Population
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Total Population
Year
Non-South
New Hampshire
1767
52,720
633
1.2%
384
0.7%
77
0.1%
1773
73,097
674
0.9%
379
0.5%
76
0.1%
Massachusetts
1764–1765
22,384
4,891
2.2%
2,824
1.3%
565
0.3%
Maine
1764–1765
21,857
344
6.0%
192
0.9%
38
0.2%
Rhode Island
1755
40,536
4,697
11.6%
2,387
5.9%
477
1.2%
New York
1703
20,665
2,258
10.9%
1,174
5.7%
235
1.1%
1712–1714
22,608
2,425
10.7%
1,334
5.9%
267
1.2%
1723
40,564
6,171
15.2%
3,364
8.3%
673
1.7%
1731
50,286
7,231
14.4%
4,334
8.6%
867
1.7%
1737
60,437
8,941
14.8%
4,948
8.2%
990
1.6%
1746
61,589
9,107
4,857
7.9%
971
1.6%
1749
73,348
10,592
14.4%
5,696
7.8%
1,139
1.6%
1756
96,790
13,548
14.0%
7,570
1,514
1.6%
1771
163,348
19,874
12.2%
10,623
6.5%
2,125
1.3%
New Jerseyc
1726
32,442
2,581
8.0%
1,435
4.4%
516
1.6%
1738
46,676
3,981
8.5%
2,208
4.7%
796
1.7%
1745
61,403
4,606
7.5%
2,588
4.2%
921
1.5%
Maryland
1755
153,505
45,312
29.5%
23,746
15.5%
4,749
3.1%
d
453
3.0%
356e
2.0%
Number
Percent of Total Population
Colony
Number
Estimated Electorateb
Region
Border States
Number
Male Population
Source: Adapted from Table 3.4. The methodology for estimating the African American electorate is taken from William Gillette, Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 105, Table, footnote C. Here the calculation is applied to the African American male population instead of the total African American population. Calculations by the authors. Calculations at notes d and e by the editor. a
African American includes Negro and mulatto populations.
b
Estimated African American electorate = 0.2 x African American male population.
c
Estimated African American electorate = 0.2 x African American total population.
d
Estimated African American electorate of Maryland = 0.01 x African American total population.
e
Estimated African American electorate of Maryland = 0.015 x African American total population.
60
Chapter 3
data offer the opportunity to see where in a particular colony the African American population resided, as well as the size and percentage of that population in relationship to the white population. The data provide some empirical data to estimate the potential electoral influence and impact of that population. In addition, the data allow the reader to see the growth and the spread of this population over time during the Colonial Era. Table 3.9 shows the colonial censuses that broke down their demographic data by counties for nine different
colonies from 1624 through 1773, a period of 149 years. New York colony had the largest number of these county-level breakdowns with nine, followed by six in North Carolina, four in Maryland, three in both Rhode Island and New Jersey, two in Massachusetts, and one each in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Virginia. Together, there are thirty different county-level data points, and of these thirty different countylevel data points, gender information appears in nineteen of them.
Table 3.9 Local-Level Population Censuses and Enumerations of African Americans, 1624–1773
African American
Colony
Year
Locale
Table No.
Total Population
New Hampshire
1773
County
3.14
73,097
Massachusetts
1754
County
3.11
N/A
1764
County
3.12
245,698
16a
1708
Town
3.15
7,181
1748–1749
Town
3.16
31,778
1755
Town
3.17
40,536
Adult
Connecticut
1756
County
3.13
130,612
New York
1703
County
3.25
20,665
1712
County
3.26
22,608
1723
County
3.27
40,564
1731
County
3.28
1737
County
1746
Voting Age
Males
379
Females
Population
295
674
1,505
855
2,712
3,016
2,219
5,235
426
2,082
1,277
1,265
2,542
3,019
16
707
702
1,409
16
900
681
1,581
Adult
2,186
1,810
3,996
50,289
10
2,932
1,853
4,785
3.29
60,437
10
3,551
2,714
6,265
County
3.30
61,589
16
2,893
2,034
4,927
1749
County
3.31
73,309
16
3,317
2,656
5,973
1756
County
3.32
96,790
16
4,290
3,198
7,488
1771
County
3.33
168,007
16
6,220
5,197
11,417
1726
County
3.18
33,442
16
872
630
1,502
1738
County
3.19
47,369
16
1,359
998
2,357
1745
County
3.20
61,403
16 a
2,588
2,018
4,606
1704
County
3.21
34,912
4,475
1710
County
3.22
42,741
7,945
1712
County
3.23
46,151
8,408
1755
County
3.24
153,505
16
11,696
8,646
20,342
Virginia
1624–1625
Settlement
3.10
1,232
12
11
23
1755
County
103,328
59,999
North Carolina
1754
County
24,861
4,275
2,911
7,186
1755
County
24,607
7,018
1756
County
25,737
7,661
1765
County
45,912
12,303
1766
County
48,610
12,923
1767
County
51,044
11,884
Rhode Island
New Jersey
Maryland
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932) and A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 149–185. Calculations by the authors. a
Data source does not stratify the enumerated African Americans by voting age.
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 61
Beyond these different data points, we have data over time from two colonies: New York has nine data points and North Carolina provides six. These two colonies are indeed quite unusual in this manner. But even more unusual is the settlement (before counties) breakdown in Virginia, which shows the growth and movement of America’s original African American population. Collectively, these case studies of county- and townshiplevel demography allow us to supplement the state-level data and see precisely where African Americans had a possible chance to influence electoral outcomes in their communities. And these data show in place after place that in every census taken the male population outnumbered the female population, which is quite important because, except in Virginia and New Jersey, only male voters held the legal right to suffrage.
before their indentured servitude was to be completed—the census of 1624 revealed that they had grown from the original twenty to twenty-three and that they had been dispersed to six of the nineteen settlements. Although ten were still located within the Jamestown area (renamed James City and James City Neck of Land), the next largest concentration of this founding population was in Piersey’s Hund, where some seven of them were living. Moreover, females nearly matched males in number, and overall they constituted about 1% of the total population in Virginia. Finally, these rare demographic data precede the legal change in status of these indentured servants to Free-Men-andWomen-of-Color, allowing their acquisition of property, which would in turn allow them to become “stakeholders” in society and thereby voters.
Virginia
Thirteen years after Jamestown’s founding, the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620 began English settlement in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, there were no censuses until 1754 and 1764. In the initial census, which is shown in Table 3.11 (p. 62),
Table 3.10 lists the specific locations of the twenty African Americans who arrived in the recently established colony of Jamestown in 1619. Five years after they arrived—two years
Massachusetts
Table 3.10 Settlement-Level Demography for Virginia, Census of 1624 African Americans Whites Settlement
Males
Males Females
Number
Females
Percent of Total Population
Number
Percent of Total Population
Total Population
Basses Choyse
16
3
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
19
Chaplain Choice and Truelove’s Co.
13
4
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
17
Charles City Neck of Land
25
19
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
44
Colledge Island
20
2
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
22
Eastern Shore
44
7
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
51
Elizabeth City
198
59
2
0.8%
1
0.4%
260
78
20
1
1.0%
0
0.0%
99
Hog Island
40
13
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
53
James City
122
53
3
1.6%
6
3.3%
184
James City Neck of Land
126
19
1
0.7%
0
0.0%
146
Jordan’s Journey
36
19
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
55
Martin’s Hund
20
7
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
27
Mulbury Island
25
5
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
30
Newportes Newes
20
0
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
20
Pasheayghs
35
8
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
43
Piersey’s Hund
40
9
4
7.1%
3
5.4%
56
The Maine
30
6
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
36
W. and Sherley Hund
44
16
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
60
8
0
1
10.0%
1
10.0%
10
940
269
12
1.0%
11
0.9%
1,232
Elizabeth City beyond Hampton Road
Wariscoyack Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 144. Calculations by the authors.
62
Chapter 3
Table 3.11 County-Level Demography of Slaves in Massachusetts, Census of 1754 African American Slaves Males County
Number
Females
Percent of Total Slave Population
Number
Unspecified Gender
Percent of Total Slave Population
Number
Percent of Total Slave Population
Total Slave Population
Barnstable
36
47.4%
30
39.5%
10
13.2%
76
Bristol
39
32.0%
22
18.0%
61
50.0%
122
Dukes
3
42.9%
4
57.1%
0
0.0%
7
Essex
178
40.5%
122
27.8%
139
31.7%
439
Hamphire
56
75.7%
18
24.3%
0
0.0%
74
Middlesex
210
58.2%
123
34.1%
28
7.8%
361
Nantucket
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
0
0.0%
0
Plymouth
63
50.8%
49
39.5%
12
9.7%
124
798
62.6%
424
33.3%
52
4.1%
1,274
Worcester
47
53.4%
22
25.0%
19
21.6%
88
York
75
51.0%
41
27.9%
31
21.1%
147
1,505
55.5%
855
31.5%
352
13.0%
2,712
Suffolk
Totals
Source: Adapted from A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 156–157. Calculations by the authors.
we see the African American slave population broken down by gender. In this colony, the African American slave population includes 55.5% identified as male and 31.5% identified as female (the remaining 13.0% are not identified by gender). This population resided in ten of the eleven counties in the colony. We can infer from this census data where the Free-Men-of-Color who had the right to vote possibly resided. Extant records tell us that Suffolk County had some. As shown by Table 3.12, with the publication of the second census in this colony ten years later, even greater demographic information is provided, showing that the African American population had grown from 2,712 to 4,891 and that the male population still outnumbered the female population. In addition, Suffolk still had the largest population, followed by Middlesex, Essex, and Plymouth. Also, in this census one finds an African American population in every one of the reported eleven counties. Appended to Table 3.12 is the demographic data on the territory of Maine, which at this time was a part of Massachusetts. African Americans made up about 1.6% of Maine’s population, and they were to be found in all three of its counties. Males slightly outnumbered females, and the largest population was in York County. However, the small size of this population suggests that they would have had very limited electoral influence in this period if they, in fact, voted.
Connecticut Connecticut issued its first census in 1756. African Americans composed 2.3% of the total population and were found in all of the six counties. Table 3.13 tells us that two counties, Fairfield and New London, had the largest percentage of African Americans with 3.5%; while the Hartford county percentage of
African Americans matched the state mean. Free-Men-of-Color initially had the legal right to vote in this colony. So some portion of the census population, qualified on the basis of property ownership, had this right.
New Hampshire The other New England colony to produce a census in the Colonial Era was New Hampshire. Their census appeared in 1773 on the eve of the Revolutionary period. As shown in Table 3.14 (p. 64), the African American population in this colony was just less than 1.0%. Of this population, males slightly outnumbered females, and they were located in all of the five counties in the state, with more than half of the total population in Rockingham County. However, they were not large enough overall in population size to have effectuated any kind of influence upon electoral politics.
Rhode Island Finally, there is the colony of Rhode Island, which produced three censuses during the Colonial period, in 1708, 1748, and 1755. Table 3.15 (p. 64), which provides the 1708 demographic data by township rather than by county, is quite similar to other area colonies, like New Hampshire and Connecticut, in that the African American population was less than 6% of the total and was located in all nine of the townships in this colony. Only the townships of Jamestown and Newport had a sizable presence. In Rhode Island, Free-Men-of-Color had the right to vote. Forty years later in the second census, as indicated in Table 3.16 (p. 64), the African American population had grown from 426 to 2,082, and from 5.9% to 6.6% of the total population. As the colony increased in population so did the number of
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 63 Table 3.12 County-Level Demography of Massachusetts, Census of 1764 African American Populationb White Electorate
Males
a
County Barnstable Berks
Males
Females
2,970
3,250
Number
Females
Percent of Total Population
135
1.1%
Number
Percent of Total Population
96
0.8%
Total Population 12,464
772
676
50
1.5%
38
1.2%
3,250
Bristol
4,333
4,768
165
0.9%
128
0.7%
18,076
Dukes
618
660
25
0.9%
21
0.8%
2,719
Essex
10,727
12,664
624
1.4%
446
1.0%
43,751
Hampshire
4,363
4,407
121
0.7%
73
0.4%
17,245
Middlesex
8,218
9,196
485
1.4%
375
1.1%
33,732
Nantucket
904
882
24
0.7%
20
0.6%
3,526
Plymouth
5,305
6,028
243
1.1%
219
1.0%
22,256
Suffolk
8,054
9,307
814
2.2%
537
1.5%
36,410
Worcester Massachusetts Subtotals
7,488
7,663
138
0.5%
114
0.4%
30,412
53,752
59,501
2,824
1.3%
2,067
0.9%
223,841
Counties of the Maine Territory of Massachusetts, later counties of the separated state of Maine Cumberland Lincoln York Maine Subtotals Totals
1,898
1,718
55
0.7%
40
0.5%
878
847
17
0.5%
7
0.2%
7,474 3,644
2,562
2,839
120
1.1%
105
1.0%
10,739
5,338
5,404
192
0.9%
152
0.7%
21,857
59,090
64,905
3,016
1.2%
2,219
0.9%
245,698
Source: Adapted from A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 158–162. Calculations by the authors. a
Electorate as defined by persons of age 16 years and older.
b
Data source does not stratify enumerated African Americans by voting age.
Table 3.13 County-Level Demography of Connecticut, Census of 1756
Whites
County
Number
African Americans
Number
Percent of Total Population
Total Population
Fairfield
19,849
711
3.5%
20,560
Hartford
35,714
854
2.3%
36,568
Litchfield
11,773
54
0.5%
11,827
New Haven
17,955
226
1.2%
18,181
New London
22,015
829
3.5%
23,461
19,670
345
1.7%
20,015
126,976
3,019
2.3%
130,612
Windham Totals
Source: Adapted from A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), p. 164. Calculations by the authors. a
Total population includes 617 Indians.
townships, moving from nine to twenty four. In 1748, African Americans were located in each and every one of the townships, with the largest number being in South Kingstown and the second largest in Providence. However, the highest percentage (26.2%) resided in Jamestown. In point of fact, the percentage
of African Americans stood above the overall colony population proportion in ten of the twenty-four townships. Clearly, in two townships, Jamestown and South Kingstown, they had enough size to influence township elections. When Rhode Island took its third census seven years later in 1755, shown in Table 3.17 (p. 65), the adult African American population had become larger than the previous reported total, which was undistinguished by age. Adult males outnumbered adult females, and together their percentage of the total adult population was slightly less than in 1748, dropping from 6.6% to 6.3% of the total. The number of townships had grown by one, from twenty-four to twenty-five, and African Americans resided in all of them. There was one exception for females: none lived in the Gloucester township. However, the most discernible change was in the possible electoral impact of African Americans within the townships. Two more townships now had a sizable enough percentage to exert some electoral power, Charlestown and New Shoreham, along with the townships of Jamestown and South Kingstown in the previous census. Overall, the censuses in the New England colonies tell us that the African American populations there were quite small, but that within some of these colonies at the county and township levels there were locations where electoral influence could have been possible. This reality was nearly impossible to see from reviewing only the state-level data.
64
Chapter 3
Table 3.14 County-Level Demography of New Hampshire, Census of 1773 White Population Males Females County Cheshire Grafton Hillsborough Rockingham Strafford Totals
Number 5,018 1,974 6,978 17,273 5,496 36,739
African American Slaves Males
Number 4,466 1,563 6,459 17,968 5,228 35,684
Females
Percent of Total Population 0.1% 0.3% 0.3% 0.7% 0.6% 0.5%
Number 7 9 39 260 64 379
Percent of Total Population 0.0% 0.3% 0.3% 0.6% 0.4% 0.4%
Number 2 11 38 206 38 295
Total Population 9,493 3,557 13,514 35,707 10,826 73,097
Source: Adapted from A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 150–151. Calculations by the authors.
Table 3.15 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1708 Whites Town Greenwich Jamestown Kingstown New Shoreham Newport Portsmouth Providence Warwick Westerly Totals
Freemen 40 33 200 38 190 98 241 80 95 1,015
Militiaa 65 28 282 47 358 104 283 95 100 1,362
Servants 3 9 0 0 20 8 6 4 5 55
African Americans Percent of Total Servants Population 6 2.5% 32 15.5% 85 7.1% 6 2.9% 220 10.0% 40 6.4% 7 0.5% 10 2.1% 20 3.5% 426 5.9%
Total Population 240 206 1,200 208 2,203 628 1,446 480 570 7,181
Source: Adapted from A Century of Population Growth From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), p. 162. Calculations by the authors. a
All freemen within the colony, from age 16 to 60, were also members of the militia.
Table 3.16 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1748–1749 Whites
African Americans
Whites
Town
Number
Bristol
928
128
12.0%
1,069
Providence
Charlestown
641
58
5.8%
1,002
Richmond
Coventry
769
16
2.0%
792
Scituate
Cumberland
802
4
0.5%
806
Exeter
1,103
63
5.4%
1,174
Gloucester
1,194
8
0.7%
Greenwich
956
61
Jamestown
284
110
Little Compton
Number
Percent of Total Population
Total Population
Town
Number 3,177
African Americans Number
Percent of Total Population
225
6.5%
Total Population 3,452
500
5
1.0%
508
1,210
16
1.3%
1,232
Smithfield
400
30
6.7%
450
1,202
South Kingstown
1,405
380
19.2%
1,978
5.8%
1,044
Tiverton
842
99
9.5%
1,040
26.2%
420
Warren
1,004
62
5.4%
1,152
Middletown
586
76
11.2%
680
New Shoreham
260
20
6.7%
300
Newport
5,335
110
2.0%
5,513
North Kingstown
1,665
184
9.5%
1,935
Portsmouth
807
134
13.5%
992
Warwick West Greenwich Westerly Totals
600
50
7.4%
680
1,513
176
9.9%
1,782
757
8
1.0%
766
1,701
59
3.3%
1,809
28,439
2,082
6.6%
31,778
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 66. Calculations by the authors.
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 65 Table 3.17 Town-Level Demography of Rhode Island, Census of 1755 White Electoratea
Males
Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
Male-Only Electorate
Total Electorateb
Total Population
Town
Males
Bristol
210
252
44
17.3%
8.1%
35
6.5%
254
541
1,100
Charlestown
171
187
100
36.9%
17.5%
112
19.6%
271
570
1,130
Coventry
298
232
4
1.3%
0.7%
2
0.4%
302
536
1,178
Cranston
375
354
21
5.3%
2.7%
22
2.8%
396
772
1,460
Cumberland
230
254
4
1.7%
0.8%
2
0.4%
234
490
1,083
East Greenwich
319
238
33
9.4%
5.3%
33
5.3%
352
623
1,167
Exeter
347
236
16
4.4%
2.6%
20
3.2%
363
619
1,404
Gloucester
332
327
4
1.2%
0.6%
0
0.0%
336
663
1,511
Jamestown
Females
African American Electoratea
86
100
42
32.8%
15.6%
41
15.2%
128
269
517
Little Compton
244
342
28
10.3%
4.3%
43
6.5%
272
657
1,272
Middletown
153
206
29
15.9%
7.0%
26
6.3%
182
414
778
83
77
29
25.9%
12.6%
41
17.8%
112
230
378
New Shoreham Newport
1,696
1,633
400
19.1%
9.8%
341
8.4%
2,096
4,070
6,753
North Kingstown
544
465
70
11.4%
6.0%
87
7.5%
614
1,166
2,109
Portsmouth
243
228
51
17.3%
8.8%
60
10.3%
294
582
1,363
Providence
747
741
72
8.8%
4.4%
75
4.6%
819
1,635
3,159
Richmond
199
195
9
4.3%
2.2%
5
1.2%
208
408
829
Scituate
392
403
4
1.0%
0.5%
4
0.5%
396
803
1,813
Smithfield
448
454
16
3.4%
1.7%
17
1.8%
464
935
1,921
South Kingstown
366
321
137
27.2%
14.7%
109
11.7%
503
933
1,913
Tivertown
277
217
44
13.7%
7.3%
67
11.1%
321
605
1,325
Warren
193
217
26
11.9%
5.7%
23
5.0%
219
459
925
Warwick
426
422
48
10.1%
5.0%
62
6.5%
474
958
1,911
West Greenwich
275
292
12
4.2%
2.0%
10
1.7%
287
589
1,246
Westerly
523
551
34
6.1%
3.0%
28
2.5%
557
1,136
2,291
9,177
8,944
1,277
12.2%
6.2%
1,265
6.1%
10,454
20,663
40,536
Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 67. Calculations by the authors. a
Electorate is defined as the segment in the data source consisting of “adult” persons.
b
The total electorate is the sum of “adult” persons among white and African American populations.
New Jersey New Jersey, which permitted both Free-Men-and-Women-ofColor to vote, conducted three censuses: in 1726, 1738, and 1745. As shown in Table 3.18 (p. 66), in 1726 the African American population sixteen years of age or older was 4.5% of the colony’s total population and had a presence in all ten counties, with males outnumbering females. Though this presence exceeded the average proportion for the colony in only three counties, seemingly only in one county, Bergen, could African Americans have had some electoral influence.
By the time of the second census in 1738, as shown in Table 3.19 (p. 66), the African American population had grown from 1,502 to 2,357 for an increase of 855 individuals. Moreover, the adult African American population as a percentage of total state population increased slightly from 4.5% to 5.0%. Along with this increase males still outnumbered females, while this population was distributed among all ten counties. As for potential electoral influence, Bergen County again seems to have offered the best chance, with Somerset County as a close second. Elsewhere in the colony, the demographic data suggest no other substantial potential.
66
Chapter 3
Table 3.18 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1726 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
Percent of Total Electorate
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
509
173
12.6%
121
8.8%
1,372
2,673
1,080
983
86
3.9%
63
2.8%
2,212
4,129
209
156
8
2.1%
5
1.3%
378
668
Essex
992
1,021
92
4.2%
78
3.6%
2,183
4,230
Gloucester
608
462
32
2.8%
21
1.9%
1,123
3,229
Hunterdon
892
743
43
2.5%
45
2.6%
1,723
3,377
County
Males
Bergen
569
Burlington Cape May
Females
Total Electorateb
Total Population
Middlesex
953
878
90
4.5%
73
3.7%
1,994
4,009
Monmouth
1,234
1,061
170
6.7%
90
3.5%
2,555
4,879
Salem
1,060
861
52
2.6%
38
1.9%
2,011
3,977
582
502
126
9.6%
96
7.4%
1,306
2,271
8,179
7,176
872
5.2%
630
3.7%
16,857
33,442
Somerset Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 109. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons 16 years of age and older.
b
The total electorate consists of the white and African American electorates, each of persons 16 years of age and older.
Table 3.19 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1738 White Electoratea County Bergen Burlington Cape May
Males
Females
African American Electoratea Males
Percent of Total Electorate
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
Total Electorateb
Total Population
939
822
256
11.5%
203
9.1%
2,220
4,095
1,487
1,222
134
4.6%
87
3.0%
2,930
5,238
261
219
12
2.4%
10
2.0%
502
1,004
1,118
1,720
114
3.7%
114
3.7%
3,066
7,019
Gloucester
930
757
42
2.4%
24
1.4%
1,753
3,267
Hunterdon
1,618
1,230
75
2.5%
53
1.8%
2,976
5,507
Middlesex
1,134
1,085
181
7.2%
124
4.9%
2,524
4,764
Monmouth
1,508
1,339
233
7.2%
152
4.7%
3,232
6,086
Salem
1,669
1,391
57
1.8%
56
1.8%
3,173
5,884
967
940
255
10.9%
175
7.5%
2,337
4,505
11,631
10,725
1,359
5.5%
998
4.0%
24,713
47,369
Essex
Somerset Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 110. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons 16 years of age and older.
b
Total electorate = white electorate + African American electorate.
In 1745, seven years after the second census, the colony produced its third census of the Colonial Era. Table 3.20 indicates further growth in the African American population, rising from 2,357 to 4,606 for an increase of 2,249, almost doubling over the previous census. This increase was accompanied by a rise in the percentage of total population
from 5.0% to 7.5%. Once again, males outnumbered females, but both could potentially vote in this colony. Note that unlike in previous censuses the census of 1745 did not stratify the African American population by age. The place with the most electoral influence for African Americans was, once again, Bergen County, followed by possibly Middlesex, Somerset, and Monmouth for
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 67 Table 3.20 County-Level Demography of New Jersey, Census of 1745 White Electoratea
African American Populationb
County
Males
Females
Males
Bergen
721
590
379
12.6%
237
7.9%
3,006
Burlington
1,786
1,605
233
3.4%
197
2.9%
6,803
Cape May
306
272
30
2.5%
22
1.9%
1,188
1,694
1,649
244
3.5%
201
2.9%
6,988
Essex
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Total Population
Females
Total Population
Gloucester
913
797
121
3.5%
81
2.3%
3,506
Hunterdon
2,302
2,117
244
2.7%
216
2.4%
9,151
Middlesex
1,728
1,659
483
6.3%
396
5.2%
7,612
Monmouth
2,071
1,783
513
5.9%
386
4.5%
8,627
Morris
1,109
957
57
1.3%
36
0.8%
4,436
Salem
1,716
1,603
90
1.3%
97
1.4%
6,847
740
672
194
6.0%
149
4.6%
3,239
15,086
13,704
2,588
4.2%
2,018
3.3%
61,403
Somerset Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 111. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons of age 16 years and older.
b
The data source does not stratify enumerated African Americans by age.
contests involving several seekers for the same office. Thus, over three different time periods it appears that the electoral influence of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color in New Jersey was slowly growing.
Table 3.21 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1704 White Electoratea
Maryland Maryland conducted four different colonial censuses, in 1704, 1710, 1712, and 1755. Starting with the 1704 census, as shown in Table 3.21, slaves composed 12.8% of total population and they resided in all eleven counties of the colony. Four of the eleven counties had higher percentages of African Americans than the colony mean; in Calvert County, African Americans exceeded a quarter of its total population. Six years later, in 1710, as shown in Table 3.22 (p. 68), the African American population had grown from 12.8% to 18.6% of the colony total. African Americans also had a greater presence in Prince George’s County, at 32.5% of the county population, followed by Anne Arundel with 32.0%, Calvert with 29.0%, and Charles with 18.6%. These four of the twelve Maryland counties had proportions of African American residents equal to or higher than the colony as a whole. This expansion of the African American population continued on to the next census, which occurred two years later in 1712. Table 3.23 (p. 68) indicates that the total population of African Americans rose from 7,945 to 8,408, for an additional 463 individuals in two years, but that the African American percentage of the total population actually decreased, from 18.6% to 18.2%, indicating that the white population was also growing rapidly. By 1712 the proportion of African Americans in Calvert
County
Masters
Free Men
Slavesb
Percent Free of Total Total Women Number Population Population
Anne Arundel
765
503
1,058
672
14.7%
4,561
Baltimore
364
235
418
204
10.6%
1,927
Calvert
309
619
560
938
26.0%
3,611
Cecil
407
430
489
198
8.5%
2,335
Charles
408
390
485
578
19.3%
2,989
Dorchester
305
418
512
199
8.6%
2,312
Kent
264
393
413
159
8.4%
1,891
Prince George’s
416
464
530
436
14.0%
3,104
Somerset
804
642
1,167
305
6.9%
4,437
St. Mary’s
418
938
617
326
9.3%
3,515
Talbot
712
822
914
460
10.9%
4,230
Totals
5,172
5,854
7,163
4,475
12.8%
34,912
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 128. Calculations by the authors. The electorate is described by the data source as consisting of masters and “free” men and women. a
The data source does not stratify the enumerated slave population by race or gender. b
68
Chapter 3
Table 3.22 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1710 White Electoratea
County Anne Arundel
Masters and Taxable Men
Women
Table 3.23 County-Level Demography of Maryland, Census of 1712
African Americansb
Number
Percent of Total Population
White Electoratea Total Population
County
Masters and Taxable Men
African Americansb
Women
Number
Percent of Total Population
Total Population
1,559
31.2%
5,003
1,014
793
1,528
32.0%
4,778
Anne Arundel
985
885
Baltimore
733
558
438
15.5%
2,827
Baltimore
785
572
452
15.5%
2,923
Calvert
708
560
934
29.0%
3,216
Calvert
644
597
1,179
33.7%
3,500
Cecil
497
406
197
10.1%
1,956
Cecil
504
435
285
13.6%
2,097
Charles
951
641
638
18.6%
3,429
Charles
993
783
724
18.1%
4,007
Dorchester
499
430
343
15.7%
2,181
Dorchester
759
747
387
11.1%
3,475
Kent
974
753
479
17.4%
2,753
Kent
830
575
485
16.8%
2,886
Prince George’s
845
637
1,297
32.5%
3,994
Prince George’s
790
600
1,202
31.7%
3,790
Queen Anne’s
808
644
374
12.2%
3,067
Queen Anne’s
1,011
843
550
14.3%
3,850
Somerset
1,871
1,194
579
9.2%
6,314
Somerset
1,616
1,368
581
9.1%
6,352
St. Mary’s
1,088
827
668
16.2%
4,121
St. Mary’s
998
812
512
12.5%
4,090
Talbot
1,103
851
470
11.4%
4,105
Talbot
1,114
864
492
11.8%
4,178
Totals
11,091
8,294
7,945
18.6%
42,741
Totals
11,029
9,081
8,408
18.2%
46,151
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 128–129. Calculations by the authors.
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 129. Calculations by the authors.
a
The electorate is defined as the population excluding children.
a
The electorate is defined as the population excluding children.
b
The data source does not stratify enumerated African Americans by age.
b
The data source does not stratify enumerated African Americans by age.
(33.7%), Prince George’s (31.7%), and Anne Arundel (31.2%) counties far exceeded that of the other counties; in this census only these three counties had a higher percentage of African Americans than the colony as a whole. The final Maryland census in the Colonial Era appeared in 1755 and is shown in Table 3.24. This census broke down the African American population by gender to reveal another instance of males outnumbering females. This adult population is distinguished as taxable, including both free African Americans and slaves, and in number is more than twice that reported for all African American adults in the previous census forty-three years earlier. Note that, besides their average distribution for all counties, African American male slaves ranged from a high of 11.4% of a total county population to a low 3.2% of another. Of those counties at the high end, Anne Arundel and Prince George’s County had 11.4% and 11.3%, respectively; Calvert and Charles counties had 9.6% and 9.5%, respectively; and Talbot had 8.4%. Thus, slave African American males composed a significant portion of the population in five of the fourteen Maryland counties, while the free African American population was quite small in all counties.
New York New York, in the Middle Atlantic region, conducted nine censuses from 1703 to 1771. It gave to Free-Men-of-Color the legal right to suffrage, and the historical record includes
evidence that qualified Free-Men-of-Color did vote in state and county elections.15 Figure 3.6 visually presents the percentages of the total African American population at each census along with the component percentages of males and females. In this colony the total African American population peaked in 1737 but then began a steady decline, ending up very close to the level in the initial census of 1703. These fluctuations in the total African American population are repeated at the gender levels. However, there is one consistency: except in 1703, males always outnumbered females. The New York counties with the largest African American populations included New York, Kings, Richmond, and Queens, and, occasionally, Ulster. Falling just below the levels in these counties was Albany, where African Americans made up about 10% of the population for eight of the nine censuses (Albany was not listed in the census for 1746). In each of these counties, Free-Men-of-Color composed a large enough proportion of the population to have possibly influenced electoral contests at the local and county levels. Tables 3.25 through 3.33 (pp. 70–74) show that in the Colonial period, the colony of New York conducted some nine censuses. When these nine censuses are combined, the mean number of counties in the colony stood at 9.9, ranging from nine counties at the time of the 1703 census to a high of twelve counties at the census of 1771. And in these counties over these nine censuses we found that the population range for the
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 69 Table 3.24 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1712 Free African Americans White Men
County
Men
Percent of Total Population
African American Slaves
Women
Percent of Total Population
Men
Percent of Total Population
Women
Percent of Total Population
Taxable Populationa
Total Population
Anne Arundel
2,156
24
0.2%
26
0.2%
1,497
11.4%
1,071
8.1%
4,774
13,150
Baltimore
3,697
38
0.2%
23
0.1%
1,169
6.8%
849
4.9%
5,776
17,238
733
24
0.4%
9
0.2%
550
9.6%
523
9.2%
1,839
5,715
Calvert Cecil
1,782
2
0.0%
14
0.2%
406
5.3%
302
3.9%
2,506
7,731
Charles
2,307
63
0.5%
37
0.3%
1,244
9.5%
983
7.5%
4,634
13,056
Dorset
2,129
16
0.1%
10
0.1%
633
5.4%
536
4.6%
3,324
11,753
Frederick
3,085
68
0.5%
30
0.2%
447
3.2%
338
2.4%
3,968
13,969
Kent
1,901
18
0.2%
18
0.2%
698
7.4%
532
5.6%
3,167
9,443
Prince George’s
1,843
20
0.2%
24
0.2%
1,315
11.3%
194
1.7%
3,396
11,616
Queen Anne’s
2,316
26
0.2%
29
0.3%
676
6.0%
604
5.4%
3,651
11,240
Somerset
1,380
27
0.3%
19
0.2%
652
7.5%
586
6.7%
2,664
8,682
St. Mary’s
1,784
32
0.3%
22
0.2%
860
7.6%
788
7.0%
3,486
11,254
Talbot
1,542
36
0.4%
21
0.2%
719
8.4%
658
7.7%
2,976
8,533
Worcester
1,814
32
0.3%
34
0.3%
404
4.0%
366
3.6%
2,650
10,125
28,469
426
0.3%
316
0.2%
11,270
7.3%
8,330
5.4%
48,811
153,505
Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 125–126. Calculations by the authors. a
The taxable population includes persons of age 16 years and older. Taxable population = white men + free African American men and women + African American slave men and women.
Figure 3.6 African Americans as Percentage of Total Population in New York, 1703–1773
Percent of Total Population
12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%
1703
1712
1723
1731 1737 1746 Census Year
All African Americans African American women
1749
1756
1771
African American men
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 95–103 and 181. Note: All populations consist of persons of age 16 years or older, except in the years 1723 (“adult”), 1731 (10 years or older), and 1737 (10 years or older).
male African American voters ran from a high of 10.0% in 1723 to a low of 6.8% in 1771. The mean percentage level during these nine censuses is 8.5% while the median is 8.6%. New York was one of few colonies in this period to undertake censuses of its African American populations by age and gender, and in ways comparable to the same stratifications of its white populations. The tables of the New York census series show numbers of African American men and women that reveal their shares of “voting-age electorates” and electorates based exclusively on male membership. Figures 3.7 and 3.8 (p. 74) summarize these electoral statistics, showing that African American men and women of voting age reached their largest proportion of the populations that included similarly aged white men and women in the census of 1723. This zenith of proportions among the censuses is observed in the same year for African American men with their share of the maleonly electorate that includes white men. Of course, the actual electorates of the time were restricted to property-owning adult white males that excluded not only African Americans—men and women—but white women as well.
North Carolina estimated Free-Men-of-Color voters ran from a low of 707 voters in 1703 to a high of 6,220 voters in the last colony census in 1771. The mean is 3,000 Free-Men-of-Color voters and the median is 2,932 such voters. Finally, at the percentage level the range of
Finally, North Carolina is the one southern state besides Virginia where some demographic census data were kept and are available in the historical record. North Carolina provides six different data points, from the year 1754 to 1767. As in New York, North
70
Chapter 3
Table 3.25 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1703 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
County
Males
Albany
510
Kings New York
Females
Percent of MaleOnly Electorate
Number
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Number
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
53
5.1%
2.3%
593
Total Electorate
Total Population
1,031
2,273
385
83
14.0%
8.1%
3.7%
345
304
135
28.1%
15.7%
7.1%
75
8.7%
3.9%
480
859
1,912
813
1,009
102
11.1%
4.6%
2.3%
288
13.0%
6.6%
915
2,212
4,375
Orange
49
40
13
21.0%
11.9%
4.9%
7
6.4%
2.6%
62
109
268
Queens
952
753
117
10.9%
6.0%
2.7%
114
5.9%
2.6%
1,069
1,936
4,392
Richmond
176
140
60
25.4%
14.7%
11.9%
32
7.8%
6.3%
236
408
504
Suffolk
787
756
60
7.1%
3.6%
1.8%
52
3.1%
1.6%
847
1,655
3,346
Ulster
383
305
63
14.1%
8.0%
3.8%
36
4.6%
2.2%
446
787
1,649
Westchester Totals
472
469
74
13.6%
7.0%
3.8%
45
4.2%
2.3%
546
1,060
1,946
4,487
4,161
707
13.6%
7.0%
3.4%
702
7.0%
3.4%
5,194
10,057
20,665
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 95. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons of age 16 to 60 years.
Table 3.26 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1712 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
County
Males
Albany
688 89
Dutchess Kingsb
Females
Number
Percent of Male-Only Electorate
676
155
18.4%
9.4%
4.7%
122
7.4%
3.7%
843
1,641
97
12
11.9%
5.9%
2.7%
7
3.4%
1.6%
101
205
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
New York Orange Richmond
b
Number
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
Total Electorate
Total Population 3,329 445 1,925
1,062
1,268
321
23.2%
10.8%
5.5%
320
10.8%
5.5%
1,383
2,971
5,841
98
91
21
17.6%
9.5%
4.8%
12
5.4%
2.7%
119
222
438
1,279
Suffolk
929
926
116
11.1%
5.7%
2.6%
70
3.4%
1.6%
1,045
2,041
4,413
Ulster
424
406
148
25.9%
14.0%
7.0%
78
7.4%
3.7%
572
1,056
2,120
560
539
127
18.5%
9.8%
4.5%
72
5.5%
2.6%
687
1,298
2,818
3,850
4,003
900
18.9%
9.5%
4.0%
681
9.5%
3.0%
4,750
9,434
22,608
Westchester Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 95. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons of age 16 to 60 years.
b
The source provides no data for the electorates of Kings and Richmond counties.
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 71 Table 3.27 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1723 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Total Electorate
Total Population
Males
Females
Albany
1,512
1,408
307
16.9%
9.0%
4.7%
200
5.8%
3.1%
1,819
3,427
6,501
276
237
22
7.4%
4.0%
2.0%
14
2.6%
1.3%
298
549
1,083
Kings
Number
Percent of Total Electorate
County Dutchess
Number
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
Females
490
476
171
25.9%
13.6%
7.7%
123
9.8%
5.5%
661
1,260
2,218
1,460
1,726
408
21.8%
10.0%
5.6%
476
11.7%
6.6%
1,868
4,070
7,248
Orange
309
245
45
12.7%
7.2%
3.6%
29
4.6%
2.3%
354
628
1,244
Queens
1,568
1,599
393
20.0%
10.2%
5.5%
294
7.6%
4.1%
1,961
3,854
7,191
335
320
101
23.2%
12.3%
6.7%
63
7.7%
4.2%
436
819
1,506
1,441
1,348
357
19.9%
10.2%
5.7%
367
10.4%
5.9%
1,798
3,513
6,241
642
453
227
26.1%
15.7%
7.8%
126
8.7%
4.3%
869
1,448
2,923
Westchester
1,050
951
155
12.9%
6.8%
3.5%
118
5.2%
2.7%
1,205
2,274
4,409
Totals
9,083
8,763
2,186
19.4%
10.0%
5.4%
1,810
10.0%
4.5%
11,269
21,842
40,564
New York
Richmond Suffolk Ulster
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 96. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as “adult” persons, i.e., men and women.
Table 3.28 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1731 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Total Population
Total Electorate
Total Population
Males
Females
Albany
1,212
1,255
568
18.6%
12.7%
6.6%
185
4.1%
2.2%
3,049
4,489
8,573
298
481
59
9.4%
5.2%
3.4%
32
2.8%
1.9%
629
1,142
1,727
268
518
205
24.6%
13.7%
9.5%
146
9.7%
6.8%
834
1,498
2,150
1,024
2,250
599
18.6%
9.8%
6.9%
607
10.0%
7.0%
3,227
6,084
8,622
Kings New York
Number
Percent of Total Electorate
MaleOnly Electorate
County Dutchess
Number
Females
Orange
299
534
85
11.9%
6.6%
4.3%
47
3.6%
2.4%
712
1,293
1,969
Queens
1,139
2,175
476
17.5%
9.1%
6.0%
363
6.9%
4.5%
2,715
5,253
7,995
Richmond
256
571
111
20.8%
9.2%
6.1%
98
8.1%
5.4%
534
1,203
1,817
Suffolk
955
1,130
239
10.0%
6.6%
3.1%
83
2.3%
1.1%
2,383
3,596
7,675
Ulster
515
914
321
24.5%
13.3%
8.6%
196
8.1%
5.3%
1,311
2,421
3,728
Westchester Totals
707
1,701
269
12.5%
6.8%
4.5%
96
2.4%
1.6%
2,148
3,945
6,033
14,610
11,529
2,932
16.7%
9.5%
5.8%
1,853
6.0%
3.7%
17,542
30,924
50,289
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 97. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons over 10 years of age.
72
Chapter 3
Table 3.29 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1737 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
County
Males
Females
Albany
Number
Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Number
Total Electorate
Total Population
1,384
2,995
714
18.2%
9.6%
6.7%
496
6.7%
4.6%
3,923
7,414
10,681
Dutchess
646
860
161
14.6%
8.0%
4.7%
42
2.1%
1.2%
1,101
2,003
3,418
Kings
264
631
210
24.3%
12.6%
8.9%
169
10.2%
7.2%
864
1,664
2,348
New York
1,036
3,568
674
17.2%
8.3%
6.3%
609
7.5%
5.7%
3,927
8,104
10,664
Orange
433
753
125
12.7%
6.8%
4.4%
95
5.2%
3.3%
985
1,833
2,840
Queens
1,656
2,290
460
16.0%
8.3%
5.1%
370
6.7%
4.1%
2,867
5,527
9,059
266
497
132
21.3%
10.7%
7.0%
112
9.1%
5.9%
620
1,229
1,889
1,008
2,353
393
14.6%
7.3%
5.0%
307
5.7%
3.9%
2,690
5,350
7,923
Ulster
601
1,681
378
24.3%
10.8%
7.8%
260
7.4%
5.3%
1,553
3,494
4,870
Westchester
944
1,890
304
12.6%
6.7%
4.5%
254
5.6%
3.8%
2,414
4,558
6,745
17,393
17,518
3,551
17.0%
8.6%
5.9%
2,714
6.6%
4.5%
20,944
41,176
60,437
Richmond Suffolk
Totals
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 98. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as persons over 10 years of age.
Table 3.30 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1746 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Females
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
County
Males
Females
Dutchess
2,256
1,750
186
7.6%
4.3%
2.1%
100
2.3%
1.1%
506
464
199
28.2%
15.1%
8.5%
152
11.5%
2,246
2,897
721
24.3%
11.2%
6.2%
569
8.8%
Kings New York
Number
Number
MaleOnly Electorate
Total Electorate
Total Population
2,442
4,292
8,806
6.5%
705
1,321
2,331
4.9%
2,967
6,433
11,717
Orange
830
721
133
13.8%
7.7%
4.1%
44
2.5%
1.3%
963
1,728
3,268
Queens
2,059
1,914
527
20.4%
10.8%
5.5%
361
7.4%
3.7%
2,586
4,861
9,640
411
414
101
19.7%
9.9%
4.9%
94
9.2%
4.5%
512
1,020
2,073
Suffolk
2,061
2,016
445
17.8%
9.2%
4.8%
310
6.4%
3.3%
2,506
4,832
9,254
Ulster
1,160
1,000
374
24.4%
13.4%
7.1%
264
9.4%
5.0%
1,534
2,798
5,265
Richmond
Westchester Totals
2,393
1,640
207
7.6%
4.3%
2.1%
140
2.3%
1.1%
2,600
4,380
9,235
13,922
12,816
2,893
17.2%
9.1%
4.7%
2,034
6.4%
3.3%
16,815
31,665
61,589
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 99. Calculations by the authors. a
Electorate defined as “women” of unspecified age and males aged 16 years and older.
Carolina gave Free-Men-of-Color the legal right to suffrage, and the historical record includes evidence that qualified Free-Menof-Color did vote in state and county elections.16 Figure 3.9 (p. 75) shows that African Americans accounted for more than a quarter of the colony’s population for most of the period. This proportion peaked in 1756 and then declined by about 6% over the next eleven years.
Tables 3.34 through 3.39 (pp. 75–77) reveal what the six colonial censuses conducted in North Carolina show about African Americans in actual numbers and percentages in each of the counties in the state. Taxable African American males had the right to vote in North Carolina. In New Hanover County the censuses record that throughout the period the taxable African American population made up 75% or more of all taxable
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 73 Table 3.31 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1749 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
Females
Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
Total Electorate
Total Population
County
Males
Females
Albany
2,681
2,087
472
15.0%
8.4%
4.4%
365
6.5%
3.4%
3,153
5,605
10,634
Dutchess
1,980
1,751
176
8.2%
4.4%
2.2%
79
2.0%
1.0%
2,156
3,986
7,882
499
391
265
34.7%
20.3%
11.6%
149
11.4%
6.5%
764
1,304
2,283
2,939
3,268
651
18.1%
8.6%
4.9%
701
9.3%
5.3%
3,590
7,559
13,285
Kings New York
Number
Number
Orange
922
899
111
10.7%
5.5%
2.6%
103
5.1%
2.4%
1,033
2,035
4,234
Queens
1,659
1,778
429
20.5%
10.2%
5.4%
349
8.3%
4.4%
2,088
4,215
7,940
456
434
130
22.2%
11.6%
6.0%
98
8.8%
4.5%
586
1,118
2,154
Suffolk
2,111
1,969
396
15.8%
8.3%
4.2%
293
6.1%
3.1%
2,507
4,769
9,384
Ulster
1,102
979
351
24.2%
13.1%
7.3%
240
9.0%
5.0%
1,453
2,672
4,810
Richmond
Westchester Totals
2,540
2,233
336
11.7%
6.2%
3.1%
279
5.2%
2.6%
2,876
5,388
10,703
16,889
15,789
3,317
16.4%
8.6%
4.5%
2,656
6.9%
3.6%
20,206
38,651
73,309
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 100. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as “women” of unspecified age and males of age 16 years and older.
Table 3.32 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1756 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
Total Electorate
Total Population
Females
Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Total Electorate
County
Males
Females
Albany
4,251
3,846
862
16.9%
9.0%
4.9%
603
6.3%
3.5%
5,113
9,562
17,424
Dutchess
3,076
2,782
323
9.5%
5.1%
2.3%
162
2.6%
1.1%
3,399
6,343
14,157
551
536
235
29.9%
15.5%
8.7%
197
13.0%
7.3%
786
1,519
2,707
New York
2,482
3,667
672
21.3%
8.9%
5.2%
695
9.2%
5.3%
3,154
7,516
13,046
Orange
1,162
998
140
10.8%
5.8%
2.9%
94
3.9%
1.9%
1,302
2,394
4,886
Queens
2,400
2,365
618
20.5%
10.6%
5.7%
470
8.0%
4.4%
3,018
5,853
10,786
518
471
122
19.1%
10.1%
5.7%
101
8.3%
4.7%
640
1,212
2,132
Suffolk
2,362
2,335
337
12.5%
6.4%
3.3%
236
4.5%
2.3%
2,699
5,270
10,290
Ulster
1,843
1,618
486
20.9%
11.3%
6.0%
360
8.4%
4.4%
2,329
4,307
8,105
Westchester
3,947
2,379
495
11.1%
7.0%
3.7%
280
3.9%
2.1%
4,442
7,101
13,257
22,592
20,997
4,290
16.0%
8.4%
4.4%
3,198
6.3%
3.3%
26,882
51,077
96,790
Kings
Richmond
Totals
Number
Number
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 101. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as “women” of unspecified age and males aged 16 years and older.
persons. In Bladen County, African Americans made up nearly half of the taxable population. Thus, we will infer from this data, since property qualifications were necessary to vote and taxes were levied on property, that there is the possibility that FreeMen-of-Color in these two counties voted. Surprisingly, the initial colonial census of 1754 provides a gender breakdown, while the other five censuses in 1755, 1756, 1765, 1766, and 1767 do not. These five latter censuses combined
both male and female African Americans into the same taxable group. Hence, we calculated the black male percentage in the first census at 59% and used that figure to estimate both the number and percentage of African American males in each of the other census years. Summarizing the data in these six tables, the number of counties in colonial North Carolina ranged from a low of twentytwo in the 1754 census to a high of twenty-nine in the 1767 one.
74
Chapter 3
Table 3.33 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1771 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea Males
Females
County
Males
Females
Number
Percent of Male-Only Electorate
Albany
10,958
9,045
1,350
11.0%
6.0%
3.2%
980
4.4%
2.3%
12,308
22,333
42,706
Cumberland
1,061
862
7
0.7%
0.4%
0.2%
2
0.1%
0.1%
1,068
1,932
3,947
Dutchess
5,071
4,839
451
8.2%
4.2%
2.0%
328
3.1%
1.5%
5,522
10,689
22,404
193
151
4
2.0%
1.1%
0.6%
0
0.0%
0.0%
197
348
722
Gloucester Kings
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
Number
Percent of Total Electorate
Percent of Total Population
MaleOnly Electorate
Total Electorate
Total Population
720
680
309
30.0%
15.4%
8.5%
295
14.7%
8.1%
1,029
2,004
3,623
New York
5,363
5,864
932
14.8%
7.0%
4.3%
1,085
8.2%
5.0%
6,295
13,244
21,863
Orange
2,464
2,124
206
7.7%
4.1%
2.0%
174
3.5%
1.7%
2,670
4,968
10,092
Queens
3,033
2,332
782
20.5%
11.7%
7.1%
534
8.0%
4.9%
3,815
6,681
10,980
534
595
174
24.6%
12.1%
6.1%
137
9.5%
4.8%
708
1,440
2,847
Suffolk
3,181
3,106
448
12.3%
6.3%
3.4%
334
4.7%
2.5%
3,629
7,069
13,128
Ulster
3,285
3,275
573
14.9%
7.6%
4.1%
441
5.8%
3.2%
3,858
7,574
13,950
Richmond
Westchester Totals
5,753
5,266
984
14.6%
7.6%
4.5%
887
6.9%
4.1%
6,737
12,890
21,745
41,616
38,139
6,220
13.0%
6.8%
3.7%
5,197
5.7%
3.1%
47,836
91,172
168,007
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 102–103. Calculations by the authors. a
The electorate is defined as “women” of unspecified age and males aged 16 years and older.
20% 18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%
Figure 3.8 African American Men as Percentage of Male Electorate in New York, 1703–1773 25% Percent of Male Electorate
Percent of Total Electorate
Figure 3.7 African Americans as Percentage of Total Electorate in New York, 1703–1773
1703
1712
1723
1731
1737
1746
1749
1756
1771
Census Year All African Americans African American women
20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 1703
1712
1723
1731
1737
1746
1749
1756
1771
Census Year African American men
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 95–103 and 181. Note: All populations consist of persons of age 16 years or older, except in the years 1723 (“adult”), 1731 (10 years or older), and 1737 (10 years or older).
The mean number of counties is 25.3 while the median is 25.5 counties. According to our 59% estimate, the number of taxable African American males—potential voters—ranged from a high of 7,625 in the 1766 census to a low of 4,141 in the 1755 census. The mean for these six censuses stands at 5,805 and the median is 5,766. In terms of percentage of the taxable population in the
African American men Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 95–103 and 181. Note: All populations consist of persons of age 16 years or older, except in the years 1723 (“adult”), 1731 (10 years or older), and 1737 (10 years or older).
colony, African American males ranged from a high of 17.8% in the 1766 colonial census to a low of 11.3% in the 1767 census. The mean percentage is 15.4% while the median is 15.7%. Thus, our estimated data tell us that Free-Men-of-Color had the qualification to vote in some respectable numbers in local and county elections in colonial North Carolina.
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 75 Taxablea African Americans
Figure 3.9 African American Share of Taxable Population in North Carolina, 1754 –1773
Males
Percent of Taxable Population
35% County
30% 25% 20% 15%
500
100
(additions to Beaufort and Anson)
120
40
12,493
4,275
a
1754
1755
1756
1765
1766
1767
Census Year
Males
Taxable Whites
60
6.9%
870
Beaufort
771
567
41.0%
1,383
346
50.6%
Bladen
338
400
Chowanc
1,481
Craven Cumberland
40
4.6%
20
2.3%
870
267
20.4%
218
16.7%
1,306
Currituck
1,220
289
16.9%
200
11.7%
1,709
Duplin
870
468
33.0%
120
17.5%
28.4%
308
18.7%
989 d
637
226
684
Carteret
810
1,876
c
Beaufort
338
Taxable Populationb
810
Bertie
Females
Number
Percenta of Taxable Population
Anson
Anson
Cumberland
24,861
Taxable African Americans
Taxablea Percent Percent White of Taxable of Taxable Taxableb Males Number Population Number Population Population
Craven
11.7%
Table 3.35 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1755
Taxablea African Americans
Chowan
2,911
These are the taxable populations indicated by the source and not intended as calculated totals.
c
c
17.2%
0
The source does not break down the taxable population data for this county.
Table 3.34 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1754
Carteretc
690
c
County
Bladen
13.0%
24
The taxable populations included persons of age 16 years and older.
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 162–167.
Bertie
90
b
Taxable African Americans
County
14.5%
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 162. Calculations by the authors.
5% 0%
Tyrrel
Totals
10%
Females
Taxablea Percent Percent White of Taxable of Taxable Taxableb Males Number Population Number Population Population
934
48.6%
1,923
474
150
24.2%
620
460
168
26.8%
628
684
Edgecom
1,611
924
36.4%
2,535
400
Granville
779
426
35.4%
1,205
1,481
Hyde
237
183
43.6%
1,646
Johnstonc
420 1,425
850
New Hanover
362
1,374
79.1%
1,736
Currituck
470
80
12.7%
70
11.1%
629
Northampton
902
834
48.0%
1,736
Duplin
560
105
16.7%
63
10.0%
628
Onslow
448
247
35.5%
695
1,611
508
20.0%
416
16.4%
2,535
Orange
950
50
5.0%
1,000
1,205
Pasquotank
563
366
39.4%
929
420
Perquimans
Edgecombe Granville
779
Hyde
237
261 100
21.7%
165
23.8%
83
13.7% 19.8%
c
1,176
1,425
Rowan
1,116
54
4.7%
1,160
New Hanover
362
799
46.0%
575
33.1%
1,736
Tyrrel
477
335
46.4%
722
Northampton
902
510
29.4%
324
18.7%
1,736
Totals
11,287
7,018
28.5%
24,607
Onslow
448
151
21.7%
96
13.8%
695
Orange
950
35
3.5%
15
1.5%
1,000
Pasquotank
563
266
28.6%
100
10.8%
929
a
Perquimansc
1,117
b
These are the taxable population numbers that are provided by the source.
c
1,116
30
The source provides only the total taxable population for this county.
d
No data is provided by the source for Cumberland County.
Johnston
c
Rowan
2.6%
24
2.1%
1,170
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 163. Calculations by the authors. Percentages are based on taxable populations reported by the source.
76
Chapter 3
Table 3.36 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1756
Table 3.37 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1765 Taxable African Americans
Taxable African Americans Taxable Whites
County
Number
Percent of Taxable Population
Taxable Populationa
18.3%
1,383
Beaufort
411
470
53.3%
881
1,876
Bertie
636
877
58.0%
1,513
684
Bladen
604
633
51.2%
1,237
400
Brunswick
209
1,106
84.1%
1,315
6.9%
870
Beaufort
771
567
41.0%
338
346
50.6%
Carteret
b
Chowan
b
Craven
989
934
48.6%
1,481 1,923
Carteret
411
931
69.4%
1,342
610
1,017
62.5%
1,627
1,284
1,320
50.7%
2,604
866
366
29.7%
1,232
Cumberland
302
74
19.7%
376
Currituck
470
150
24.2%
620
Craven
Duplin
460
168
26.8%
628
Cumberland
Granville Hyde New Hanover Northampton Onslow Orange
1,091
39.5%
2,765
835
470
36.0%
1,305
Dobbs
1,176
609
34.1%
1,785
424
Duplin
848
130
13.3%
978
148
34.9%
397
24.2%
1,639
Edgecombe
396
1,420
78.2%
1,816
Granville
1,736
Halifaxb
695
Hertford
902
563
Perquimans
b
1,242
834 247
48.0% 35.5%
Pasquotank Rowan
1,674
448
b
2,078
Currituckb
276
Johnston
366
39.4%
1,116
54
4.6%
974
929
38.4%
653
Johnston
984
458
31.8%
1,442
1,476
73.6%
1,176
Northampton
722
Totals
12,069
7,661
29.8%
25,737
b
These are the taxable population numbers that are provided by the source. The percentages of taxable population are calculated based on these numbers rather than the calculated sum of the taxable white population and the taxable African American population. a
1,352 2,005 2,434
Onslow
678
451
39.9%
1,129
Orange
2,825
579
17.0%
3,404
b
Pasquotank
1,106
Perquimansb
1,531
Pitt
750
Rowan
b
The source provides only the total taxable population for this county.
1,567 251
529
46.4%
1,675 2,628
New Hanover
335
41.9%
402
Mecklenberg
477
701
Hyde
1,176
Tyrrel
1,739
b
1,113
796
b
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 163–164. Calculations by the authors.
b
715
Buteb Chowan
Edgecombe
Taxablea Population
131
60
Bladen
Number
584
810
Bertie
County
Percent of Taxable Population
Anson
Anson b
Taxable Whites
429
36.4%
1,179 3,059
Tyrell
538
368
40.6%
906
Totals
15,319
12,303
26.8%
45,912
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 165–166. Calculations by the authors. These are the taxable population numbers that are provided by the source. The percentages of taxable population are calculated based on these numbers rather than the calculated sums of the taxable white and African American populations. a
The source provides only the total taxable population for this county.
b
The African American Electorate in the Colonial Era, 1610–1773 77 Table 3.38 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1766
Table 3.39 County-Level Demography for North Carolina List of Taxables for 1767
Taxable African Americans Taxable Whites
County Ansonb Beaufort
Number
432
476
Percent of Taxable Population
Taxable African Americans Taxablea Population
County
786
Anson
696
173
19.9%
869
908
Beaufort
410
481
54.0%
891
1,745
Bertie
1,262
Bute
Taxablea Population
Bladenb Brunswick
Number
Percent of Taxable Population
52.4%
Bertie
b
Taxable Whites
b
1,829
Bladen
791
716
47.5%
1,507
229
1,177
83.7%
1,406
Brunswick
224
1,085
82.9%
1,309
Bute
1,172
967
45.2%
2,139
1,299
941
42.0%
2,240
Carteret
460
269
36.9%
729
Carteret
470
290
38.2%
760
Chowan
Craven Cumberland Currituck
616
1,082
63.7%
1,698
Chowan
1,391
1,298
48.3%
2,689
Craven
900
387
30.1%
1,287
Cumberland
b
Dobbs Duplin Edgecombe
b
Granville
b
875
Currituck
2,898
28.7%
1,261
1,268
706
35.8%
1,974
1,071
437
29.0%
1,508
906
47.0%
34.7%
1,854
Dobbs
883
359
28.9%
1,242
Duplin
2,066
Edgecom
1,735
Granville
1,022
809
46.6%
b
2,894
Halifax
1,667
Hertford
Johnston
52.4%
362
643
Hertfordb Hyde
1,520
899
b
Halifax
b
1,378
1,211
926
1,653
889
2,260
b
2,806
b
430
286
39.9%
716
1,003
511
33.8%
1,514
Johnson
1,461
Mecklenbergb
Hyde
1,928 1,690
441
282
39.0%
723
1,129
567
33.4%
1,696
Mecklenbergb
New Hanover
507
2,038
New Hanover
511
Northamptonb
2,497
Northampton
2,557
Onslowb
1,192
Onslowb
1,216
Orange
1,531
75.1%
b
3,324
649
16.3%
3,973
Orange
Pasquotank
740
606
45.0%
1,346
Pasquotank
Perquimans
527
1,017
65.9%
1,544
Perquimans
Pitt
798
470
37.1%
1,268
Pitt
3,059
Rowanb
Rowanb
b
2,163 1,492
74.5%
2,003
3,573
729
17.0%
4,300
433
359
45.3%
792
775
1,472 448
36.6%
1,223 3,643
Tyrell
634
386
37.8%
1,020
Tyrell
594
390
39.6%
984
Totals
16,183
12,923
26.6%
48,610
Totals
16,984
11,884
23.3%
51,044
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 165–166. Calculations by the authors.
Source: Adapted from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 166–167. Calculations by the authors.
These are the taxable population numbers that are provided by the source. The percentages of taxable population are calculated based on these numbers rather than the calculated sums of the taxable white and African American populations.
a
a
The source provides only the total taxable population for this county.
b
These are the taxable population numbers that are provided by the source. The percentages of taxable population are calculated based on these numbers rather than the calculated sums of the taxable white and African American populations. The source provides only the total taxable population for this county.
b
78
Chapter 3
Conclusions on the African American Electorate in the Colonial Era While information on African American voters in Colonial America was heretofore sketchy, fragmentary, and scattered, a much better organized and structured portrait of this potential group of voters is now possible. Useful information has been compiled on the categories of African Americans who could vote and in which colonies they could vote. In addition, there is now some idea of the size and scope of those voting populations. Although the census and estimated demographic data are incomplete for many colonies, there is now a starting point to try to recapture lost or strayed data. The extant empirical data that this chapter uncovers and analyzes relieve current and future researchers from relying solely upon the existence of legal suffrage for African Americans in each and every colony to merely speculate about where and when African Americans might have voted in Colonial America. This chapter pinpoints exactly where the potential African American voting populations existed and in some instances the sizes and percentages of those populations. The data in this chapter also provide an empirical foundation upon which scholars can build to reveal the evolution and progression of African American voting behavior early in our nation’s history. No longer will it be necessary for academics and scholars to quickly skip over this period with an apology, stating that African Americans probably did not vote in this epoch of American history. With this data, and taking the variables of population size and population increases into account, it is possible to determine the true effects of efforts in the Revolutionary and Antebellum periods to extend suffrage rights or to deny them.
Notes 1. John Kolp, Gentlemen and Freeholders: Electoral Politics in Colonial Virginia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. ix.
2. For more on this topic see the “Bibliographical Essay,” in Robert Dinkin, Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689–1776 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 263. 3. Walter Dean Burnham, “Printed Sources,” in Jerome Clubb, William Flanigan, and Nancy Zingale (eds.), Analyzing Electoral History: A Guide to the Study of American Voter Behavior (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1981), pp. 39–42; and Michael Dubin, United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860: The Official Results by County and State (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2002), p. ix. 4. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), see Table A.1 Suffrage Requirements: 1776–1790, and Table A.4 Race and Citizenship Requirements for Suffrage: 1790–1855; pp. 340–341 and 348–353. 5. Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972), pp. 21–26, as well as Figures 2 and 3 for the fluctuations over time. For an analysis in one state, New York, see Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 59, 124–126, and 198. 6. John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom, 7th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), p. 56. 7. Ibid., p. 57. 8. Ibid., p. 58. 9. Ibid. 10. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975). See also Evart Greene and Virginia Harrington, American Population before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932). 11. Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. 3–15. 12. Greene and Harrington, p. v. The authors want to thank our developmental editor, David Arthur, for bringing the recently discovered Delaware census data to our attention. Two researchers at the Library of Michigan in Lansing helped us find this fugitive demographic information. 13. Keyssar, p. 5. 14. William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 105, Table 5, note C. 15. See Dixon R. Fox, “The Negro Vote in Old New York,” Political Science Quarterly Vol. 32. (June 1917), pp. 252–275. 16. See Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912). pp. 8–11, 41–42.
CHAPTER 4
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789 The Demography of African Americans in Revolutionary America
80
Table 4.1 Numbers of Censuses in the Thirteen Original States, 1774–1789
81
Table 4.2 Populations by Census or Estimate, 1774–1789
82
Potential African American Voters in Revolutionary America
84
Table 4.3 African American Populations in the Thirteen Original States, 1774–1789
85
Table 4.4 Voting Rights, Population, and Population Change of African Americans in the Thirteen Original States: The Revolutionary Era
86
County-Level Election Data in the Revolutionary Era
87
Table 4.5 Town-Level Demography for Rhode Island, Census of 1774
87
Table 4.6 Town-Level Demography for Rhode Island, Census of 1783
88
Table 4.7 County-Level Demography for Connecticut, Census of 1774
89
Table 4.8 County-Level Demography for Connecticut, Census of 1782
89
Table 4.9 County-Level Demography for New Hampshire, Census of 1775
89
Table 4.10 County-Level Demography for New Hampshire, Census of 1786
90
Table 4.11 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1786
90
Table 4.12 County-Level Demography for Massachusetts and Maine, Census of 1776
91
Table 4.13 County-Level Demography for North Carolina, Incomplete Census of 1786
91
Table 4.14 Local-Level Population Censuses and Enumerations of African Americans during the Period of the American Revolution
92
Conclusions on the African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Period
92
Notes 92
80
A
Chapter 4
s the thirteen colonies transitioned to the original thirteen states, the number of colonies/states that permitted African Americans the legal right to vote declined significantly. Indeed, the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789, ended with a more limited— not less limited—franchise than had previously existed. There was almost no continuity between voting rights in the Colonial Era and the Revolutionary Era. This was in spite of the fact that African Americans bravely fought for the future United States in early skirmishes prior to the Revolutionary War and, eventually, in the war itself. Initially, African Americans were not welcome in the Revolutionary Army, but when Lord Dunmore proclaimed that those African Americans, slave and free, who would fight with the British would be given their freedom after the war, it forced General George Washington and the Continental Congress to draft and recruit African Americans into the Revolutionary Army and Navy.1 Once drafted, recruited, or sent as substitutes for their slavemasters, these people of color fought for all of the idealistic principles found in the Declaration of Independence and for the spirit of Revolution as set forth in the numerous pamphlets and broadsides of the period. Yet in the midst of all of these philosophical explanations of independence and freedom from tyranny, the colonies wrote, then ratified, and approved new state constitutions, several of which replaced the property-based voting rights of the Colonial Era with “white only” clauses as the legal bases for voting rights in the Revolutionary Era. Alexander Keyssar, a leading scholar of this period, wrote: “for many participants, values and principles at the heart of the revolution were difficult to reconcile with the practice of denying voting rights to men simply because they were poor or African American.”2 Nevertheless, this is exactly what the framers of these pioneering state constitutions did. The Articles of Confederation, which provided the legal basis for the national legislature/government (Continental Congress), made no provisions for national voting rights. Each state had one vote in the Continental Congress. Thus, institutions rather than individuals had voting rights at the national level. Individual suffrage rights were left to each of the new thirteen states to decide, as they had done during the Colonial Era. However, when the Continental Congress was considering the Articles of Confederation, the proposed ninth article stated that “the requisitions for the land [military/Army] forces should be apportioned among the several states according to the number of their white inhabitants”3 [emphasis added]. Since only states had representation in the Continental Congress, New Jersey objected to this white only clause because it violated their state constitution, which had embedded the principle of the Revolution that all men were equal. Due to this objection, the white only section was removed from the article.4 On the same day, there was an objection to the fourth article by South Carolina. This article provided “that the free inhabitants of each of these States . . . shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states.”5 This article would, by its wording, convey suffrage rights to Free-Men-ofColor. However, according to historian Emil Olbrich, South Carolina, which had in 1716 disenfranchised Free-Men-of-Color, moved in this Congress “to insert ‘white’ between the words ‘free inhabitants,’ and also to insert after ‘several states’ the words
‘according to the laws of such states respectively for the government of their own free white inhabitants.’”6 “Both these amendments were defeated; eight states voted against them, one state was divided and two states voted for them. Congress therefore was not willing to refuse Negroes the ‘privileges and immunities of free citizens.’”7 The Continental Congress, however, had to rule on the qualifications of electors in organizing the Northwest Territory; in the Ordinance of 1787, no colored discrimination was inserted. This first experiment in democracy saw the Continental Congress keep a color discrimination clause out of its formative document, the Articles of Confederation. And when this Congress had to consider suffrage rights in the Northwest Territory, it was consistent in letting Free-Men-of-Color have suffrage rights like all other free men. In the only overview book on voting in the Revolutionary Era, Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Original Thirteen States, 1776–1789, Robert J. Dinkin wrote: Racial requirements for voting were also being altered at this point. Several states allowed free Negroes to possess the franchise for the first time, though often due to inadvertence, confusion, and haste in constitution-making, rather than to conscious design. In Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New York, free blacks became members of the electorate on the same terms as whites. (Of course, the latter state’s property qualification continued to serve as a barrier to many.) Maryland’s constitution (1776) permitted voting for the lower house without color discrimination, but a statute in 1783 denied the ballot to anyone manumitted after that date. . . . The Massachusetts Constitution approved in 1780 did not specifically give the franchise to persons of color; the lack of any distinction among males in the voting provision was interpreted to mean that such individuals could take part.8 Despite the emergence of a new ideology, based on the Declaration of Independence, that stressed equality as the foundation of American nationalism, a uniform philosophy for dealing with suffrage rights did not emerge. Put differently, state and local leaders enacted the Revolution’s vision and philosophy in varying ways.
The Demography of African Americans in Revolutionary America In 1909 the Census Bureau noted, “In November, 1781, a resolution was introduced in [the Continental] Congress recommending to the several states that they make an enumeration of their white inhabitants pursuant to the ninth article of the Confederation. The Resolution failed to pass and the article was inoperative. Several of the states, however, made an enumeration about that time” independently of a confederated agreement.9 There were eleven official censuses conducted during the fifteen-year period from 1774 to 1789, along with numerous population estimates. These data reveal
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
the size and distribution of the dual (slave and free) African American populations in certain locations. It is also possible to discern the potential voting population of African Americans in each of the thirteen new states. Table 4.1 lists the eleven censuses conducted in this fifteenyear period by the former colonies. Nine were conducted in New England, but only one each in the middle (coastal Atlantic) states (New York) and in the southern states (Virginia, which also completed a population estimate). Despite the fact that a war for independence from England was underway during this period, the number of censuses conducted is comparable to the Colonial Era (see Table 3.1), with only minor differences. Hence, the war, somewhat surprisingly, appears not to have been a disruptive factor. In fact, Rhode Island conducted two more censuses than it had during the Colonial Era, though it was the only state to conduct more. In addition, several states conducted censuses and estimates to determine how many men, both white men and Free-Men-of-Color, could be mustered for the militia and the Continental Army. After the war was over, there was the added imperative for censuses due to the “settlement of the national [war] debt . . . [so that each state could] assume their equitable proportion.”10 Thus, in this manner the Revolutionary War helped to create a greater understanding of the demography of the thirteen original states. Table 4.1 Numbers of Censuses in Thirteen Original States, 1774–1789 Colony / State
Number
Percent of Total
New Hampshire Massachusetts Mainea Rhode Island Connecticut Vermontb
2 1 1 3 2
18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 27.3% 18.2%
New England Colonies/States Subtotal
9
81.8%
New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware
1
9.1%
Middle Colonies/States Subtotal
1
9.1%
Border Colony/State Subtotal
0
0.0%
Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia
1
9.1%
Southern Colonies/States Subtotal
1
9.1%
11
100%
Maryland
Total Censuses of All Colonies/States During the Revolutionary Era
Source: Table “Censuses Prior to 1790,” A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth, 1790–1900 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), p. 4. a
Though Maine was part of Massachusetts, there was also a census of the counties that formed Maine.
b
As part of a census of New York.
81
The state census data from this fifteen-year span lack the same demographic detail concerning the African American population as is available for the Colonial Era. Only one state census from this period (Connecticut in 1774) contained detailed data on African Americans. As a consequence of this extremely limited data, our tabular display is not as robust as those in the Colonial Era. As a result, Table 4.2 (pp. 82–83) covers the censuses for each state as well as the population estimates for other states where no censuses were conducted. Table 4.2 offers a clear portrait of the African American population in the newly created thirteen states. Delaware is the one exception among states emerging from the Revolutionary War Era for which no census data or population estimates exist. It is not clear why Delaware made no count of its population.11
The Three-Fifths Clause and the Slave Population Unique to the Revolutionary Era are the population estimates made by the Constitutional Convention in 1787, during its meeting in Philadelphia to work out the so-called ThreeFifths Clause. Since state representation in the House of Representatives was to be based on population, one of the three major compromises at the Convention was to let slave states count five slaves as equal to three whites, or, put another way, each slave was deemed equivalent to three-fifths of a person. Though the first federal census was not conducted until 1790, the first session of the House of Representatives was to take place in 1789, just after the first national election in 1788. The Convention leaders developed a set of population estimates of slaves so that the number of seats in the first Congress could be worked out for each of the states where large proportions of the population consisted of slaves. Recent examination of these estimates has revealed the following: In the first congressional election in 1788 five states (Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia) gained 14 seats or a bonus of 48%, allowing them to reach near parity in the number of House seats (47–53) with the eight larger northern states. This bonus in numbers increased until 1830 and in percentages until 1860, when the numbers began to decline somewhat. Over the nine (national) censuses and reapportionments of House seats from 1788 until 1860 (the Clause was abolished during the 1860s as a result of the Civil War), the mean or average bonus percentage of seats were 25.12 Since the Three-Fifths Clause allowed the slave states to gain bonus seats in the House of Representatives, there was also an increase in the number of electoral votes for the slave states. Each additional House seat translated to an additional electoral vote for each slave state. “The percentage of additional electoral votes going to the slave states, as a result of the Three-Fifths Clause, ranged from a low of 8 percent in 1792 to a high of 19 percent in most presidential elections between 1788 and 1860 (the
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Table 4.2 Populations by Census or Estimate, 1774–1789 Populations Colony/State
Year
Reference ([footnote]: page)
Enumeration Type
New Hampshire
1775
[1]: 1170.
Census
81,300
80,644
656
Census of 1775.
1775
[3]: 152–153.
Census
81,305
80,649
656
Census of 1775, white population = total population – black population.
1786
[3]: 156.
Census
95,801
95,452
46
Census of 1786. Free inhabitants included African Americans.
1786
[2]: 73.
Census
95,801
95,452
349
“95,452 free inhabitants (whites); 46 slaves (blacks); 303 others (former slaves and black).” Total population = # whites + # blacks.
1786
[1]: 1170.
Census
95,849
95,452
46
1787
[2]: 8, 73.
Population
102,000
102,000
0
1776
[1]: 1170.
Census
290,900
286,139
4,761
Census of 1776.
1776
[2]: 17.
Census
290,900
286,139
4,761
Census of 1776, after deducting 3 counties of Maine.
1776
[2]: 30–40.
Census
338,667
333,418
5,249
Census of 1776.
1776
[1]: 1170.
Census
290,900
286,139
4,761
Census of 1776.
1784
[2]: 18, 46.
Census
357,510
353,133
4,377
Census of 1784, including 3 counties of Maine.
1785
[2]: 18.
Population
335,024
330,836
4,188
Total population = # whites + # blacks.
1786
[3]: 18.
Census
356,642
352,171
4,371
Total population = # whites + # blacks.
1787
[2]: 8, 18.
Population
360,000
360,000
0
1774
[1]: 1171.
Census
59,678
54,435
3,761
Census of 1774.
1774
[3]: 162.
Census
59,607
54,460
3,668
Census of 1174.
1783
[1]: 1171.
Census
51,887
48,556
2,806
Census of 1783.
1783
[2]: 64, 67, 69–70.
Census
51,869
48,538
2,342
Census of 1783.
1787
[2]: 8, 64.
Population
58,000
58,000
0
1774
[3]: 168.
Census
197,842
191,378
6,464
Census of 1774. Total population computed.
1774
[2]: 50, 58–61.
Census
199,169
191,342
6,464
Census of 1774.
1782
[1]: 1169.
Census
209,177
202,904
6,273
Census of 1782.
1782
[2]: 50.
Population
208,840
202,567
6,273
Total population = 202,567 whites + 6,273 “Indians and Negroes.”
1787
[2]: 8, 50.
Population
202,000
202,000
0
1774
[2]: 91.
Population
182,247
161,098
21,149
Estimated from population increases from 1756 to 1771.
1776
[2]: 91.
Population
191,741
169,148
21,193
Estimated based on ratio of population increases from 1771 to 1774.
1786
[1]: 1170.
Census
238,897
219,996
18,889
Census of 1786.
1786
[3]: 183.
Census
238,897
219,996
18,889
Census of 1786.
1786
[2]: 92.
Census
238,897
219,996
18,889
Census of 1786.
1787
[2]: 8, 92.
Population
233,000
233,000
0
1784
[1]: 1170.
Census
149,435
138,934
10,501
Census of 1784.
1784
[2]: 108, 113.
Census
149,435
139,934
10,501
Census of 1784.
1787
[2]: 8, 108.
Population
138,000
138,000
0
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New York
New Jersey
Totala
White
African American
Comments
Census of 1786. Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “or 82,000 white inhabitants.”
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “or 352,000 whites.”
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves.
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves.
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “280,000 souls, … and adding 50,000 for Vt. Livingston to Lafayette, April 24, 1787 … 233,000 population; or 238,000.”
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “or 138,000 to 145,000.”
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
83
Populations Colony/State
Year
Reference ([footnote]: page)
Enumeration Type
Delawareb
1787
[2]: 8.
Population
37,000
37,000
0
Pennsylvania
1774
[2]: 116.
Population
300,000
200,000
100,000
1775
[2]: 116.
Population
302,000
300,000
2,000
1787
[2]: 8, 116.
Population
360,000
360,000
0
1782
[2]: 127.
Population
254,050
170,688
83,362
1782
[1]: 1169.
Census
254,050
170,688
83,362
Census of 1782.
1787
[2]: 8, 127.
Population
218,000
174,000
80,000
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “218,000 population . . . or 174,000 whites, and 80,000 blacks.”
1774
[2]: 141.
Population
500,000
300,000
200,000
“A very rough guess.”
1782
[2]: 141.
Population
567,614
355,916
211,698
Partial census of 1782 and estimates from tithable-topopulation ratios.
1785
[2]: 142.
Taxables or Polls
73,000
55,985
17,015
1787
[2]: 8, 142.
Population
700,000
420,000
280,000
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “420,000 inhabitants, including 280,000 Negroes; or 300,000 whites and 300,000 blacks.”
1788
[2]: 142.
Population
588,000
352,000
236,000
Also “800,000 and over in population: 503,248 whites; 12,880 free colored; and 305,257 slaves.”
1774
[2]: 159.
Taxables or Polls
64,000
54,000
10,000
Taxables, equivalent to Congressional total population estimate of up to 300,000.
1775
[2]: 159.
Militia
30,000
20,000
10,000
Estimated militia.
1786
[2]: 160.
Population
224,000
164,000
60,000
Estimated population.
1787
[2]: 8, 160.
Population
200,000
181,000
60,000
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “or 181,000 whites.”
1774
[2]: 176.
Population
200,000
40,000
160,000
1775
[2]: 176.
Population
174,000
70,000
104,000
1775
[2]: 176.
Population
150,000
60,000
90,000
1785
[2]: 176.
Population
188,000
108,000
80,000
1787
[2]: 8, 176.
Population
150,000
93,000
80,000
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves.
1774
[2]: 182.
Population
100,000
20,000
80,000
White population estimated at one-fifth of total population.
1774
[2]: 182.
Population
32,000
17,000
15,000
1787
[2]: 8, 182.
Population
90,000
70,000
20,000
Maryland
Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina
Georgia
Totala
White
African American
Comments Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves. According to estimate, of total “1/3 are blacks.” According to estimate. Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “or 341,000.”
Estimated tithables, yielding equivalent total population of 448,008.
White population estimated at one-fifth of total population.
Negro population estimated in range from 80,000–100,000.
Estimate of 1787 for 3/5 of slaves; “including 20,000 negroes; or by another estimate, 27,000.”
Sources: [1] “Table Series Z 24–132: Population Censuses Taken in the Colonies and States During the Colonial and Pre-Federal Period: 1624–25 to 1786,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 1169–1171. [2] Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932). [3] A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 149–185. a
The totals come from the source materials, unless indicated by calculation formula in notes.
b
The population estimate for Delaware in 1787 is not based on an available census but rather on varied and partial counts from its counties that were taken in prior years.
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mean over these 19 elections was a 17% bonus). This helped the southern states to elect four of the first five presidents.”13 Seen in this perspective, the votes of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color ironically lacked the power and influence of their non-voting slave brethren. In Table 4.2 the 1787 population estimates for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives for each state are given. With this data, one has a good sense of the number of slaves in the new nation. South Carolina had the largest slave population proportion (53.3%), followed by Virginia (40.0%), Maryland (36.7%), North Carolina (30.0%), and Georgia (22.2%). Eight of the original states reported no slave populations and, therefore, the Three-Fifths Clause did not increase their representation in the House of Representatives. In each of these eight states (Delaware is missing due to the lack of available census or estimated demographical information), the African American populations were quite small compared to the total populations in the five southern states.
States that Tracked Gender as Well as Race Two of the Revolutionary Era states, Connecticut and New York, provided gender and racial breakdowns of their census data for single years of the period; Table 4.3 (p. 85) provides that information. New York permitted Free-Men-of-Color to vote, and for the year preceding the 1787 Constitutional Convention, the African American population stood at 7.9% of the total and there were more males than females. In Connecticut during the first year of the Continental Congress, African Americans made up 2.6% of the population, and males there also outnumbered females. Among all of the original states, Maryland had the largest African American population, accounting for 32.8% of the total population. All of the other states in this group reported African American populations of less than 10% of their total populations. In two states, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, the African American populations declined during the Revolutionary Era, but in Connecticut this population grew, albeit slowly.
Potential African American Voters in Revolutionary America Table 4.4 (p. 86) lists the states and whether they provided or denied suffrage rights to Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color in their original state constitutions. In addition, one state (Maryland) changed its policy during the Revolutionary Era.
States that Banned African American Suffrage Two states, Virginia and South Carolina, banned suffrage rights immediately upon making the transition from colonies to states. Virginia and South Carolina had also banned this right in the Colonial Era; these same two states had large African American populations. Maryland eventually denied suffrage rights to Free-Menof-Color during the Revolutionary Era. At one point, based
on early historical findings by Emil Olbrich, a pioneering student of African American suffrage rights, it was thought that Maryland did not deny suffrage rights in this period. Here is how Olbrich initially wrote about it: “Maryland, which had passed in 1783 and re-enacted in 1796, a law forbidding emancipated slaves to exercise the elective franchise, adopted, by a bill . . . in November 1801, a constitutional amendment . . . that only free white male citizens should be electors. This alteration was confirmed in November 1802”14 and retained in an amendment confirmed in 1810. In its 1776 state constitution, there was no color discrimination. However, a Maryland law of June, 1793, entitled ‘an act to prohibit the bringing [of] slaves into the state,’ provided that slaves might be manumitted under certain conditions, and ‘that no colored person freed thereafter, nor the issue of such should be allowed to vote, or to hold office, or to give evidence against any white, or to enjoy any other right of a freeman than the possession of property and redress at law or equity for injury to person or property.’15 That yet another state law of December 31, 1796, made no mention “of the issue of manumitted slaves” suggests these children of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color could vote.16 Later, a much more carefully researched study, focused entirely on Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color in the state, corrected these earlier factual errors by asserting: “In 1783 a state statute restricted the right to Negroes who were free prior to that year, and in 1810 Negro suffrage was ended completely by a constitutional amendment that limited the franchise to whites.”17 The state legislature had passed a statute in 1801 that restricted suffrage rights to whites only. In the final analysis, Maryland’s legislative behavior toward African American suffrage in this era was typical of several states and, prior to that, several colonies, which continually revisited the question of the African American right to vote. In point of fact, the right to vote was continually debated throughout both eras, and in a state like Maryland action was eventually taken to deny the right to vote. In other places, where it continued, it was still brought up for debate.
States that Allowed African American Suffrage Nine states never denied suffrage rights to African American males in the Revolutionary Era (up to 1789). Comparing Table 4.4 with Table 3.5 for the Colonial Era, there are some noticeable differences in the Revolutionary Era. There were no outright denials during the Colonial Era, but eventually three of the southern colonies came to deny suffrage rights. Two of those three, Virginia and South Carolina, did so when they made the transition from colonies to states. However, North Carolina, seemingly affected by the war and principles of natural rights, allowed Free-Men-of-Color suffrage rights when it became a state. All the other colonies continued the traditions that they had in place in the Colonial Era.
Georgia
254,050
149,435
83,362
10,501
18,889
6,273
5,101
2,806
3,668
488
4,761
46
656
Number
32.8%
7.0%
7.9%
3.0%
2.6%
5.4%
6.2%
1.0%
1.6%
0.0%
0.8%
Percent of Total Population
9,521
2,883
Number
Males
9,368
2,218
Number
Females
20
Voting Ageb
2,630
Number
1.3%
Percent of Total Population
Total
1,577
Number
0.8%
Percent of Total Population
Males
1,053
0.5%
Percent of Total Population
Females
Number
African American Population of Voting Age
African American population includes Negro and mulatto populations.
Age is derived from age strata in source data.
a
b
Source: Adapted from “Table Series Z 24–132: Population Censuses Taken in the Colonies and States During the Colonial and Pre-Federal Period: 1624–25 to 1786,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), pp. 1169–1171. Calculations by the authors.
1782
Maryland
South Carolina
Delaware
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
1784
New Jersey
238,897
209,177
1782
1786
197,842
51,887
1783
1774
59,607
50,493
1784
1774
47,767
1776
307,018
1784
New York
Connecticut
Rhode Island
Maine
290,900
1786
1776
95,849
1775
New Hampshire
Massachusetts
81,300
Year
Colony/State
Total Population
Total
African American Populationa
Table 4.3 African American Populations in the Thirteen Original States, 1774–1789
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Table 4.4 Voting Rights, Population, and Population Change of African Americans in the Thirteen Original States: The Revolutionary Era Voting Rights of Free African Americans
1780 Estimated Totala Population
Percent Total Population Increaseb (1770–1780)
1780 Estimated Negro Population
1780 African American Percent of Total Population
Percent Negro Population Increaseb (1770–1780)
Denied from the Outset
Denied by 1789
Never Denied
New Hampshire
87,802
40.7%
541
0.6%
-17.3%
Massachusetts
268,627
14.2%
4,822
1.8%
1.4%
Rhode Island
52,946
-9.0%
2,671
5.0%
-29.0%
Connecticut
206,701
12.4%
5,885
2.8%
3.3%
New York
210,541
29.2%
21,054
10.0%
10.2%
New Jersey
139,627
18.9%
10,460
7.5%
27.3%
Pennsylvania
327,305
36.3%
7,855
2.4%
36.4%
Delaware
45,385
27.9%
2,996
6.6%
63.2%
Maryland
245,474
21.2%
80,515
32.8%
26.2%
Virginia
538,004
20.4%
220,582
41.0%
17.6%
North Carolina
270,133
37.0%
91,000
33.7%
30.8%
South Carolina
180,000
44.9%
97,000
53.9%
29.0%
Georgia
56,071
139.9%
20,831
37.2%
96.1%
Totals
2
1
10
2,628,616
25.8%
566,212
21.5%
24.0%
Colony
Sources: “Table Series Z 1-19: Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610 to 1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975), p. 1168 and Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 349–353, Table A4. a
Total population = white population + Negro (African American) population;
b
Percent population increase or decrease = (population in 1780 – population in 1770)/population in 1770.
To be sure, extant data reveal that several of the nine states that never denied Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color the right to vote continued to debate the extension and granting of this right but, for one reason or another, permitted suffrage rights to continue. New Jersey, for example, permitted Free-Women-ofColor to vote until February 22, 1807. In the state constitution of 1776, it provided “that all inhabitants of this colony, who had the requisite property, age, and residence qualifications should be entitled to vote.” There is evidence that this clause was interpreted literally because in the historical record there are instances where African American women voted.18 New Jersey is the one locale, other than Virginia until 1699, not to impose gender restrictions that barred African American women from voting.19
“Negro Elections” Historian Emil Olbrich discussed “a peculiar slave custom in colonial Rhode Island and Connecticut” which, he argued, provided “interesting and curious evidence of the African’s appreciation of the elective franchise, even in slavery.”
He wrote: In both colonies the imitative Negroes follow the example of the whites on election day and elected a governor. In Rhode Island, where slaves were still numerous, each town held its own election to which the slaves looked forward with great anxiety and which is said to have been marked by as violent and acrimonious party spirit as among the whites. . . . As the number of slaves diminished, these mock elections became less general and, toward the end of the 18th century, finally disappeared.20 Olbrich described the same situation in Connecticut: In Connecticut, the earliest evidence of the custom is the record that, in 1766, after having held the office ten years, Governor Cuff [a slave] resigned in favor of John Anderson [a slave]. There Negro elections continued into the nineteenth century after the Negroes were freed, and their last governor held office down to within a few years of the civil war.21
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
Olbrich further described these mock elections held by slaves in Connecticut by giving a portrait of the inauguration of these “Negro Governors,” whose only function was ceremonial within the slave community:
87
Table 4.5 Town-Level Demography for Rhode Island, Census of 1774 White Electoratea Town
African American
Female
Total
Barrington
142
162
304
41
6.8%
601
Bristol
272
319
591
114
9.4%
1,209
Charlestown
312
350
662
52
2.9%
1,821
Coventry
474
493
967
20
1.0%
2,023
Cranston
476
517
993
60
3.2%
1,861
Cumberland
400
478
878
17
1.0%
1,756
East Greenwich
416
464
880
69
4.1%
1,663
Exeter
441
478
919
67
3.6%
1,864
Glocester
743
740
1,483
19
0.6%
2,945
Hopkinton
427
477
904
48
2.7%
1,808
Jamestown
110
118
228
131
23.3%
563
Re-enacting the Ordinance of 1787
Johnston
242
254
496
65
6.3%
1,031
Finally, during this period, the newly elected federal government in 1789 re-enacted the Ordinance of 1787 with its impartial suffrage provision. This re-enactment and subsequent ones that provided for “a territorial government,” like those for the Mississippi, Indiana, Orleans (Louisiana), Michigan, and Illinois territories, shifted away from impartiality. Instead, they set the qualification for who could vote at the first election for the general assembly and/or delegates to the constitutional convention and “then left the fixing of permanent suffrage qualifications to the territorial legislature.”23 Thus, on the verge of the creation of new states from the sundry territories, the federal government was against color discrimination in suffrage rights, but, as in some states, this would change in later years.
Little Compton
304
382
686
47
3.8%
1,232
Middletown
210
259
469
64
7.3%
881
New Shoreham
109
121
230
55
9.6%
575
2,100
2,624
4,724
1,246
13.5%
9,209
North Kingstown
538
595
1,133
211
8.5%
2,472
North Providence
193
230
423
31
3.7%
830
Portsmouth
343
400
743
122
8.1%
1,512
Providence
1,219
1,049
2,268
303
7.0%
4,321
Richmond
286
324
610
24
1.9%
1,257
Scituate
909
933
1,842
55
1.5%
3,601
Smithfield
742
769
1,511
51
1.8%
2,888
South Kingstown
550
597
1,147
440
15.5%
2,835
Tiverton
418
438
856
95
4.9%
1,956
Warren
237
255
492
44
4.5%
979
Warwick
569
615
1,184
89
3.8%
2,338
West Greenwich
429
465
894
19
1.1%
1,764
Westerly
421
443
864
69
3.8%
1,812
14,032
15,349
29,381
3,668
6.2%
59,607
On the day of the inauguration of governor of the state, they followed whites to the capital, enjoyed the military parades and the procession to hear the election sermon, elected a governor, inaugurated with great ceremony and with shouting, laughing and singing, listened to an address from their governor, ate a dinner, and then danced until noon of the next day.22 However, there is one thing which sets the Connecticut mock slave elections apart from those in Rhode Island. From our data, we know that in 1818 Connecticut eliminated the right to suffrage for Free-Men-of-Color and restricted the right to only white males. Rhode Island never did this during the Revolutionary Era. Thus, the mock slave elections became the only electoral outlet for Connecticut African Americans until just before the Civil War.
Newport
County-Level Election Data in the Revolutionary Era In this section, we will focus upon those states that produced state censuses and broke the population down to the township or the county level. These data were, in some instances, further broken down by gender and age. Our examination of this data will permit the reader to see not only which states allowed African Americans to vote in the Revolutionary Era but the number of these potential voters who lived in towns and counties. These data have heretofore never been organized and structured so as to permit a county-level analysis.
Totals
Rhode Island Table 4.5 provides this view from twenty-nine towns in Rhode Island in 1774. Three of these towns had doubledigit percentages of African American population, including Jamestown (23.3%), South Kingstown (15.5%), and Newport (13.5%), while twenty-five other towns had the population in single digit percentages, and one, Gloucester (0.6%), had less
Population
Percentc
Total Populationb
Male
Source: A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 162–163. The census enumerates the white population in age stratifications. The electorate is defined here as persons age 16 years and over. a
b
Total population = African Americans + whites + American Indians.
Percent of total population. The census did not stratify the African American population by age. c
88
Chapter 4
than one percent. The capital of the colony and later state, Providence, had 7.0%. Overall, the African American population stood at 6.2%. In the final analysis, only in Newport and South Kingstown did the African American population rise to a level where the potential African American electorate could have influenced the outcome of county and state elections. Nine years later, in 1783, Rhode Island conducted another census, the results of which are shown in Table 4.6. The total African American population had dropped considerably, to only 5.4% of the state’s population. This decrease was noticeable in the towns mentioned previously. Jamestown, which had the largest African American population of all Rhode Island towns in 1774, still had the largest in 1783, but the proportion dropped from 23.3% to 19.9%. Newport also dropped from 13.5% to 10.8%, while South Kingstown increased from 15.5% to 16.9%. Except for the increase in South Kingstown, there was no increase in the potential influence of African Americans upon elections through the rest of Rhode Island.
Table 4.6 Town-Level Demography for Rhode Island, Census of 1783 African Americans Town
Connecticut Table 4.7 shows that in Connecticut, with its six different counties, African Americans comprised 3.1% of the electorate, which included them along with the white population of age 20 years or older. Within the African American population, males outnumbered females. All of the counties in the state had single-digit African American population percentages, with the range running from a low of 1.5% in Litchfield to a high of 4.6% in Fairfield; but even in this highest percentage county, the population numbers were so small that African Americans would have had extremely limited electoral influence. Connecticut took another census eight years later, in 1782, and Table 4.8 summarizes the results. The small African American population in this state declined from 6,464 to 6,273, while its percentage of the total population also dropped slightly from 3.1% to 3.0%. The previous breakdown by gender is no longer present in the latter census. This 1782 census shows a decline in the already small potential influence and impact of African American voters in the electorate.
Total Whites Indians Mulattoes Blacks Percenta Populationb
Barrington
488
0
20
26
8.6%
534
Bristol
954
2
13
63
7.4%
1,032
Charlestown
1,204
280
9
30
2.6%
1,523
Coventry
2,093
2
3
9
0.6%
2,107
Cranston
1,508
9
17
50
4.2%
1,584
Cumberland
1,537
0
2
9
0.7%
1,548
East Greenwich
1,529
10
17
53
4.4%
1,609
Exeter
1,946
18
7
87
4.6%
2,058
Foster
1,756
0
0
7
0.4%
1,763
Gloucester
2,769
0
0
22
0.8%
2,791
Hopkinton
1,677
30
11
17
1.6%
1,735
270
0
0
65
19.4%
335
Jamestown Johnston
928
3
37
28
6.5%
996
Little Compton
1,294
13
0
34
2.5%
1,341
Middletown
646
0
4
29
4.9%
679
Newport
4,914
17
51
549
10.8%
5,531
North Kingstown
2,110
8
22
188
9.0%
2,328
North Providence
676
5
0
17
2.4%
698
Portsmouth
1,266
7
11
67
5.8%
1,351
Providence
4,015
6
33
252
6.6%
4,306
Richmond
1,061
1
15
17
2.9%
1,094
Scituate
1,613
0
19
3
1.3%
1,635
Smithfield
2,158
12
7
40
2.1%
2,217
South Kingstown
2,190
32
38
415
16.9%
2,675
New Hampshire
Tiverton
1,792
21
44
93
7.0%
1,950
In the state of New Hampshire, which allowed suffrage rights to African Americans, two censuses were conducted during the Revolutionary period, one in 1775 and another in 1786, and in each of these censuses, they disaggregated the data by county. For 1775, Table 4.9 reveals that only in one of the state’s five counties, Rockingham, did the African American population reach or exceed one percent. In all of the other counties, the total was under one percent, and this also held true for the entire state. Thus, the potential voting African American population in this state had minimal potential influence and impact. Eleven years later, the census of 1786 (Table 4.10, p. 90) indicated that there were fewer African Americans (who were merely listed among “Slaves” or “Others”) in the state than before, making it possible that there were fewer potential voters than before. Thus, while African Americans could vote in the Revolutionary Era in New Hampshire, their potential influence was very small indeed.
Warren
867
3
5
30
3.9%
905
Warwick
1,951
37
36
100
6.4%
2,124
West Greenwich
1,677
0
7
14
1.2%
1,698
Westerly
1,667
9
36
28
3.7%
1,740
48,556
525
464
2,342
5.4%
51,887
Totals
Source: Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 69–70. a
Percent of total population. Data source does not stratify enumerated populations by age.
b
Total population = African Americans + whites + American Indians.
New York Table 4.11 (p. 90) provides a look at New York at the county level in 1786. These data are also broken down by gender for
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
89
Table 4.7 County-Level Demography for Connecticut, Census of 1774 White Electoratea
African American Electoratea
Total Populations
County
Male
Female
Total
Male
Female
Total
Total Electorate
Fairfield
6,260
6,119
12,379
358
234
592
12,971
28,936
1,214
30,150
48.3%
47.2%
95.4%
2.8%
1.8%
4.6%
100%
96.0%
4.0%
100%
10,745
11,398
22,143
370
201
571
22,714
50,666
1,215
51,881
47.3%
50.2%
97.5%
1.6%
0.9%
2.5%
100%
97.7%
2.3%
100%
5,668
5,154
10,822
99
61
160
10,982
26,844
440
27,284
51.6%
46.9%
98.5%
0.9%
0.6%
1.5%
100%
98.4%
1.6%
100%
5,811
5,843
11,654
268
181
449
12,103
25,896
925
26,821
48.0%
48.3%
96.3%
2.2%
1.5%
3.7%
100%
96.6%
3.4%
100%
6,617
6,965
13,582
335
255
590
14,172
31,542
2,036
33,578
46.7%
49.1%
95.8%
2.4%
1.8%
4.2%
100%
93.9%
6.1%
100%
5,696
6,210
11,906
147
121
268
12,174
27,494
634
28,128
46.8%
51.0%
97.8%
1.2%
1.0%
2.2%
100%
97.7%
2.3%
100%
40,797
41,689
82,486
1,577
1,053
2,630
85,116
191,378
6,464
197,842
47.9%
49.0%
96.9%
1.9%
1.2%
3.1%
100%
96.7%
3.3%
100%
Hartford
Litchfield
New Haven
New London
Windham Totals
White
Black
Total
Source: A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 166–169. a
Electorate defined as persons 20 years of age and over. Electorate percentages are percent shares of total electorate.
Table 4.8 County-Level Demography for Connecticut, Census of 1782 Whites
African Americansa
County
Population
Population
Percent of Total Population
Fairfield
29,722
1,134
3.7%
30,856
Hartford
55,647
1,320
2.3%
56,967
Litchfield
33,127
529
1.6%
33,656
New Haven
25,092
885
3.4%
25,977
New London
31,131
1,920
5.8%
Windham
28,185
485
202,904
6,273
Totals
Table 4.9 County-Level Demography for New Hampshire, Census of 1775
Whites
Total Population
Percent of Total Population
Total Population
County
Male Electoratea
Cheshire
2,708
7
0.1%
10,659
Grafton
1,108
24
0.6%
3,880
33,051
Hillsborough
3,983
87
0.5%
16,108
1.7%
28,670
Rockingham
9,272
435
1.1%
37,945
3.0%
209,177
Stafford
3,077
103
0.8%
12,713
20,148
656
0.8%
81,305
Totals
Source: Evarts B. Green and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 61. a
African Americans and Slavesb
This enumeration of African Americans also includes some American Indians.
both races. Here as in other states, the African American male population outnumbers the female population. As a percent of total population, the largest African American population was in Kings County with 17.4% and 15.6%, for males and females, respectively. The county with the second largest percentage of African Americans was Richmond, with 11.7% and 10.3%. Then, there were three counties, Queens, Ulster, and Suffolk, which
Population
Source: A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 152–154. The electorate is defined as male persons 16 years of age and over, whether in the army or not. The census does not enumerate African Americans or white females by age. a
b
The census does not distinguish African Americans from the slave population.
had African American population percentages larger than the state’s mean. The county with the smallest population—both in number and percentage—was Washington, where fifteen
90
Chapter 4
Massachusetts
Table 4.10 County-Level Demography for New Hampshire, Census of 1786
County
Free Inhabitants
Slavesa
Cheshire
15,160
7
6
15,173
Grafton
8,344
0
56
8,400
Hillsborough
25,933
9
48
25,990
Rockingham
32,138
21
185
32,344
Stafford
13,877
9
8
13,894
Totals
95,452
46
303
95,801
The demographic data for Massachusetts, as shown in Table 4.12, follow the patterns seen in the other New England states. African Americans made up only 1.5% of the total population in 1776. The percentage of African Americans in each of the thirteen counties was quite small. Nantucket had the highest percentage of African Americans with 2.9%, followed in order by Suffolk with 2.4%, Bristol with 2.3%, and Dukes and Essex with 2.0% each. Overall, none of these population totals or percentages gave the Free-Men-of-Color enough numerical strength to have had any significant electoral influence in the state during the Revolutionary Era.
Total Population
Othersa
Source: A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 154–156. These enumerated populations include African Americans as well as some American Indians. ‘Free Inhabitants’ are not indicated to have included African Americans. No population in the census was stratified by age. a
African Americans made up about 0.2% of the total population. Therefore, one sees from the table that clearly there were several counties, especially Kings and Richmond, where African Americans could possibly have had some influence and impact upon the outcome of elections
North Carolina Table 4.13 shows data from the 1786 census of North Carolina, a southern state where Free-Men-of-Color intermittently had the right to vote. This table isolates a segment of the county populations by a threshold voting age, permitting one to see the approximate size of the voting age population in each of the eighteen counties. Eight of the counties had an African American voting age population percentage above that for the state; and in four counties, voting age African Americans accounted for at least a quarter of the total population. In those counties where the African American population was sizable, they presumably
Table 4.11 County-Level Demography for New York, Census of 1786 White Electoratea
African American Populationb
County
Males
Females
Males
Percent of Total
Females
Percent of Total
Total Population
Albany
17,230
16,093
2,335
3.2%
2,355
3.3%
72,360
7,601
7,481
830
2.5%
815
2.5%
32,636
842
766
695
17.4%
622
15.6%
3,986
Montgomery
3,829
3,415
217
1.4%
188
1.2%
15,057
New York
6,141
6,746
896
3.8%
1,207
5.1%
23,614
Orange
3,429
3,187
442
3.1%
416
3.0%
14,062
Queens
3,012
3,140
1,160
8.9%
1,023
7.8%
13,084
665
638
369
11.7%
324
10.3%
3,152
Suffolk
3,475
3,633
567
4.1%
501
3.6%
13,793
Ulster
5,256
4,865
1,353
6.1%
1,309
5.9%
22,143
Washington
1,210
983
8
0.2%
7
0.2%
4,456
Westchester
4,968
4,818
649
3.2%
601
2.9%
20,554
57,658
55,765
9,521
4.0%
9,368
3.9%
238,897
Dutchess Kings
Richmond
Totals
Source: A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), p. 183. a
The electorate is defined here as the population segment that includes persons of age 16 years and older.
b
The census does not have age stratifications of the African American population.
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789 Table 4.12 County-Level Demography for Massachusetts and Maine, Census of 1776 Whites
County
Population
Table 4.13 County-Level Demography for North Carolina, Incomplete Census of 1786 Whites
African Americans
Population
Percent of Total Population
Total Population
91
Countya
African Americans
Percent Males Other All of Total Other Total 21–60b Males Females 21–60 Populationc Blacks Populationd
Franklin
740
1,069
1,814
931
17.0%
913
5,475
Barnstable
12,936
171
1.3%
13,107
Tyrrell
552
966
1,488
374
9.7%
379
3,859
Berkshire
17,952
216
1.2%
18,168
Pasquotank
615
1,023
1,551
789
16.5%
815
4,793
Bristol
24,916
585
2.3%
25,501
Northampton
763
1,329
1,966
1,721
24.4%
1,564
7,043
New Hanover
579
722
1,397
1,332
26.4%
1,012
5,042
Duplin
734
1,356
1,997
605
11.5%
548
5,248
Warren
735
1,399
2,499
1,792
21.6%
1,870
8,295
Dukes
2,822
59
2.0%
2,881
Essex
50,923
1,049
2.0%
51,972
Hampshire
32,701
245
0.7%
32,946
Middlesex
40,121
702
1.7%
40,823
Nantucket
4,412
133
2.9%
4,545
Plymouth
26,906
487
1.8%
27,393
Suffolk
27,419
682
2.4%
28,101
Worcester
45,031
432
1.0%
45,463
286,139
4,761
1.6%
290,900
MA Subtotals
Addition to above Richmond
Counties of the Maine Territory of Massachusetts, later counties of the separated state of Maine
701
380
757
1,126
168
6.5%
154
2,585
Caswell
1,273
2,748
3,611
1,110
11.3%
1,097
9,839
Chowan
463
641
970
992
26.2%
716
3,782
Nash
650
1,269
1,850
799
15.1%
709
5,277
Edgecomb
1,045
1,977
2,985
1,271
15.0%
1,202
8,480
Halifax
1,088
814
3,145
2,638
25.5%
2,552
10,327
Gates
543
901
1,361
927
18.9%
1,183
4,917
Granville
733
1,486
2,149
925
14.8%
954
6,247
Cumberland
14,110
162
1.1%
14,272
Addition to above
Lincoln
15,546
85
0.5%
15,631
Sampson
565
1,197
1,786
384
9.0%
338
4,268
York
17,623
241
1.3%
17,864
Hyde
496
584
1,282
430
12.6%
376
3,421
Surry
340
837
436
105
6.7%
94
1,559
12,294 21,075
33,413
17,293
16.4%
16,476
105,213
ME Subtotals Totals
47,279
488
1.0%
47,767
333,418
5,249
1.5%
338,667
Source: Evarts B. Green and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 30–40. Note: The census does not have stratifications of the enumerated populations by age.
had the potential to impact county level elections. Opposition to this influence became one of the causes for the contraction of the legal right of African American to vote in North Carolina and the eventual denial of voting rights in 1835.
Overall View of African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Period Overall, Table 4.14 (p. 92) provides a synopsis of the African American population during the Revolutionary Era for six states—Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, and North Carolina—as well as a breakdown by gender in two of them, Connecticut and New York. Using the county or township population sizes in these states, shown in Tables 4.5–4.13, we are able to infer the possibility of electoral influence and impact. Such data allow a refinement from the
Totals
4,055
Source: Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), p. 169. North Carolina’s census in 1786 was not a completed census. In some instances the census indicates “additions” to the total population count without identifying the contributing counties or distributing the “added” population among identified counties or segmenting the “added” enumerations by race and age as was done in the identified counties. a
The census segmented white males and all African Americans, male and female, who were 21 years to 60 years of age. White females were not distinguished in this manner. b
c
Percent of the reported total population.
d
Reported total populations may not match the sum of the component populations.
state level, and this refinement tells us exactly where in each state the largest and smallest African American populations resided. In the three states where two censuses were conducted during this period, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, we were able to compare and contrast the growth and decline in the African American populations and to get some sense of the size of the male and female populations. The North Carolina data provide a portrait of the South that helps to explain what might have eventually ended the legal right of African Americans to suffrage in this state, as well as why other southern states may never have granted this legal right despite the national revolutionary spirit and its principles.
92
Chapter 4
Table 4.14 Local-Level Population Censuses and Enumerations of African Americans during the Period of the American Revolution African American Colony
Year
Locale
Table No.
Total Population
Age Strataa
Males
Females
New Hampshire
1775
County
4.9
81,305
16
656
1786
County
4.10
95,801
46
Massachusetts
1776
County
4.12
338,667
Rhode Island
1774
Town
4.5
59,607
3,668
1783
Town
4.6
51,887
2,806
1774
County
4.7
197,842
20
1,577
1,053
6,464
1782
County
4.8
209,177
New York
1786
County
4.11
238,897
16
9,521
9,368
18,889
North Carolina
1786
County
4.13
105,213
21–60
17,293
Connecticut
Population
5,249
6,273
Sources: Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932) and A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909), pp. 149–185. The age used by some states to define the electorate or potential electorate. In most cases, the data was collected for whites or white males exclusively. Connecticut, in its census of 1774, was the only state in the Revolutionary period to count whites and African Americans in the same comparable age and gender stratas. a
Conclusions on the African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Period During the Revolutionary Era, nine of the thirteen states (69.2%) allowed the exercise of suffrage rights by Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color. Thus, more than two-thirds of the original states granted legal suffrage rights. Unlike the Colonial Era, where none of the original thirteen colonies initially denied suffrage rights to Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color, two states denied them throughout the Revolutionary Era and another eventually denied the right. Virginia and South Carolina adopted anti-suffrage laws during the Colonial Era and simply carried them over into the Revolutionary Era. North Carolina barred suffrage for free African Americans in 1715 during the Colonial Era but within thirty years, around 1734–1735, reversed its position and again permitted free African Americans to have the legal right to suffrage.24 Delaware adopted antisuffrage laws during the Antebellum Era, although free African Americans had the legal right to suffrage in both the Colonial and Revolutionary Eras.25 On the other hand, a majority of nine states permitted the legal right to suffrage to continue for Free-Men-and-Women-ofColor. This had been set in motion during the Colonial Era, and these states embedded this right in their state constitutions. In eight of these nine states, property qualifications were the only barrier that Free-Men-of-Color faced. In Vermont, even property qualifications were wiped away. The one reality not swept away was the anti-suffrage sentiment. It lingered. Moreover, the rise of two national governments during the Revolutionary War Era (the Continental Congress from the Articles of Confederation and the United States of America from the
United States Constitution) did not settle the matter because the power to determine the right to vote remained with the states. The Constitution did establish a linkage between the states and the federal government because Article 1, Section 2, calls for state voters to cast their ballots directly for members of the House of Representatives. But even with this constitutional linkage, the power to determine who votes still resided with the state governments. Commenting on the lack of continual progress in the suffrage struggle, Emil Olbrich wrote: The evolution of democracy rarely followed a straight path, and it always has been accompanied by profound antidemocratic countercurrents. The history of suffrage in the United States is a history of both expansion and contraction, of inclusion and exclusion, of shifts in direction and momentum at different places and at different times.26 This has been especially true for African Americans, for their quest started in the Colonial Era and continued into the Revolutionary Era. “The chief problems that have faced the black electorate have been the acquisition and retention of the franchise.”27 Neither era permanently settled the matter. And as a consequence, linear progress never became a feature of the suffrage struggle for the potential African American electorate in these two eras.
Notes 1. John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 7th Edition (New York: McGrawHill, 1994), pp. 74–75.
The African American Electorate in the Revolutionary Era, 1774–1789
2. Alexander Keyssar, The Right To Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 25. 3. Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912), p. 19. 4. Ibid., pp. 19–20. 5. Ibid., p. 20. See also Marion Wright, “Negro Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776–1785,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 33 (April 1948), pp. 168–224. 6. Olbrich, p. 20. 7. Ibid. 8. Robert Dinkin, Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Original Thirteen States, 1776–1789 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 41–42. 9. Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 4. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. See also John Munroe, “The Negro in Delaware,” South Atlantic Quarterly Vol. 56 (Autumn 1957), pp. 428–443, and Harold Livesay, “Delaware Negroes, 1865–1915,” Delaware History Vol. 13 (October 1968), pp. 87–123. 12. Hanes Walton, Jr. and Robert Smith, American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom, 4th Edition (New York: Longman Publishers, 2008), pp. 10–11. 13. Ibid., p. 11. See also how this affected presidential and congressional campaigns during this era because those candidates who won these
93
slave states’ electoral votes and bonus congressional seats were referred to as “Negro Presidents and Negro Congressmen,” Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003). 14. Olbrich, p. 21. 15. Ibid., p. 10. 16. Ibid. 17. James Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634–1860 (New York: 1921), p. 119. See also Margaret Callcott, The Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870–1912 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969), p. 3. 18. Olbrich, p. 23. 19. John Kolp, Gentlemen and Freeholders: Electoral Politics in Colonial Virginia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 41. 20. Olbrich, p. 11 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. See also Joseph P. Reidy, “ ‘Negro Election Day’ and Black Community Life, 1750–1860,” in Marxist Perspectives (Fall 1978), pp. 102–117. 23. Olbrich, p. 26. 24. Ibid., p. 8. 25. Ibid., p. 10. 26. Ibid., p. xx. 27. Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics: A Theoretical and Structural Analysis (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1972), p. 33.
CHAPTER 5
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861 The Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause The Demography of African Americans in Antebellum America
96
Table 5.1 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1788–1789 Elections
98
Table 5.2 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1790 Census
99
Table 5.3 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1800 Census
100
Table 5.4 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1810 Census
101
Table 5.5 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1820 Census
102
Table 5.6 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1830 Census
104
Table 5.7 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1840 Census
105
Table 5.8 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1850 Census
107
Table 5.9 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1860 Census
108
Figure 5.1 Number of States Admitted to the United States by Decade, 1787–1860s
109
Figure 5.2 Numerical Parity of Free and Slave States in the United States by Decade, 1787–1860s
109
Longitudinal Analysis of the Three-Fifths Clause
109
Table 5.10 States Admitted to the Union of the United States, Founding–1870
109
Figure 5.3 Number of House of Representatives Seats Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s
110
Figure 5.4 Percent of House of Representatives Seats Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s
110
Figure 5.5 Percent of Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s
111
Figure 5.6 Total Electoral Votes and Number of Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s
112
Figure 5.7 African American Population Growth in the United States by Slavery Status, 1790–1860
112
Figure 5.8 White Population Growth in the United States by Slavery Status of Residence, 1790–1860
112
Figure 5.9 African American and White Population Growth in the United States, 1790–1860
113
Figure 5.10 Number of Electoral Votes by Slavery Status Grouping of States, 1787–1860s
113
Figure 5.11 Two-Fifths of African American Slave Population as a Share of Total U.S. Population, 1790–1860
114
Table 5.11 Number of Seats in the House of Representatives Held by the Slave States during and after the Period of the Three-Fifths Clause, 1860, 1872, and 1882
115
Summary and Conclusions on the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause
115
Notes 115
96
Chapter 5
R
atification of the U.S. Constitution on June 26, 1788, created a new electoral system requiring the election of a president and members of the House of Representatives. While the Senate would be elected by the state legislatures, the House and the executive branch of government required popular participation by the state-based electorates. Each state government—thirteen at that time—would set the qualifications for voting in this new federalist system comprised of national, state, county, and local governments. This new document enabled the transition from a confederation of states organized under the Articles of Confederation and operating through the Continental Congress into a federalist system of government. In the Continental Congress only states could vote, and state legislatures, not the voters, decided which delegates would represent the state in the Continental Congress. Now with the Constitution in place, national elections had to be held in the same way as state, county, and local contests. Although the Constitution did not set suffrage qualifications for national elections, it did recognize the duality of the African American population, free and slave. Southerners at the 1787 Constitutional Convention demanded that if the House of Representatives was to be based on population, then slaves had to be counted in the apportionment for the House. Leaders from the slave states demanded a full count of this group, while the leaders from non-slave states declared that they could not be counted in the population for the purposes of representation because they were used and treated as property. Eventually, a compromise was worked out known as the Three-Fifths Clause. It is written into Section 2 of Article I of the Constitution in the following manner: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”1 James Madison later reflected on this constitutional decision, writing in Federalist 54 that The true state of the case is, that they [slaves] partake of both of these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. . . . [T]he slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property. The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixt character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied, that these are the proper criterion. . . .2 Later in the very same essay, Madison reiterated his justification that the nation had done the right thing in adopting the Three-Fifths Clause: “Let the case of the slaves be considered, as it is in truth, a peculiar one. Let the compromising expedient of the Constitution be mutually adopted, which regards them as inhabitants, but as debased
by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants, which regards the slave as divested of two-fifths of the man.”3 Ratification of the Constitution, therefore, did not convey suffrage rights to African Americans, but it did allow three-fifths of the slave population, or 60%, to be counted as the population base for slave state representation in the House of Representatives. Thus, the Three-Fifths Clause in the Constitution not only allowed slave states to increase the number of seats that they would have in one house of the national congress but, as the electoral votes of each state are determined by the number of senators and representatives that they have in Congress, it also increased the number of electoral votes that each slave state would have in presidential elections. Of course, if each slave had been counted as a full person, those states would have gained even more. Therefore, along with the creation of national elections came one institution (the House of Representatives) of the new nation built upon non-voting slaves as well as another institution (the Electoral College) residing on the very same foundation. Ironically, Free-Men-of-Color voters found themselves structurally compelled to participate in national elections that were undergirded by the suppression of their fellow men and women of color, but then, they had been in the same situation in the elections of Colonial and Revolutionary America.
The Demography of African Americans in Antebellum America Madison’s argument for the ratification of the Constitution with the Three-Fifths Clause may have effectuated the adoption of this formative document and assured the entrance of the southern states into the Union. Yet he and the other Federalist writers, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, paid no attention to how this clause would provide the political, electoral, and opinion context for the entire Antebellum Era. On this point, African American historian Charles Wesley wrote, “the failure to settle this issue [of slaves being both human and property] laid the foundation for considerable confusion concerning the Negro’s right to vote, for if they were property manifestly, there was no adequate argument for this right.”4 Similarly, constitutional scholar Donald Nieman noted that the Three-Fifths Clause “became an important tool that southerners would use during the next seventy years to bend national policy to their will and make the Constitution a proslavery document.”5 He added: “between ratification of the Constitution and the Mexican War (1846–1848) the American political system worked against realization of the Constitution’s antislavery potential.” As they had at the Philadelphia Convention, southern political leaders doggedly insisted that the national government show solicitude for slavery and challenged measures that threatened the institution. Although northern politicians sometimes resisted these demands, more often they backed down or broke ranks in the face of southern initiatives. Confronted with southern assertiveness, many northern leaders believed that preservation of the Union required them to make concessions to southerners on an issue so vital to their interests.6
The North was not merely interested in saving the Union. Niemann continued, “White attitudes toward blacks, which had taken root during the previous century [in Colonial America] reinforced slavery and the system of racial hierarchy which it created. . . . Such attitudes legitimized existing social arrangements and provided ready arguments against emancipation.”7 Thus, once the Three-Fifths Clause was embedded in the Constitution, along with the fugitive slave clause and another that protected the importation of slaves for twenty years, a political and legal environment was created that placed the Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color in grave jeopardy. Free African Americans existed at the mercy of the state, and many leaders in the slave states equated African Americans with slaves. Nieman observed, “Southern laws governing free blacks were much more restrictive and repressive than those on northern statute books, making southern free blacks little better than slaves without masters.”8 Thus, Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color in Antebellum America found themselves, both in the North and South, “with limited citizenship privileges,” and “they occupied a subordinate position between the whites and the slaves. They were between freedom and bondage.”9 The Three-Fifths Clause drained not only the humanity away from slaves but from free blacks as well. It eroded rights of the latter in both the northern and southern states because the Three-Fifths Clause implied legally that an endless array of restrictions could be visited upon blacks for the good of sectional unity. If the Constitution could count a portion of the African American population while excluding them from suffrage rights, then state legislatures, which had the power over suffrage rights qualifications, could use the existence of the Three-Fifths Clause to diminish the voting rights of free blacks. As this chapter will show, this is exactly what the states did during the Antebellum era. Before we discuss how the Three-Fifths Clause was used to restrict and circumscribe the rights and liberties of the FreeMen-and-Women-of-Color, it is essential to show how this clause empowered the slave states in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Here, for the very first time, is an empirical analysis and assessment of the impact of the Three-Fifths Clause upon the number of seats in the House of Representatives and the number of electoral votes in presidential elections, beginning with the initial election of 1788–1789 and, subsequently, in every federal Census from 1790 through 1860. On July 9, 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Three-Fifths Clause was no longer operative. Also, since the nation had no census for the initial national election in 1788, population estimates were put forward by the 1787 Constitutional Convention regarding the number of slaves in each of the six slave states. The Convention also fixed a population of 30,000 as the criterion for one seat in the House of Representatives, although the population requirement for at least one seat in the House of Representatives changed with the appearance of each Census. All of the thirteen original states were granted provisional representation (based on estimated populations) for the first federal election in 1788–1789. Table 5.1 (p. 98) groups these states according to geography and the status to which each had evolved on the question of slavery by 1860, the eve of the Civil War, as (1) free states, (2) border slave states, and (3) southern
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
97
slave states. The next columns analyze the number of seats that each state had in the House of Representatives of the first Congress, as well as the number of electoral votes in the first presidential election. The non-slave column reveals the number of House seats (and electoral votes) given to the states based on free population (including both whites and blacks); the slave column shows the number of seats (and votes) based on the slave population, made possible by the Three-Fifths Clause. Finally, the table disaggregates the actual state populations into their non-slave population, the three-fifths of the slave population, the population used for apportionment to representation, and the total population for each of the thirteen original states in the new nation. At the bottom of Table 5.1 are the grand totals. There were 65 seats in the initial House of Representatives and a total of 91 electoral votes (achieved by adding the total of 65 seats in the House and the 26 senators) for the presidential election. From these numbers we find that 55 House seats were attributable to non-slave (or free) populations. Thus, a total of 10 House seats, and therefore 10 electoral votes, were attributable to the ThreeFifths Clause.
The 1790 Census Table 5.2 (p. 99) shows how matters stood at the time that the first United States Census was taken in 1790. Three new states, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee, had been added to the Union, and since Tennessee entered the Union after the Census had been taken, it was allocated one seat in the House of Representatives on a provisional basis. Examining the grand totals, there were 106 seats in the House of Representatives of the Second Congress, and presidential elections during this decade would have had 138 electoral votes. Of these numbers, 95 seats and 127 of the electoral votes were attributable to non-slave populations. Because of the Three-Fifths Clause, slave states received 9 seats and 9 electoral votes; adding the seats and votes of border slave states, enslaved populations accounted for 11 seats and 11 electoral votes. This decade was also the first time there were an equal number of free and slave states. Vermont entered as a free state and Tennessee as a slave state. Nonetheless, the free states had 57 seats in the House of Representatives and the slave states 49, so viewed by their status on the question of slavery, the states were not on parity: the free states had 8 more seats. There is also no parity shown between the states in Table 5.1, for the free states had 35 seats and the slave states only 30, and this disparity between the states begins to grow slightly in Table 5.2. This same reality pertains in the presidential elections. In 1790, the free states had 73 electoral votes and the slave states only 65 votes, a difference of 8 electoral votes. In the first federal election (Table 5.1), the free states had 49 electoral votes compared to the slave states’ 42, for a difference of 7 electoral votes. Clearly, the slave states needed the Three-Fifths Clause to stay near to parity with the free states in terms of political power in the House of Representatives. However, as representation in the Senate became equal in the 1790s, the southern states did gain effective veto power over legislation that might negatively impact slavery. Although the number of states would not always be equal, the
98
Chapter 5
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Border Slave
Slave
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.1 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1788–1789 Elections Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives
State
Non-Slaveb House Seats
Slavec House Seats
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
Connecticut
5
0
5
2
7
202,000
0
202,000
202,000
Massachusetts
8
0
8
2
10
360,000
0
360,000
360,000
New Hampshire
3
0
3
2
5
102,000
0
102,000
102,000
New Jersey
4
0
4
2
6
138,000
0
138,000
138,000
New York
6
0
6
2
8
238,000
0
238,000
238,000
Pennsylvania
8
0
8
2
10
360,000
0
360,000
360,000
Rhode Island
1
0
1
2
3
58,000
0
58,000
58,000
Subtotal (7)
35
0
35
14
49
1,458,000
0
1,458,000
1,458,000
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
37,000
0
37,000
37,000
Maryland
4
2
6
2
8
218,000
80,000
298,000
351,333
Subtotal (2)
5
2
7
4
11
255,000
80,000
335,000
388,333
Georgia
2
1
3
2
5
90,000
20,000
110,000
123,333
North Carolina
4
1
5
2
7
200,000
60,000
260,000
300,000
South Carolina
3
2
5
2
7
150,000
80,000
230,000
283,333
Virginia
6
4
10
2
12
420,000
280,000
700,000
886,667
Subtotal (4)
15
8
23
8
31
860,000
440,000
1,300,000
1,593,333
Total (13)
55
10
65
26
91
2,573,000
520,000
3,093,000
3,439,666
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
d
Populations in this column are constitutionally re-apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + ((3/5) x Slave population).
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
southern states would fight hard to maintain their numerical parity. Another interesting feature in Table 5.2 is that by the time of the initial Census there were slaves in the so-called free states because southern slave owners sometimes transported slaves with them when moving to free states. (This situation would be the crux of Dred Scott’s unsuccessful argument for his freedom in the 1857 Supreme Court case that helped set the stage for the Civil War.) The number of slaves in the free states was much smaller than in the slave states but significant enough that free states began to get fractions of seats and electoral votes just like the slave states. For instance, if New York’s seats and votes were
examined in terms of fractions, New York might have obtained almost a half-seat and a half-electoral vote because of its slave population.
The 1800 Census In 1803 Ohio entered the Union as a free state. Table 5.3 (p. 100) indicates that a near balance in numbers of free and slave states had been maintained, with nine of the former and eight of the latter. However, of the total 142 House seats, the free states had 77, compared with 65 for the slave states, for a difference of 12. In terms of the 176 electoral votes, the free states had 95,
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
99
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Border Slave
Slave
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.2 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1790 Census Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives
State
Populations
Non-Slaveb House Seats
Slavec House Seats
Total House Seats
7
0
7
2
9
235,145
1,589
236,734
237,793
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
Connecticut
Massachusetts
14
0
14
2
16
378,693
0
378,693
378,693
New Hampshire
4
0
4
2
6
141,727
94
141,821
141,884
New Jersey
5
0
5
2
7
172,716
6,854
179,570
184,139
New York
10
0
10
2
12
318,824
12,716
331,540
340,017
Pennsylvania
13
0
13
2
15
430,630
2,224
432,854
434,337
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
67,954
575
68,529
68,912
Vermont
2
0
2
2
4
85,423
0
85,423
85,423
Subtotal (8)
57
0
57
16
73
1,831,112
24,052
1,855,164
1,871,198
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
50,209
5,332
55,541
59,096
Kentucky
2
0
2
2
4
61,247
7,458
68,705
73,677
Maryland
6
2
8
2
10
216,692
61,822
278,514
319,728
Subtotal (3)
9
2
11
6
17
328,148
74,612
402,760
452,501
Georgia
2
0
2
2
4
53,284
17,558
70,842
82,548
North Carolina
8
2
10
2
12
293,245
60,470
353,715
394,028
South Carolina
4
2
6
2
8
141,979
64,256
206,235
249,073
Tennessee
1
0
1
2
3
32,274
2,050
34,324
35,691
Virginia
14
5
19
2
21
454,983
175,576
630,559
747,610
Subtotal (5)
29
9
38
10
48
975,765
319,910
1,295,675
1,508,950
Total (16)
95
11
106
32
138
3,135,025
418,574
3,553,599
3,832,649
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
d
Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population.
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
compared to the 81 for the slave states, for a difference of 14. Hence, in each decade since the formation of the new nation, the slave states moved further and further away from parity, losing power and influence in the Congress and in each of the presidential elections. This was a far cry from the Continental Congress, where each state had one vote. Table 5.3 (p. 100) shows that slave populations in free states declined compared to the 1790 Census, because in these states the process of emancipation had begun, and they were
gradually abolishing slavery. However, while slavery in the free states was starting to disappear, the loss of this population did not result in the loss of seats and/or electoral votes. As shown in Tables 5.1 and 5.2, none of the free states had large enough slave populations to gain seats through reapportionment. Indeed, when former slaves remained in the state and became Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color, the state’s representation grew as they were counted as whole persons, rather than only as three-fifths of a person.
100
Chapter 5
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Border Slave
Slave
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.3 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1800 Census Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives
State
Connecticut
Non-Slaveb House Seats
Slavec House Seats
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
7
0
7
2
9
250,051
571
250,622
251,002
Massachusetts
17
0
17
2
19
568,564
0
568,564
568,564
New Hampshire
5
0
5
2
7
183,850
5
183,855
183,858
New Jersey
6
0
6
2
8
198,727
7,453
206,180
211,149
New York
17
0
17
2
19
568,148
12,542
580,690
589,051
Ohio
1
0
1
2
3
45,365
0
45,365
45,365
Pennsylvania
18
0
18
2
20
600,659
1,024
601,683
602,365
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
68,742
228
68,970
69,122
Vermont
4
0
4
2
6
154,465
0
154,465
154,465
Subtotal (9)
77
0
77
18
95
2,638,571
21,823
2,660,394
2,674,941
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
58,120
3,692
61,812
64,273
Kentucky
5
1
6
2
8
180,662
24,230
204,892
221,045
Maryland
7
2
9
2
11
235,913
63,381
299,294
341,548
Subtotal (3)
13
3
16
6
22
474,695
91,303
565,998
626,866
Georgia
3
1
4
2
6
103,280
35,644
138,924
162,686
North Carolina
10
2
12
2
14
344,807
79,978
424,785
478,103
South Carolina
6
2
8
2
10
199,440
87,691
287,131
345,591
Tennessee
3
0
3
2
5
92,018
8,150
100,168
105,602
Virginia
16
6
22
2
24
534,404
207,478
741,882
880,200
Subtotal (5)
38
11
49
10
59
1,273,949
418,941
1,692,890
1,972,182
128
14
142
34
176
4,387,215
532,067
4,919,282
5,273,989
Total (17)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
d
Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population.
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
The 1810 Census In the decade after the third Census in 1810, five new states joined the Union. There were two free states (Illinois, and Indiana) and the three slave states (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi). Table 5.4 shows that four of these five states came in with provisional representation, and each received one seat in the House of Representatives. The Census of 1810 apportioned the 186 seats in the House of Representatives and the 230 electoral votes for presidential elections. The free states had 105 seats in the House and the slave states 81, for a difference of 24 seats. As for electoral votes, the free states had 127 and the slave states 103,
for a difference of 24 electoral votes. Thus, despite the balance in the number of states, the slave states were dropping further and further away from parity in political representation in the House and Electoral College influence with each Census. Of the free states of Table 5.4, only two, New York and New Jersey, reported significant slave populations, but the number of slaves in free states continued to drop. Slavery, as an institution, was slowly becoming geographically regionalized, from the free states in the North to the slave states in the South. The first three Censuses, as illustrated in our tables, document a slowly emerging trend that did not favor the slave states.
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
101
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.4 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1810 Census Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives
State
Slave
Slave House Seats c
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
Connecticut
7
0
7
2
9
261,632
186
261,818
261,942
Illinois
1
0
1
2
3
12,114
101
12,215
12,282
Indiana
1
0
1
2
3
24,283
142
24,425
24,520
Massachusetts
20
0
20
2
22
700,745
0
700,745
700,745
New Hampshire
6
0
6
2
8
214,460
0
214,460
214,460
New Jersey
6
0
6
2
8
234,711
6,511
241,222
245,562
New York
27
0
27
2
29
944,032
9,010
953,042
959,049
6
0
6
2
8
230,760
0
230,760
230,760
Ohio
Border Slave
Non-Slave House Seats
b
Pennsylvania
23
0
23
2
25
809,296
477
809,773
810,091
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
76,823
65
76,888
76,931
Vermont
6
0
6
2
8
217,895
0
217,895
217,895
Subtotal (11)
105
0
105
22
127
3,726,751
16,492
3,743,243
3,754,237
Delaware
2
0
2
2
4
68,497
2,506
71,003
72,674
Kentucky
9
1
10
2
12
325,950
48,337
374,287
406,511
Maryland
7
2
9
2
11
269,044
66,901
335,945
380,546
Subtotal (3)
18
3
21
6
27
663,491
117,744
781,235
859,731
Alabama
1
0
1
2
3
0
0
0
0
Georgia
4
2
6
2
8
147,215
63,131
210,346
252,433
Louisiana
1
0
1
2
3
41,896
20,796
62,692
76,556
Mississippi
1
0
1
2
3
23,264
10,253
33,517
40,352
North Carolina
10
3
13
2
15
386,676
101,294
487,970
555,500
South Carolina
6
3
9
2
11
218,750
117,819
336,569
415,115
Tennessee
5
1
6
2
8
217,192
26,721
243,913
261,727
Virginia
16
7
23
2
25
582,084
235,510
817,594
974,600
Subtotal (8)
44
16
60
16
76
1,617,077
575,524
2,192,601
2,576,283
167
19
186
44
230
6,007,319
709,760
6,717,079
7,190,251
Total (22)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
d
Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population.
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
The 1820 Census Table 5.5 (p. 102), which is based on the fourth Census in 1820, further demonstrates this emerging trend. Only one state was admitted during this decade, Missouri, which came
in as a slave state. Parity was again achieved, as there were now twelve free states and twelve slave states. The House of Representatives that year had 213 seats, with the free states accounting for 123 and the slave states 90, a difference of
102
Chapter 5
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Border Slave
Slave
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.5 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1820 Census Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives Non-Slave House Seats
b
State
Slave House Seats c
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
Connecticut
6
0
6
2
8
275,151
58
275,209
275,248
Illinois
1
0
1
2
3
54,294
550
54,844
55,211
Indiana
3
0
3
2
5
146,988
114
147,102
147,178
Maine
7
0
7
2
9
298,335
0
298,335
298,335
Massachusetts
13
0
13
2
15
523,287
0
523,287
523,287
New Hampshire
6
0
6
2
8
244,161
0
244,161
244,161
New Jersey
6
0
6
2
8
270,018
4,534
274,552
277,575
New York
34
0
34
2
36
1,362,724
6,053
1,368,777
1,372,812
Ohio
14
0
14
2
16
581,434
0
581,434
581,434
Pennsylvania
26
0
26
2
28
1,049,247
127
1,049,374
1,049,458
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
83,011
29
83,040
83,059
Vermont
5
0
5
2
7
235,981
0
235,981
235,981
Subtotal (12)
123
0
123
24
147
5,124,631
11,465
5,136,096
5,143,739
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
68,240
2,705
70,945
72,749
Kentucky
10
2
12
2
14
437,585
76,039
513,624
564,317
Maryland
7
2
9
2
11
299,953
64,438
364,391
407,350
Missouri
1
0
1
2
3
56,364
6,133
62,497
66,586
Subtotal (4)
19
4
23
8
31
862,142
149,315
1,011,457
1,111,002
Alabama
2
1
3
2
5
86,022
25,127
111,149
127,901
Georgia
5
2
7
2
9
191,333
89,794
281,127
340,989
Louisiana
2
1
3
2
5
84,343
41,438
125,781
153,407
Mississippi
1
0
1
2
3
42,634
19,688
62,322
75,448
North Carolina
10
3
13
2
15
433,912
122,950
556,862
638,829
South Carolina
6
3
9
2
11
244,265
155,085
399,350
502,740
Tennessee
8
1
9
2
11
342,716
48,064
390,780
422,823
Virginia
16
6
22
2
24
640,218
255,089
895,307
1,065,366
Subtotal (8)
50
17
67
16
83
2,065,443
757,235
2,822,678
3,327,503
192
21
213
48
261
8,052,216
918,015
8,970,231
9,582,244
Total (24)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
d
Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population.
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
33 seats. In the Electoral College, there were 261 electoral votes in total, with the free states holding 147 for a 33 vote edge over the 114 electoral votes of the slave states. Hence, even with a balance in number of states, the erosion of power and influence in terms of seats and electoral votes meant that the slave states were falling further and further behind. Up to this time New York and New Jersey were still reported to have slave populations; these two were the slowest of free states to emancipate their slave populations. Accompanying this Census in 1820 was the passage of the Missouri Compromise. Designed to reduce the intersectional strife and friction caused by power struggles that went along with adding slave and free states, this compromise “said that slavery was congressionally banned north of Missouri” in the federal territories.10 This congressional action allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state because the compromise forbade slavery in places north of Missouri. Besides creating a geographical basis for the existence of slavery, the compromise also laid the foundation for Congress to pursue a policy of balance in admitting new states to the Union. For each new state admitted to the Union, there had to be an equal number of free and slave states after 1820. But as the Census data reveal, this compromise, rather than limiting the intersectional strife, increased it.
The 1830 Census With the 1830 Census, the slave states could readily see that their disadvantages were steadily increasing. Table 5.6 (p. 104) shows that two new states, Michigan and Arkansas, were added to the Union on a provisional basis and each was given one representative. Michigan was admitted as a free state and Arkansas as a slave state. During the 1830s, there was a grand total of 242 seats in the House of Representatives and 294 electoral votes for the presidential races. Of the 242 House seats, the free states had 142 to the slave states’ 100, for a difference of 42 seats. The free states had 168 electoral votes to 126 for the slave states, for a difference of 42 electoral votes. The data of 1830 reveal that the gaps in seats and votes between free and slave states had widened over the differences seen in the 1820 data.
The 1840 Census During the Census decade of 1840, as shown in Table 5.7 (p. 105), four new states were added to the Union, all provisionally: two free states, Iowa and Wisconsin, and the last two slave states, Florida and Texas. For the first time the House of Representatives actually declined in its number of seats over the previous decade, dropping to a total of 230 seats from 242 in 1830. Even with the additional states admitted, the number of electoral votes also declined to 290. Of the 230 House seats, the free states had 139 and the slave states had 91, for a difference of 48 seats, up 6 seats over the 1830 count despite the overall shrinkage of the House. Free states had 169 of the electoral votes and slave states had 121, for a difference of 48 votes, 6 more votes than the difference of the previous decade. Thus, with each passing decade, in a House of Representatives of increasing numbers and in a House of declining numbers,
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
103
the slave states, despite adding new states to their bloc, were losing power and influence in the Congress and presidential elections—the Three-Fifths Clause notwithstanding. The 48-seat and 48-vote disparities were the largest to this point in time. If this trend continued, the slave states would become too much of a minority in the House to defend the culture and politics of their region.
The 1850 Census To stop this erosion of political and electoral power, the slave states were able to push the Compromise of 1850 through Congress. “The period was ushered in by the controversy over slavery in the newly acquired territory in the Southwest,” that resulted from the United States’ war with Mexico.11 “With the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the rapid peopling of many areas in the Mexican cession, a policy had to be decided upon.”12 In a bid to enhance its chances for statehood, California adopted a state constitution in 1849 with a clause prohibiting slavery. Historian John Hope Franklin described the situation: Some leaders held that the new territory should be divided into slave and free sections as in the Missouri Compromise. . . . Others . . . wanted . . . total exclusion of slavery from the territories. . . . Still others were of the position that the question should be decided by the people who lived in the new territories. . . . Finally, there were those who insisted that slavery could not be legally excluded anywhere. . . . 13 One of the things that helped to set off this renewed intersectional strife and animosity was the Supreme Court’s decision “in 1842, in the Case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania . . . [which ruled] that state officials were not required to assist in the return of fugitives, and the decision did much to render ineffective all efforts to recover slaves.”14 Leaders in the slave states felt that the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution had been set aside, and that this decision made the recovery of their human property even more difficult and expensive. Thus, slave state leadership and their slave owner constituencies felt that now they were not only losing political and electoral power but also their economic power. Therefore, they demanded that the 1850 Compromise contain “a stringent fugitive slave law,” but being a compromise, the non-slave states demanded and received the entrance of California as a free state and the end of the slave trade in Washington, D.C.15 It created, at best, a very uneasy and untenable situation for the moment, but the moment did not last long, and the nation stood on the verge of a dramatic re-shaping of the political landscape. Two years later, in 1852, “the appearance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin . . . increased the strain on intersectional relations. This novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe sold more than 300,000 copies in the first year of publication and was soon dramatized in theaters throughout the North.”16 The novel described in vivid and moving language the inhumanity and cruelty of slavery and the fugitive slave law and catchers. Now along with the attacks
104
Chapter 5
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Border Slave
Slave
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.6 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1830 Census Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives Non-Slave House Seats
b
State
Slave House Seats c
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
Connecticut
6
0
6
2
8
297,650
15
297,665
297,675
Illinois
3
0
3
2
5
156,698
448
157,146
157,445
Indiana
7
0
7
2
9
343,028
2
343,030
343,031
Maine
8
0
8
2
10
399,453
1
399,454
399,455
Massachusetts
12
0
12
2
14
610,407
1
610,408
610,408
Michigan
1
0
1
2
3
31,607
19
31,626
31,639
New Hampshire
5
0
5
2
7
269,325
2
269,327
269,328
New Jersey
6
0
6
2
8
318,569
1,352
319,921
320,823
New York
40
0
40
2
42
1,918,533
45
1,918,578
1,918,608
Ohio
19
0
19
2
21
937,897
4
937,901
937,903
Pennsylvania
28
0
28
2
30
1,347,830
242
1,348,072
1,348,233
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
97,182
10
97,192
97,199
Vermont
5
0
5
2
7
280,652
0
280,652
280,652
Subtotal (13)
142
0
142
26
168
7,008,831
2,141
7,010,972
7,012,399
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
73,456
1,975
75,431
76,748
Kentucky
11
2
13
2
15
522,704
99,128
621,832
687,917
Maryland
7
1
8
2
10
344,046
61,796
405,842
447,040
Missouri
2
0
2
2
4
115,364
15,055
130,419
140,455
Subtotal (4)
21
3
24
8
32
1,055,570
177,954
1,233,524
1,352,160
Alabama
4
1
5
2
7
191,978
70,529
262,507
309,527
Arkansas
1
0
1
2
3
25,812
2,746
28,558
30,388
Georgia
6
3
9
2
11
299,292
130,519
429,811
516,823
Louisiana
2
1
3
2
5
106,151
65,753
171,904
215,739
Mississippi
1
1
2
2
4
70,962
39,395
110,357
136,621
North Carolina
10
3
13
2
15
492,386
147,361
639,747
737,987
South Carolina
5
4
9
2
11
265,784
189,241
455,025
581,185
Tennessee
11
2
13
2
15
540,301
84,962
625,263
681,904
Virginia
15
6
21
2
23
741,648
281,854
1,023,502
1,211,405
Subtotal (9)
55
21
76
18
94
2,734,314
1,012,360
3,746,674
4,421,579
218
24
242
52
294
10,798,715
1,192,455
11,991,170
12,786,138
Total (26)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population. d
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
105
Free/Slave Status (1860) Free
Border Slave
Slave
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.7 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1840 Census Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives State
Non-Slave House Seats
b
Slave House Seats c
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
Connecticut
4
0
4
2
6
304,961
10
304,971
304,978
Illinois
7
0
7
2
9
475,852
199
476,051
476,183
Indiana
10
0
10
2
12
685,863
2
685,865
685,866
Iowa
2
0
2
2
4
43,096
10
43,106
43,112
Maine
7
0
7
2
9
501,793
0
501,793
501,793
Massachusetts
10
0
10
2
12
737,699
0
737,699
737,699
Michigan
3
0
3
2
5
212,267
0
212,267
212,267
New Hampshire
4
0
4
2
6
284,573
1
284,574
284,574
New Jersey
5
0
5
2
7
372,632
404
373,036
373,306
New York
34
0
34
2
36
2,428,917
2
2,428,919
2,428,921
Ohio
21
0
21
2
23
1,519,464
2
1,519,466
1,519,467
Pennsylvania
24
0
24
2
26
1,723,969
38
1,724,007
1,724,033
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
108,825
3
108,828
108,830
Vermont
4
0
4
2
6
291,948
0
291,948
291,948
Wisconsin
2
0
2
2
4
30,934
7
30,941
30,945
Subtotal (15)
139
0
139
30
169
9,722,793
678
9,723,471
9,723,922
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
75,480
1,563
77,043
78,085
Kentucky
8
2
10
2
12
597,570
109,355
706,925
779,828
Maryland
5
1
6
2
8
380,282
53,842
434,124
470,019
Missouri
5
0
5
2
7
325,462
34,944
360,406
383,702
Subtotal (4)
19
3
22
8
30
1,378,794
199,704
1,578,498
1,711,634
Alabama
5
2
7
2
9
337,224
152,119
489,343
590,756
Arkansas
1
0
1
2
3
77,639
11,961
89,600
97,574
Florida
1
0
1
2
3
28,760
15,430
44,190
54,477
Georgia
6
2
8
2
10
409,848
168,566
578,414
690,792
Louisiana
3
1
4
2
6
183,959
101,071
285,030
352,411
Mississippi
2
2
4
2
6
180,440
117,127
297,567
375,651
North Carolina
7
2
9
2
11
507,602
147,490
655,092
753,419
South Carolina
4
3
7
2
9
267,360
196,223
463,583
594,398
Tennessee
9
2
11
2
13
646,151
109,835
755,986
829,210
Texasf
2
0
2
2
4
0
0
0
0
Virginia
11
4
15
2
17
790,810
269,392
1,060,202
1,239,797
Subtotal (11)
51
18
69
22
91
3,429,793
1,289,214
4,719,007
5,578,485
209
21
230
60
290
14,531,380
1,489,596
16,020,976
17,014,041
Total (30)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment. b Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats). c Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats). d Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population. e Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population. f Census population data were not available for the provisional admission of Texas to the United States.
106
Chapter 5
and criticisms from the abolitionists, the slave states were losing the battle for public opinion. More importantly, the impact and influence of the novel had the potential to further erode their political and electoral power by setting into motion two new political realities. First, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, introduced by Illinois’ Democratic senator Stephen Douglas, undermined the temporary sectional truce generated by the 1850 Compromise. This new legislation provided that “Kansas and Nebraska should be organized as territories and that the question of slavery should be decided by territorial legislatures.”17 It ended up creating what historians call “Bleeding Kansas,” due to violent confrontations in the territory between pro-slavery southerners and “free soil” northerners over the type of state that the territory would become. The second new political reality occurred in the same year, 1854, with the founding of the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin, dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery into the new territories. Republican leaders vowed to halt the continuing efforts of pro-slavery political forces to return the nation to a pro-slavery republic. The Republican Party was developed to fill the political vacuum created by the collapse and fall of the Whig Party.18 Although these two new political realities became the new political engines driving intersectional strife and rivalry, the slave states were further aggrieved by the results of reapportionment from the 1850 Census. Table 5.8 displays the results of the 1850 Census. Near the end of this decade two new states, Minnesota and Oregon, entered the Union as free states. The slave states lost significant ground simply because, for the first time, there was no admittance of slave states to offset the new free states. With this handicap, the advantage of the free states in the House of Representatives increased to 57 seats over the slave states (only 90 seats as compared to the free states’ 147 out of the grand total of 237 seats). In the Electoral College there were 303 votes, of which free states held 183 and slave states 120, creating a difference of 63 votes. The pattern of lost political power and influence in presidential elections through the shift in the Electoral College was quite apparent. The leaders of the slave states could clearly see that free states had an ever-rising majority of seats in the House of Representatives and could outvote the slaves states; this was even more likely as northern public opinion was becoming strongly anti-slavery. Without new slave states, not even the Three-Fifths Clause could forestall the political and electoral power of the slave states slipping away, and the possibility grew that the very institution of slavery might also perish.
The 1860 Census With the advent of the 1860 Census, the nation was on the verge of civil war. Kansas entered the Union as a free state in January 1861, just months ahead of the start of hostilities in April 1861. In 1863, the Union-occupied territory of West Virginia was
formed as a free state, separated from the slave state of Virginia in the midst of the war. Nevada was also admitted in 1864. Of course, all of these states entered as free states. Two of these states had provisional representation, while one, Kansas, was fully represented. The point here is that with the onset of the war, the political and electoral power of slave states continued to decline. Table 5.9 (p. 108) shows that in 1860 the House of Representatives had a grand total of 243 seats and that the free states held 158 seats to only 85 for the slave states, for difference of 73 seats. Free states now had a near two-thirds majority (65.0%) of seats in the House of Representatives and a 42 to 30 advantage in the Senate. The slave states were at their political mercy. At the Electoral College level, there were 315 votes for presidential elections. Here, the free states held 200 electoral votes to the slave states’ 115—a difference of 85 electoral votes. This meant that the free states alone had enough electoral votes to decide a presidential contest—indeed, in 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln won the White House without a single southern electoral vote. If the Three-Fifths Clause population were to be eliminated, slave states would drop to an even smaller minority, and possibly to a “permanent minority” in the congressional and presidential politics of the nation. This population predicament makes evident the urgency that led the slave states to withdraw from the Union after Republican Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. South Carolina seceded first, and the other ten states of the old South followed in short order, setting up the Confederate States of America. Despite this secession, the Three-Fifths Clause remained in the Constitution, and the four border slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri remained in the Union to fight against the South in the Civil War. During the eight decades prior to the Civil War, some twenty-one states were added to the Union. Twelve of the twenty-one were admitted as free states and only nine were admitted as slave states. Figure 5.1 (p. 109) shows the number of states admitted by decade. Aside from the initial year of 1789, the decades of the 1810s, 1840s, and 1860s were the periods when the largest numbers of states joined the Union. Table 5.10 (p. 109) lists the states by the decade that they were admitted as well as the year of admission and their status on the issue of slavery as of 1860. Eventually, the slave states simply ran out of geographical territory for more states, as the western climate was not amenable to the cash crops that slaves had planted and harvested, and the would-be western states, seeing the growing power of the existing free states, cast their lot against becoming slave states. Figure 5.2 (p. 109) shows the numerical parity of free and slave states from the national founding through the decade of the 1860s. There was parity in the number of free and slave states in the 1790s and again from 1812, when Louisiana became a slave state, until 1850, when California was admitted as a free state. Then began a run that added two more free states before the advent of the Civil War and three more during the war.
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
107
Free/Slave Status (1860)
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.8 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1850 Census
Free
Border Slave
Slave
Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives State
Non-Slave House Seats
b
Slave House Seats c
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
California
2
0
2
2
Connecticut
4
0
4
Illinois
9
0
9
Indiana
11
0
Iowa
2
0
Maine
Massachusetts
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
4
92,597
0
92,597
92,597
2
6
370,792
0
370,792
370,792
2
11
851,470
0
851,470
851,470
11
2
13
988,416
0
988,416
988,416
2
2
4
192,214
0
192,214
192,214
6
0
6
2
8
583,169
0
583,169
583,169
11
0
11
2
13
994,514
0
994,514
994,514
Michigan
4
0
4
2
6
397,654
0
397,654
397,654
Minnesota
2
0
2
2
4
6,077
0
6,077
6,077
New Hampshire
3
0
3
2
5
317,976
0
317,976
317,976
New Jersey
5
0
5
2
7
489,319
142
489,461
489,555
New York
33
0
33
2
35
3,097,394
0
3,097,394
3,097,394
Ohio
21
0
21
2
23
1,980,329
0
1,980,329
1,980,329
Oregon
1
0
1
2
3
13,294
0
13,294
13,294
Pennsylvania
25
0
25
2
27
2,311,786
0
2,311,786
2,311,786
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
147,545
0
147,545
147,545
Vermont
3
0
3
2
5
314,120
0
314,120
314,120
Wisconsin
Subtotal (18)
3
0
3
2
5
305,391
0
305,391
305,391
147
0
147
36
183
13,454,057
142
13,454,199
13,454,293
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
89,242
1,374
90,616
91,532
Kentucky
9
1
10
2
12
771,424
126,589
898,013
982,405
Maryland
5
1
6
2
8
492,666
54,221
546,887
583,034
Missouri
6
1
7
2
9
594,622
52,453
647,075
682,044
Subtotal (4)
21
3
24
8
32
1,947,954
234,637
2,182,591
2,339,015
Alabama
5
2
7
2
9
428,779
205,706
634,485
771,623
Arkansas
2
0
2
2
4
162,797
28,260
191,057
209,897
Florida
1
0
1
2
3
48,135
23,586
71,721
87,445
Georgia
6
2
8
2
10
524,503
229,009
753,512
906,185
Louisiana
3
1
4
2
6
272,953
146,885
419,838
517,762
Mississippi
3
2
5
2
7
296,648
185,927
482,575
606,526
North Carolina
6
2
8
2
10
580,491
173,129
753,620
869,039
South Carolina
3
3
6
2
8
283,523
230,990
514,513
668,507
Tennessee
8
2
10
2
12
763,258
143,675
906,933
1,002,717
Texas
Virginia
2
0
2
2
4
154,431
34,897
189,328
212,592
10
3
13
2
15
949,133
283,517
1,232,650
1,421,661
49
17
66
22
88
4,464,651
1,685,581
6,150,232
7,273,954
217
20
237
66
303
19,866,662
1,920,360
21,787,022
23,067,262
Subtotal (11) Total (33)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a
Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment.
b
Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
c
Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats).
d
Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population.
e
Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population.
108
Chapter 5
Free/Slave Status (1860)
Provisional Representationa
Table 5.9 House of Representatives Seats and Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause, 1860 Census
Free
Border Slave
Slave
Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes House of Representatives State
Non-Slave House Seats
b
Slave House Seats c
Populations
Total House Seats
Senate Seats
Electoral Votes
NonSlave
(3/5) x Slave
Constitutional Reapportionmentd
Totale
California
3
0
3
2
5
327,263
0
327,263
Connecticut
4
0
4
2
6
460,131
0
460,131
327,263 460,131
Illinois
14
0
14
2
16
1,711,919
0
1,711,919
1,711,919
Indiana
11
0
11
2
13
1,350,138
0
1,350,138
1,350,138
Iowa
6
0
6
2
8
674,848
0
674,848
674,848
Kansas
1
0
1
2
3
107,015
1
107,016
107,017
Maine
5
0
5
2
7
628,274
0
628,274
628,274
Massachusetts
10
0
10
2
12
1,231,034
0
1,231,034
1,231,034
Michigan
6
0
6
2
8
742,941
0
742,941
742,941
Minnesota
2
0
2
2
4
169,654
0
169,654
169,654
Nebraska
1
0
1
2
3
28,763
9
28,772
28,778
Nevada
1
0
1
2
3
6,857
0
6,857
6,857
New Hampshire
3
0
3
2
5
326,073
0
326,073
326,073
New Jersey
5
0
5
2
7
672,017
11
672,028
672,035
New York
31
0
31
2
33
3,880,595
0
3,880,595
3,880,595
Ohio
19
0
19
2
21
2,339,481
0
2,339,481
2,339,481
1
0
1
2
3
52,288
0
52,288
52,288
Oregon
Pennsylvania
24
0
24
2
26
2,906,208
0
2,906,208
2,906,208
Rhode Island
2
0
2
2
4
174,601
0
174,601
174,601
Vermont
3
0
3
2
5
315,078
0
315,078
315,078
Wisconsin
6
0
6
2
8
774,864
0
774,864
774,864
Subtotal (21)
158
0
158
42
200
18,880,042
21
18,880,063
18,880,077
Delaware
1
0
1
2
3
110,418
1,079
111,497
112,216
Kentucky
8
1
9
2
11
930,168
135,290
1,065,458
1,155,651
Maryland
5
0
5
2
7
599,860
52,313
652,173
687,049
Missouri
8
1
9
2
11
1,067,061
68,959
1,136,020
1,181,992
West Virginia f
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Subtotal (5)
22
2
24
8
32
2,707,507
257,641
2,965,148
3,136,908
Alabama
4
2
6
2
8
528,961
261,048
790,009
964,041
Arkansas
2
1
3
2
5
324,287
66,669
390,956
435,402
Florida
1
0
1
2
3
78,678
37,047
115,725
140,423
Georgia
5
2
7
2
9
595,050
277,319
872,369
1,057,248
Louisiana
3
2
5
2
7
376,103
199,036
575,139
707,829
Mississippi
3
2
5
2
7
354,672
261,979
616,651
791,303
North Carolina
5
2
7
2
9
660,405
198,635
859,040
991,464
South Carolina
2
2
4
2
6
301,214
241,444
542,658
703,620
Tennessee
7
1
8
2
10
834,022
165,431
999,453
1,109,741
Texas
3
1
4
2
6
421,246
109,540
530,786
603,812
Virginia
9
2
11
2
13
1,105,341
294,519
1,399,860
1,596,206
44
17
61
22
83
5,579,979
2,112,667
7,692,646
9,101,089
224
19
243
72
315
27,167,528
2,370,329
29,537,857
31,118,074
Subtotal (11) Total (37)
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57; Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988). a Provisional representation accorded by Congress to newly admitted states; not based on any census but pending the next census for determination by reapportionment. b Number of Non-Slave Representatives = Rounded((Non-slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats). c Number of Slave Representatives = Rounded((((3/5) x Slave population)/(Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population)) x Total House Seats). d Populations in this column are constitutionally apportioned, except when provisionally represented. Re-apportioned population = Non-slave population + (3/5) x Slave population. e Total population = Non-slave population + Slave population. f West Virginia, formed from the slave state of Virginia, was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1863, one year after the reapportionment based on the 1860 census became effective in 1862. West Virginia is introduced here among the Border (Slave) states without population and representation data.
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861 Figure 5.1 Number of States Admitted to the United States by Decade, 1787–1860s
Number of States Admitted
14
Table 5.10 States Admitted to the Union of the United States, Founding–1870
13
Decade of Admittance to the Union
12 10 8 6
5
4
4
3
2
2
1
2
Original Thirteen States 1787–1790 a
4
3
Slaveholding Status as of 1860 Number Admitted
Year Admitted
13
1787 1787 1787 1788 1788 1788 1788 1788 1788 1788 1788 1789 1790
s 60 18
s
s
s 50 18
40 18
30
s
s
18
20 18
10
s
18
17
00
s 90
79 –1 17
87
18
0
0
Decade
Source: Table 5.10.
State
3
25
1800s
18 15 15 15
15 11 11
10 6
5
8 8
7
8
1
1803
15
1810s
5
1820s
2
9
1812 1816 1817 1818 1819
s 60 18
s 50 18
s 40 18
s 18
30
s 20 18
s 10 18
s 00 18
90 17
79 17
Decade Border and Slave States
1830s
2
1840s
4
Free States
1836 1837
Longitudinal Analysis of the Three-Fifths Clause Moving from our decade-by-decade analysis of the impact and influence of the Three-Fifths Clause and to a more dynamic longitudinal analysis, as shown in Figure 5.3 (p. 110), one sees how the number of seats granted by the Three-Fifths Clause evolved and peaked in the decade of the 1830s and began a descent afterward until 1860. The average number of seats granted to the slave states by the Three-Fifths Clause for this period was 18, and this number was surpassed in the decade of the 1810s, shortly after the new nation was formed. When these data concerning the number of seats in the House of Representatives attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause are analyzed from the perspective of percentages, Figure 5.4 (p. 110) reveals that in 1789 the House of Representatives began with over 15% of its seats attributable to the clause. Slave states held nearly 80% of
1845 1845 1846 1848
3
1850 1858 1859
1860s
4
1861 1863 1864 1867
Total Number of States 37
11
3
5
3
5
3
8
Free Border Slave 12
4
8
Slave Free 13
4
9
Slave Slave Free Free 15
California Minnesota Oregon
4
11
Free Free Free 18
Kansas West Virginia Nevada Nebraska
Cumulative Totals 1787–1870
4
Slave Free Slave Free Slave
Florida Texas Iowa Wisconsin
Cumulative Totals
2
Free 9
Arkansas Michigan
Cumulative Totals 1850s
8
Maine Missouri
Cumulative Totals Source: Table 5.10.
Slave
Free Border Slave Slave
Louisiana Indiana Mississippi Illinois Alabama
Cumulative Totals
87
–1
s
0
1820 1821
7
Ohio
Cumulative Totals
Border Slave Border Slave Free Free Slave Free Free Border Slave Slave Free Slave Free Slave Free
Vermont Kentucky Tennessee
Cumulative Totals
13 13
12 12
1791 1792 1796
Cumulative Totals
22
0
Cumulative Number of States in the Union
1790s
Free
Delaware Pennsylvania New Jersey Georgia Connecticut Massachusetts Maryland South Carolina New Hampshire Virginia New York North Carolina Rhode Island
Cumulative Totals Figure 5.2 Numerical Parity of Free and Slave States in the United States by Decade, 1787–1860s
20
109
4
11
Free Free Free Free 22
4
11
Free States Slave States Border Slave States
22 11 4
59.5% 29.7% 10.8%
Source: Adapted from Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 38. Calculations by the authors. a
By year of ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
110
Chapter 5
Figure 5.3 Number of House of Representatives Seats Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s 30
Number of House Seats
25
20
15
10
5
Decade
0
Number of HR Seats Mean
1787–1790
1790s
1800s
1810s
1820s
1830s
1840s
1850s
1860s
10 18
11 18
14 18
19 18
21 18
24 18
21 18
20 18
19 18
Sources: Tables 5.1–5.9.
Figure 5.4 Percentage of House of Representatives Seats Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s 18% 16%
Percent of House Seats
14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%
1787–1790
1790s
1800s
1810s
1820s
1830s
1840s
1850s
1860s
% of HR Seats
15.4%
10.4%
9.9%
10.2%
9.9%
9.9%
9.1%
8.4%
7.8%
Mean % of HR Seats*
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
10.1%
Decade
Sources: Tables 5.1–5.9.
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
these seats (with the rest among the border slave states) and kept this advantage as slavery concentrated in its grip and the percentage of attributable seats steadily declined. The causes of this decline included a steadily increasing national population with most of the growth in the free states, the increasing number of people represented by each House seat, and the constricted size of the House of Representatives beginning with the reapportionment of 1840. The mean percentage of the seats in the House of Representatives attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause stood at 10.1% for the eight decades covered during this period. The graphic data are a reflection of the tabular data. In both data sets the decade of the 1830s is revealed as the turning point in terms of the number and percentage of seats attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause. Again, analyzing these data from the perspective of percentages, Figure 5.5 indicates that both initially and for the next two decades, the 1790s and 1800s, the percentages of Three-Fifths Clause electoral votes that the slave states could cast in the Electoral College declined from 11.0% to 8.0%, just above the mean of 7.9% for the period (1787–1860s). Through the decades of the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, the electoral votes given by the ThreeFifths Clause stood near and slightly above the mean. Then, in 1840, the turning point came with a decline which continued below the mean until 1860. In the final analysis, what happened with the numbers and percentages of seats in the House of Representatives is reflected in the numbers and percentages of the Electoral College votes. The slave states steadily lost both seats and electoral votes in the competition with the free states. Power
was lost in both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, and the slave states never again increased their political and electoral power. Figure 5.6 (p. 112) shows the total number of electoral votes cast each decade in relationship to the number of votes that were attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause and the mean of the clause votes over the Antebellum period. The growing number of states in the Union and the growing population of the nation greatly increased the total number of votes in the Electoral College. The electoral votes attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause were basically overwhelmed. From the initial conception of the nation these votes declined steadily as a political advantage for the slave states. Still, only three-fifths of the slaves counted in this scheme. There was no way, given the ban on importation of slaves after 1820, for the formula to maintain parity with the other populations, where each person, including the Free-Menand-Women-of-Color, was counted at 100% in apportionments for representation. The slave states had to discount two-fifths of their slaves in the political bargain of the Three-Fifths Clause. They fell victim to a power arrangement that was supposed to yield a sustaining political advantage from their slave populations. Ultimately, the formula could not protect the slave states from the diminishing returns of slavery in a growing and evolving nation. Somehow, their leadership did not see this coming or could not find a way to overcome it. The duality of African American demography was dynamic and continued to grow and expand throughout the expansion of
Figure 5.5 Percentage of Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s 12%
Percent of Electoral Votes
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
Decade
0%
% of Electoral Votes Mean % of Electoral Votes* Sources: Tables 5.1–5.9.
111
1787–1790
1790s
1800s
1810s
1820s
1830s
1840s
1850s
1860s
11.0% 7.9%
8.0% 7.9%
8.0% 7.9%
8.3% 7.9%
8.0% 7.9%
8.2% 7.9%
7.2% 7.9%
6.6% 7.9%
6.0% 7.9%
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Figure 5.6 Total Electoral Votes and Number of Electoral Votes Attributable to the Three-Fifths Clause by Decade, 1787–1860s 350
Number of Electoral Votes
300
250
200
150
100
50
Decade Number of Electoral Votes
0
1787–1790 91
1790s 138
1800s 176
1810s 230
1820s 261
1830s 294
1840s 290
1850s 303
1860s 315
10 18
11 18
14 18
19 18
21 18
24 18
21 18
20 18
19 18
Number of 3/5 Clause Votes Mean of 3/5 Clause Votes Sources: Tables 5.1–5.9.
the new nation. Figure 5.7 demonstrates the evolution of these dual populations over the eight decades in this era. The slave population grew substantially during this period, reaching some 4 million individuals. The population of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color increased much more slowly and reached about 500,000. The growth rate of the slave population and application of the ThreeFifths Clause yielded a rather steady percentage—about 23%—of the House of Representatives and electoral vote delegations for the slave states.19 While with more limited growth and few states willing
Figure 5.7 African American Population Growth in the United States by Slavery Status, 1790–1860
to grant them suffrage rights, the free population contributed little to their states’ congressional delegations and electoral votes. Yet the problem overall for the slave states was that their total population never amounted to much more than half that of the free states. Figure 5.8 illustrates that the white population in the slave states did not keep pace with the white population in the free states. In free states Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color counted as whole persons and counted equally in reapportionments for seats in the House of Representatives, even though many of these
Figure 5.8 White Population Growth in the United States by Slavery Status of Residence, 1790–1860
4.5 3.5
Population (Millions)
Population (Millions)
4.0 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0
1790
1800
1810
1820 1830 Census Year
African American Slaves
1840
1850
1860
20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
1790s
1800s
1810s
1820s
1830s
1840s
1850s
1860s
Census Year Free African Americans
Source: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57.
Free States
Slave States
Border Slave States
Sources: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57.
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
states forbade them from voting. Since there were few Free-Menand-Women-of-Color in the slave states, their numbers did not contribute nearly as much to garnering House seats for slave states as did counting 60% of the much more numerous slave population. In addition, the free states that had slaves could still count them under the Three-Fifths Clause. Thus, the free states, with collectively a greater population that was fully counted, had an advantage over the slave states. Figure 5.9 highlights this dilemma and the problem inherent within the Three-Fifths Clause for the slave states by juxtaposing the population growth of these groups against one another. It becomes quite clear that the white population grew much faster than the slave population. Thus, since the slave population, concentrated in the slave states, did not grow as rapidly as total white population, the slave states’ reliance on the Three-Fifths Clause appears, in hindsight, to have had diminishing benefit over time. Finally, Figure 5.10 provides a longitudinal portrait of how the Three-Fifths Clause contributed to the electoral votes of the slave states. There is no question that the slave states initially
113
Figure 5.9 African American and White Population Growth in the United States, 1790–1860 35 30 Population (Millions)
25 20 15 10 5 0
1790s
1800s
1810s
1820s 1830s Census Year
Whites Free African Americans
1840s
1850s
1860s
African American Slaves Whites + African Americans
Source: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57.
Figure 5.10 Number of Electoral Votes by Slavery Status Grouping of States, 1787–1860s 350
Number of Electoral Votes
300 250 200 150 100 50 0
1787–1790
1790s
1800s
1810s
1820s
1830s
1840s
1850s
1860s
Total Votes
91
138
176
230
261
294
290
303
315
Free States
49
73
95
127
147
168
169
183
200
Slave States
31
48
59
76
83
94
91
88
83
Border Slave States
11
17
22
27
31
32
30
32
32
Decade
Source: Joint Committee on Printing, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1988).
received a significant boost in electoral votes through the ThreeFifths Clause, but as previous data analyses have shown, the turning point came after the 1830 reapportionment when this electoral vote advantage began to dissipate. Secondly, from the outset of the nation the free states had a clear electoral advantage over the slave states; over time this advantage increased despite the constitutional reapportionment mechanism that had been intended to maintain a measure of political parity between free and slave states.
Population growth in the largely rural slave states simply did not keep pace with that of the free states. Matching the free states in number rather than population was more practical and realistic for the slave states because they wanted both to continue with slavery and to remain politically competitive with the free states, and they could not legally import slaves after 1808. In 1830 the population gap between the two regions had become wide and continued to grow ever wider.
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Accounting for the Missing “Two-Fifths of a Person” The Three-Fifths Clause enhanced the power of the slave states in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Such a constitutional clause not only depicted the other two-fifths (2/5ths) of every slave as a non-person/non-human and simply property but the whole of these slaves as non-political forces and factors. The clause put 40% of the slave population tally completely outside of the political system in order to limit the political enrichment of slave states. But certainly the concept may very well have had the result of discounting full suffrage rights for Free-Men-andWomen-of-Color, even in non-slave states. In fact, no previous scholarly work on the Three-Fifths Clause has ever empirically analyzed the 2/5ths feature longitudinally. By presenting only 60% of a people, one leaves out the other 40%, and the resultant portrait is only a partial one. Discussion of this second dimension permits a complete portrait. Nor has anyone, at this writing, empirically analyzed what eventually happened to the Three-Fifths Clause in terms of the representation of former slave states in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College when action of the federal government eventually reversed the Three-Fifths Clause. Figure 5.11 shows the political meaning of the 2/5ths feature throughout the Antebellum Era. Holding slaves generated more representation and enhanced political power for the slave states up until 1830. Although the overall slave population steadily declined as a proportion of total population, among slave states the uncounted 2/5ths portion of slaves still remained as a potential reapportionment bonanza. But realizing this voting power would have required removing the yoke of slavery from most African Americans in slave states. The equivalent of nearly one million slaves were excluded from the 1840 House of Representatives reapportionment. Since the southern political leaders felt that their political power was being slowly eroded by the entrance of new states and the growing population in the north, they might have considered revisiting the lost 2/5ths component of the African American slave population as a strategy to regain empowerment, but this idea never surfaced as a tool to re-empowerment. Not only did it not surface amidst a large Figure 5.11 Two-Fifths of African American Slave Population as a Share of Total U.S. Population, 1790–1860
Percent of U.S. Population
8% 7%
7.3%
6.7%
6.6%
6%
6.4%
6.2%
5.8%
5.6%
5%
5.1%
4% 3% 2% 1% 0%
1790
1800
1810
1820 1830 Census Year
1840
1850
1860
Two-Fifths of African American Slave Population Source: Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 44–45, 57.
array of southern tactics and strategies, but redeeming this population would not in the end have helped very much with the losses of political power and economic riches. Undoubtedly, to count this lost population in favor of the slave states was a conjecture that the free states saw as ludicrous, without granting full citizenship to African Americans in the slave states and destroying the institution of slavery. However, recognizing African Americans, even in the free states, as equal human beings and citizens was a thought that was beyond the imagination of most of the electorate.
The Death of the Three-Fifths Clause Now we turn to the second aspect of the federal government and suffrage rights: government action to reverse the Three-Fifths Clause came about not as a determined and carefully worked out approach. It came instead with the secession of South Carolina from the Union in 1861, followed by ten other southern states, launching the Civil War. Constitutional scholar Nieman opines that “in the spring and summer of 1861, few predicted the revolutionary consequences of the Civil War for American constitutionalism and the rights of blacks.”20 The next step in this unplanned process to reverse the Three-Fifths Clause was the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which was supposed to free the slaves in the states of the Rebellion and not in the four border slave states that remained and fought with the Union. Hence, only the eleven states of the Confederacy lost their right to the Three-Fifths Clause representation in the House of Representatives. But since these states had already withdrawn from the Union, the question about their use of the Three-Fifths Clause was moot and academic. Nevertheless, the Three-Fifths Clause was still legally binding for the states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Thus, initially the Three-Fifths Clause was not eliminated but only partially reversed. The actual death of the Three-Fifths Clause came when the North won the Civil War in 1865 as the president and later the Congress would set the terms for the re-admission of the former Confederate states to the Union. In addition, there was the matter of the limitations and weaknesses embedded in the Emancipation Proclamation: Because the Proclamation left many slaves—including most of those in the border states—in bondage and was almost certain to be challenged in the courts, Republicans employed the amendment process to make emancipation universal and irreversible. Senate Republicans mustered enough votes to pass an antislavery amendment in early 1864, but despite solid Republican support, the House fell several votes shy of the two-thirds majority necessary to pass it. On January 31, 1865, however, with Lincoln promising patronage to gain votes from the opposition, Congress passed an amendment prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States and giving Congress authority to enforce the prohibition. Before the year was out, three-fourths of the state legislatures had given their assent, and the Thirteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution.21
The Electoral Context in Antebellum America, 1788–1861
Ratification of this amendment took place on December 6, 1865, and later the Fourteenth Amendment on July 9, 1868; with that, the Three-Fifths Clause passed into oblivion. It had been at this point in time legally destroyed. The federal government had finally reversed both the Three-Fifths Clause and the 2/5ths feature of that clause. The subsequent Civil War amendment, the Fifteenth, which was ratified on February 3, 1870, further buried the Three-Fifths Clause. And long before the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment the Military Reconstruction Acts, which “passed over a presidential veto in March 1867,” provided that military commanders in ten of the southern states register African American voters to participate in the state constitutional conventions as well as to elect representatives to state legislatures and Congress.22 Such actions allowed even former slaves to become members of Congress. Table 5.11 shows the number of representatives that each of the states of the Confederacy had in the House of Representatives in 1860 with the Three-Fifths Clause in place and the number in 1872 and 1882 after these states had been re-admitted to the Union and reapportionment had occurred. The data in this table show that most of the states of the Confederacy, which had been advantaged by the Three-Fifths Clause, gained even more advantage after the Civil War and their re-admittance to the Union simply because now the entire African American population was counted. In 1872 these eleven states had five more representatives than they had when they seceded from the Union in 1861. After another decade, in 1882, these eleven states would have eighteen more seats in the House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College than they had before they seceded. Table 5.11 Number of Seats in the House of Representatives Held by the Slave States during and after the Period of the Three-Fifths Clause, 1860, 1872, and 1882 During the Three-Fifths Clause States
After the Period of the Three-Fifths Clause
Difference (1860–1882)
1860
1872
1882
Alabama
7a
7
8b
1
Arkansas
2
4
5
3
Florida
a
2
2
b
2
0
Georgia
8a
9
10b
2
Louisiana
a
4
6
b
6
2
Mississippi
5a
6
7b
2
North Carolina
a
8
8
b
9
1
South Carolina
6a
5
7b
1
10a
10
10b
0
a
2
Virginia
13a
Total
67a
Tennessee Texas
a
b
6
b
11
9
9
10b
-3
72
85b
18
Source: Adapted from Guide to U.S. Elections, 4th Edition (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2001), pp. 889–891, 910–913, and 930–933. a
Elections for the House of Representatives in these states were held in 1859.
b
Elections for the House of Representatives in Texas were held in 1871.
115
In 1860, the range of seats in the House of Representatives ran from a low of two in Florida to a high of thirteen in Virginia. This range worked out to a mean of 6.1 seats per state. By 1872 the range ran from a low of two in Florida to a high of ten in Tennessee, with a mean of 6.6 seats per state. And in 1882, the range went from a low of two seats in Florida to a high of eleven in Texas, for a mean of 7.7 seats per state. Thus, the slave states of the Confederacy not only gained a political advantage in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College by the Three-Fifths Clause but these very same states got a second advantage with the removal of the Clause. African Americans were disadvantaged by the Clause because the vast majority never got any representation in the federal system when it was in place. Even after its demise they received only limited representation because the racial prejudices which the slave system made possible survived the Civil War and Reconstruction and subsequently made winning congressional contests difficult for African American candidates.
Summary and Conclusions on the Impact of the Three-Fifths Clause With the establishment of the federal government at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, there was a new institutional player in the voting system in America. During the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, voting qualifications were essentially left to the colonial and local governments. Creation of a federal government, with two houses of congress and a presidency, led to voting becoming a national, as well as a state and local, matter. Although the national government left the matter of voting qualifications up to the states, the Constitution did establish an indirect voting qualification, the Three-Fifths Clause, in terms of counting individuals to be represented by a seat in the House of Representatives. Such an indirect qualification sent a signal to the states about what they might decide to do about their African American populations. Nearly all of the new states that entered the Union, from the Northwest Territory, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Southwest Territory, prohibited, or eventually prohibited, free blacks from voting. Because the federal government set part of the electoral context with the Three-Fifths Clause, new states followed suit and discriminated against free blacks.
Notes 1. Samuel Kernell and Gary Jacobson, The Logic of American Politics (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2000), p. 500. 2. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2006), p. 303. 3. Ibid., p. 305. 4. Charles Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of ConstitutionMaking, 1787–1865,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 32 (April 1947), p. 146. 5. Donald Nieman, Promises to Keep: African-Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 11. 6. Ibid., p. 14. 7. Ibid., p. 8. 8. Ibid., p. 28.
116
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9. Wesley, p. 149. 10. Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), p. 24. See also, Albert Simpson, “The Political Significance of Slave Representation, 1787–1821,” Journal of Southern History Vol. 71 (1941), pp. 321–341. 11. John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 7th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), p. 192. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 193. 16. Ibid.
17. Ibid. 18. Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 931–950, 983–984. 19. This percentage is calculated as the number of House seats attributable to the slave population divided by the total number of Representatives in the Border and southern slave states. The percentage ranges from 33.3% in 1789 down to 21.5% in 1800. The average is 23.3%. See Tables 5.1 to 5.9 for the numbers of Representatives in the Border and southern slave states. 20. Nieman, p. 52. 21. Ibid., pp. 55–56. 22. Ibid., p. 71.
CHAPTER 6
The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867 Potential African American Voters in Antebellum and Civil War America
118
Table 6.1 Suffrage Rights of Free-Men-of-Color in the New States, 1791–1867
118
Table 6.2 Year of Eventual Suffrage Exclusion for Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color in the Thirteen Original States
119
Table 6.3 Free African American Population in States That Provided Suffrage Rights to African Americans, 1790–1867
120
African American Partisanship in State Elections, 1788–1866
120
African American Voting in Federal Elections, 1788–1866
126
Table 6.4 Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates in Massachusetts and New York, 1828–1860
129
Table 6.5 Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, 1828–1860
130
Table 6.6 Partial Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates, 1828–1860
130
Summary and Conclusions on the African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America
131
Notes 131
118
Chapter 6
T
he 1787 Constitution enabled the transition from a confederation of states organized under the Articles of Confederation and operating through the Continental Congress to a federalist system of government. In the Continental Congress only representatives of states could vote, and state legislatures decided which delegates would represent the state in the Continental Congress, not the voters. Now with the Constitution in place, national elections had to be held in the same way as state, county, and local contests. However, no federal apparatus or structure was created to set the rules and regulations for who could participate in these new elections. Thus, in the states where African Americans had the legal right to vote and did vote, they could now continue to vote in national elections as long as the states did not modify or reverse that right. Yet in most states this reversal is exactly what happened in the Antebellum and Civil War eras. This problem of reversal and modification of suffrage rights did not just exist in the original thirteen states; the purchase of the Louisiana Territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 literally doubled the size of the new nation and set the stage for the entrance of new states into the Union. Each of these new states would have to decide whether the Free-Men-of-Color within their borders would be granted suffrage rights or be denied them in each of the original state constitutions. As discussed in Chapter Four, the federal government allowed Free-Men-of-Color suffrage rights in the Northwest Territory, but a few states that emerged out of this territory, such as Indiana, rescinded that right even before writing a state constitution. Thus, new states emerging out of this new territory were not hindered in any way by suffrage rights granted by the national government prior to their entrance into the Union. States had the final decision on this matter.
Table 6.1 Suffrage Rights of Free-Men-of-Color in the New States, 1791–1867a
Year Black Suffrage Denied
State/ Territory
Potential African American Voters in Antebellum and Civil War America Coming out of the Revolutionary War Era nine of the thirteen original states accorded suffrage rights to free African Americans. Twenty-four new states were admitted into the Union between 1790 and 1867. Table 6.1 lists these states in chronological order according to when each entered the Union and indicates the year when they denied Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color suffrage rights. The very last column of the table shows the number of years between their entrance into the Union and the date of denial of suffrage rights to free African Americans. This table also shows that there were three new states that never denied Free-Menof-Color their suffrage rights: Vermont, Maine, and Nebraska. Interestingly, two of these states are in the New England region, where suffrage rights had been granted to Free-Men-of-Color since the Colonial and Revolutionary eras. This tradition of both suffrage and voting extends back for more than a century. In the immediate wake of the Civil War, Nebraska also granted freedom, citizenship, and suffrage rights to African Americans.
States that Initially Allowed Suffrage upon Entry to the Union Of the twenty-four states shown in Table 6.1, both Kentucky and Tennessee entered the Union with state constitutions that allowed Free-Men-of-Color to have suffrage rights and kept those
Year Black Denial Admitted Suffrage After Union in in to Union Denied Admissionb Territory State
Years of Black Suffrage
Vermont
1791
Continual
Kentucky
1792
1799
7
Tennessee
1796
1834
38
District of Columbiac
1802
1802
0
Ohio
1803
1803
0
Louisiana
1812
1812
0
Indiana
1816
1816
0
Mississippi
1817
1817
0
Illinois
1818
1818
0
Alabama
1819
1819
0
Maine
1820
Continual
Missouri
1821
1821
0
Arkansas
1836
1836
0
Michigan
1837
1835
1837
0
Texas
1845
1845
0
Florida
1845
1845
0
Iowa
1846
1846
0
Wisconsin
1848
1848
0
California
1850
1849
1850
0
Minnesota
1858
1858
0
Oregon
1859
1859
0
Kansas
1861
1861
0
West Virginia
1863
1863
0
Nevada
1864
1864
0
Nebraska
1867
Continual
Sources: Adapted from Charles Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution-Making, 1787–1865,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 32 (April 1947), pp. 153–154; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 349–353; Emil Obrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912). a
Excludes the Thirteen Original States.
Indication that African American suffrage was denied after date of state or territory admission to the United States. b
c
Territory.
constitutions for several years. Although Kentucky permitted suffrage rights for seven years after admission to the Union, African Americans retained these rights in Tennessee for thirty-eight years. Tennessee’s stance is explained, in part, by its origin in the westward expansion of North Carolina, itself one of the original states that granted suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color until 1835. This is somewhat surprising because both Kentucky and Tennessee were in a region where slavery was predominant. However, along with North Carolina and Georgia, these southern states gave the ballot to their free African American male populations.
The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867 119
States that Forbade Suffrage upon Entry to the Union A clear-cut majority of new states that entered the Union during 1800–1860, nineteen out of twenty-four states, regardless of whether slavery was permitted within their boundaries, entered the Union with state constitutions that excluded and barred suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color. None of these states would ever revise their constitutions to permit Free-Men-of-Color to have suffrage rights before the Fifteenth Amendment. During this period, geographic region did not matter in the politics of exclusion. Far western states like California and Oregon, midwestern states like Michigan and Illinois, southern states like Texas and Arkansas, and coastal states like Florida and Louisiana all denied African Americans suffrage rights. Even the federal District of Columbia, from the date of its incorporation, refused suffrage rights to African Americans. Seven states—Kentucky, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, and Michigan—held additional state constitutional conventions after their admittance to the Union, which allowed them one or sometimes two opportunities to remove the words “white only” from their constitutions, but none of them ever made this modification. The suffrage ban on African Americans remained in place. Another oddity is that two states, Michigan and California, specifically excluded Free-Men-of-Color from voting even while they were territories. Exclusion occurred in the Michigan territory in 1835, two years before Michigan became a state, and in California in 1849, one year before it entered the Union and forbade slavery in its state constitution. Overall, the twenty-four states that joined the Union during the Antebellum Era were less eager to extend suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color than the original thirteen colonies had been. Few states, even those evolved from territories without extensive slavery, desired to encourage suffrage rights for free African Americans. If the new states did not enlarge the pool of eligible Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color voters, did those states that denied and excluded African Americans during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras change their political minds and re-grant suffrage rights? Table 6.2 offers insights into this query. This table shows the dates that eight of the original thirteen states legally denied Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color suffrage rights. Two colonies, Virginia and South Carolina, excluded these individuals during the Colonial Era. During the Revolutionary and Antebellum eras, six of the original states—Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania—revised their constitutions and/or passed legislation excluding African American voters. Four of the six states passed multiple exclusionary procedures, such as moving from statutory exclusions to state constitutional exclusions, or revised older state constitutions and replaced them with new ones that continued to exclude African Americans.
States that Considered Reduction of African American Suffrage Rights Of the five remaining states where exclusion did not exist—at least on a permanent basis—during the Revolutionary and Antebellum eras, two made moves toward exclusion. New York, which had permitted Free-Men-of-Color to exercise suffrage
Table 6.2 Year of Eventual Suffrage Exclusion for Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color in the Thirteen Original States
Year Black Suffrage Evenually Denied to Women
to Men
Suffrage Never Denied
Multiple Exclusions
1699
1723
South Carolina
a
1716
Delaware
a
1792
Maryland
a
1801
New Jersey
1807
1807
Connecticut
a
1818
North Carolina
a
1835
Pennsylvania
a
1838
Massachusetts
a
New Hampshire
a
Georgia
a
Rhode Island
a
New Yorkc
a
State Virginia
b
Source: Adapted from Chapters 3 and 4. a
African American women were never accorded suffrage in these states.
In 1841, Rhode Island had an insurgent government that excluded African Americans from voting during its one year in power. Their suffrage rights were restored in the following year. b
c
In 1821 New York raised property qualifications for African American suffrage.
rights, reconsidered the matter at the 1821 state constitutional convention, for both partisan and racial reasons. Though they did not totally deny suffrage rights to blacks, they eventually added several onerous restrictions. Once the debate ended, a “provision was adopted on October 8, 1821, which placed the qualification for whites at the forty pound freehold but required Negroes to have a two-hundred-and-fifty dollar freehold. Negroes were also required to live in the state for three years and to have paid taxes. White men could vote after one year’s residence and the payment of taxes or the rendering of highway or military service.”1 Rhode Island, which had allowed Free-Men-of-Color to vote since it was founded, had an “insurgent take-over” in 1841: a property-less group took over state government from the landed gentry and stayed in control for a little more than a year. During that year the insurgent forces denied African Americans the right to vote and considered adopting a constitution that would have permanently denied the right of suffrage to blacks. In the next year, however, suffrage rights were permanently restored. Thus, in the decades leading up to the Civil War, only five of the original thirteen states gave suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color. During the transition from the Colonial Era to the Antebellum Era, the transition to constitutional government and federalism did not expand suffrage rights for African Americans but rather restricted them. Moreover, during this era of new states came the presidency of Andrew Jackson, from 1829 to 1837, and the birth of the mass-based Democratic Party. In the Jacksonian period suffrage rights were expanded and extended to the so-called common man, as states dropped their
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property qualifications. According to some historians, this led to a greatly expanded electorate and the rise of the first broad based political party in America. However, in a tremendous contradiction, Tables 6.1 and 6.2 reveal that in the Jacksonian time frame, two of the original states, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and one of the new states, Tennessee, curtailed suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color. During the Antebellum Era, suffrage rights for African Americans underwent a serious contraction in existing states and saw very limited expansion in the states that were newly
admitted to the Union. Table 6.3 offers a composite portrait of the original and new states that allowed suffrage rights to African Americans through the entire Revolutionary, Antebellum, and Civil War periods. Of the thirty-seven states that belonged to the Union during these periods, only eight, or less than one-fifth of them, allowed Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color to have the legal right to vote. The historical record shows that some African Americans did exercise their electoral power in the first federal elections, i.e., the initial presidential and congressional elections of 1788–1789.
Table 6.3 Free African American Population in States that Provided Suffrage Rights to African Americans, 1790–1867 Original Thirteen States 1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total*
State Massachusetts New Hampshire Rhode Island Georgia
5,369
1.4%
6,452
1.5%
6,737
1.4%
6,740
1.3%
7,048
1.2%
8,669
1.2%
9,064
0.9%
9,602
0.8%
630
0.4%
852
0.5%
970
0.5%
786
0.3%
604
0.2%
537
0.2%
520
0.2%
494
0.2%
3,484
5.1%
3,304
4.8%
3,609
4.7%
3,554
4.3%
3,561
3.7%
3,238
3.0%
3,670
2.5%
3,952
2.3%
398
0.7%
1,019
1.0%
1,801
1.2%
1,763
0.9%
2,486
0.8%
2,753
0.7%
2,931
0.6%
3,500
0.6%
New York
4,682
1.5%
10,417
1.8%
25,333
2.7%
29,279
2.1%
44,870
2.3%
50,027
2.1%
49,069
1.6%
49,005
1.3%
Subtotals
14,563
1.5%
22,044
1.6%
38,450
2.1%
42,122
1.8%
58,569
1.8%
65,224
1.6%
65,254
1.3%
66,553
1.1%
New States 1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Free Black % of Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total* Population Total*
State Vermont
269
0.3%
557
0.4%
750
0.3%
903
0.4%
881
0.3%
730
0.3%
718
0.2%
709
0.2%
Maine
536
0.6%
818
0.5%
969
0.4%
929
0.3%
1,190
0.3%
1,355
0.3%
1,356
0.2%
1,327
0.2%
0
67
0.2%
Nebraska Subtotals Grand Totals
0
0
0
0
0
0
805
0.4%
1,375
0.4%
1,719
0.4%
1,832
0.3%
2,071
0.3%
2,085
0.3%
2,074
0.2%
2,103
0.2%
15,368
1.3%
23,419
1.4%
40,169
1.7%
43,954
1.5%
60,640
1.6%
67,309
1.4%
67,328
1.1%
68,656
1.0%
Sources: Adapted from Tables 6.1 and 6.2; Bureau of the Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), p. 57. *
Percent of total free population (total free white population + total free African American population).
African American Partisanship in State Elections, 1788–1866 Given the fact that five of the original thirteen states granted suffrage rights to African Americans, this electorate could participate in the first elections for members of Congress and the president. House elections took place in 1788 and the presidential election followed in 1789. Merrill Jensen and Robert Becker’s four-volume study, The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790, was started during the bicentennial of the nation in 1976 and completed in 1989. These volumes contain documents covering the initial congressional elections in each of the thirteen states as well as the first election for president and vice president. This comprehensive and systematic work includes “the official documents, such as legislative journals, debates, and laws relating to the elections, and materials from letters, diaries, newspapers and other sources” and manuscripts that pertained
to these congressional elections.”2 These four volumes provide a rich source of data on the participation of African Americans in the first federal elections. Although the extant documents show that only free Negroes in New Jersey voted in the initial congressional election, African Americans were themselves a political issue in congressional elections elsewhere, in Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland, and Rhode Island. In Georgia, a seeker after a seat in the U.S. Senate, General Anthony Wayne, sought to overcome residency issues by proclaiming his credentials as a slave owner.3 Similarly, in South Carolina, a candidate for the House of Representatives, Dr. David Ramsey, lost an election in part due to accusations of sympathy for abolitionism, which he subsequently vehemently denied in a campaign of letters to the editor.4 In Rhode Island, where abolitionism was more popular, a key issue in the contest for U.S. representatives was a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning the slave trade immediately.5 Finally, the records
The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867 121
include the following remark made by one Maryland observer after the state convention had ratified the Constitution: “I expect the rule of tythes will be their guide—that is, to take in three fifths of the blacks, the which, I conceive to be right, as our delegation is increased by that rule, and we are also to be taxed accordingly.”6 All of these interesting documents give a glimpse of the context in which the first African American voters had to operate. Before we begin a discussion of Free-Men-of-Color voters in the early presidential elections, we will focus on their voting behavior and activity at the state level, so as to provide insights into their acquisition of political partisanship and party affiliation in the different political contexts in each state. Put another way, different states had different political partisan dominances, for the balanced two-party system did not exist at the state level in this period. We have chosen to rely on studies of these early factions, like the Federalists in New York, because in the absence of reliable state and local voting data on Free-Men-of-Color during the Antebellum Era, we adopted a methodological approach of examining factional affiliation in order to get some indications about African American voting behavior. Such findings from these factional groupings not only reveal how, and the manner in which, these African Americans came to vote in the early years of the Republic in state and local elections, but also how free African Americans acquired their partisanship in comparison to other contemporary Americans. In New York, for this first time in American political history, we now know that these Free-Voters-of-Color began their partisan attachments with personal factions or cliques of individual Federalists, and then transitioned into attachments and affiliations with a specific wing of the Whigs or in certain areas of the state with Democrats, because each faction backed an extension of suffrage rights in the state for the African American community. Later, when the anti-slavery parties allowed full participation at their state and national conventions, some African Americans became identified and aligned with these party organizations.
New Jersey In the initial congressional election for New Jersey the top four vote-getters, out of the fifteen candidates running, were sent to the House of Representatives. One of these four was Middlesex County candidate James Schureman who had been in the New Jersey state legislature and who, during his tenure there, led the successful effort to pass the “Law . . . to free the Poor Negroes,” and they “have all voted for him.”7 When the governor certified the vote to the clerk of the House of Representatives, congressional candidate Schureman got the most votes, 12,597, while his closest competitor, Lambert Cadwalader, got 8,685 votes, and the remaining top competitors, Elias Boudinot and Thomas Sinnickson, received 8,603 and 8,240, respectively. Extant documents tell us that “the Federal Constitution was very popular in New Jersey (the state Convention had ratified it unanimously)” and that congressional candidate James Schureman, due to his voting behavior and popularity among his constituents, was a Federalist.8 As for the 1789 presidential election, the free Negroes that voted in the congressional election for Schureman of Middlesex
County could not vote for the presidential candidates simply because New Jersey was one of the states where presidential electors were instead “chosen by the state legislature.”9 New Jersey at this time did not have popular voting in presidential elections as it had in congressional elections. Popular voting for the president in this first federal election occurred in only six of the thirteen states.10
Maryland African American historian Benjamin Quarles wrote about an instance in which an African American male not only voted but ran for office at the state level: Five of the thirteen states forming the new nation— New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina—did not exclude blacks from voting. Indeed, in one of these states, Maryland, a black candidate ran for public office in 1792, very likely the first of his color ever to take this bold step. Thomas Brown, a horse doctor, sought one of the two seats allotted to Baltimore in the House of Delegates.11 Quarles assessed Brown’s effort and impact by saying: His vote so minuscule as not to have been recorded, Brown was defeated in his bid for office, a circumstance reflecting the times. In but a few scattered instances were blacks a political factor during the eighteenth century, and black enfranchisement in postrevolutionary America was generally short-lived. In fact after 1810 Thomas Brown himself could not even have voted, Maryland having barred blacks from the polls as of that year.12
New York During this same time frame African Americans in New York were becoming active in the Federalist Party. Historian Dixon Ryan Fox described how this African American partisan identification evolved. First, noted Fox, “the Negroes had been reared in Federalist households; their cause had been advocated by distinguished Federalists, and now under the auspices of that party freedom was provided. When they reached the estate of citizens, their political attachment could be easily foretold.”13 The reason that all of this came about according to Fox was that “the Federalist party was the party of the aristocracy, especially in large communities, the party of the wealth won by a century of trade.”14 These men of wealth, property, and comfort hired slaves as “household servants” and treated them “with a careful kindliness,” making these slaves in this colony/state “a luxury rather than an investment in agriculture.”15 Moreover, these Federalist masters preferred to see their Negroes free, and led the movement in New York state for their betterment. Governor John Jay, who was one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, organized the Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and became its first president in 1785. He was succeeded by fellow Federalist Papers author, Alexander Hamilton.16 “It was a Federalist legislature and a Federalist governor who enacted the law of 1799 [gradual and general emancipation],
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by almost a straight party voted of sixty-eight to twenty-three.” New York’s Federalist political leaders voted for the principle of gradual and general emancipation in the state.17 Eventually, the Federalists would organize “among the Negroes a chapter of their partisan fraternity, the Washington Benevolent Society,” for political indoctrination and education.18 Finally, noted Fox, in opposition to equal suffrage rights the Democratic-Republican Party captured the state legislature in 1811 and enacted a law that severely restricted suffrage rights for African Americans despite strong objections from the Federalists. Reacting to this obstacle to suffrage posed by the new political party, “the votes of three hundred Negroes in the city of New York, in 1813, decided the election in favor of the Federal party, and also decided the political character of the legislature of the state. Not the number of the Negroes who were qualified made them formidable, but the strategic strength of their location.”19 Future president Martin Van Buren, a founding organizer of the mass-based Democratic Party along with President Andrew Jackson, observed the following about the African American identification and alliance with the Federalist Party in New York: The Negroes, with scarcely an exception, adhered to the Federalists. Their number in the city of New York was very great, and parties in that city were so evenly divided, that it was often sufficient to hold the balance between them, at times, too, when the vote of New York, in the legislature, not unfrequently decided the majority of that body.20 Van Buren, seeking to hinder his opponents in the Federalist Party, inserted a higher property qualification clause into New York’s 1821 state constitution that greatly restricted the voting rights of Free-Men-of-Color in state and local elections. On this point, historian Lee Benson notes: “the conservative majority led by Van Buren [and joined by even ‘liberal’ Democrats] supported . . . efforts to write a property restriction clause into the Constitution that limited suffrage to a small fraction of the Negro population.”21 Moreover, Van Buren’s Democratic Party would continue to deny unrestricted voting rights to Free-Men-of-Color in the 1846, 1860, and 1869 statewide referenda. In fact, the Van Buren “qualification of two hundred and fifty dollars passed into the fundamental law to remain until 1870.”22 This enduring property qualification for blacks only was not removed until the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and even then the Democratic Party in the state bitterly protested the Amendment’s existence. Simply put, “it was the Democratic legislature which retained the qualification for the blacks” in the state of New York.23 During this nearly five-decade period of restricted suffrage rights, 1821–1870, Free-Men-of-Color identified with the political party in the state that was pro-suffrage for them. If the Federalist Party began to decline, nationally, after the War of 1812, Fox told us that on the state level in New York, “the Federalist party as an organization in 1821 was already passing into history;” and eventually, as the leading Federalist party transitioned into the newly emerging Whig party, so did the party identification of African Americans. Benson noted that “since the
Whigs had favored equal suffrage before 1846, the Negroes’ solid vote can partly be attributed to their pursuing a political goal,” vital to the interest of Free-Men-of-Color.24 To strengthen his observation, Benson adduced this additional insight: Thus, it seems reasonable to say that Negro voting behavior in New York was primarily determined by this factor: men most hostile to them tended to be Democrats, men most favorable to them tended to be Whigs. Put another way, once we find that Democrats were considerably more likely to be “Nigger-Haters,“ we can deduce from our theory of American voting behavior that Negroes would range themselves solidly against the Democratic Party.25 However, in a more recent and statistically sophisticated analysis, John Stanley challenged the Fox and Benson argument about the linear continuity of African American partisanship in the state. Analyzing vote return data from the 1846 statewide referendum on extension of suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color, John Stanley wrote: “As far as party leadership was concerned, there is little doubt that the Democrats opposed suffrage with near unanimity. . . . Similarly, it is true that most men in public life who supported Negro suffrage were Whigs. This is a far cry, however, from saying that the Whigs as a party supported the principle of Negro suffrage.”26 Stanley concluded that “suffrage was not an issue between the parties, but rather a question that split Whig party leaders into two fairly even camps.”27 From his data he found that “at best only forty percent of Whig voters actually supported Negro suffrage.”28 Stanley continued: “Surely it would have been in the interest of Whig leaders and the rankand-file partisans to have obtained Negro suffrage in full. . . . Yet it was precisely in those areas in which the Whigs as a party had the most to gain from Negro suffrage that voting against suffrage was the heaviest and in which enfranchisement was most offensive to Whig voters.”29 Therefore, this anti-suffrage stance of about 60% of the Whigs led to a split within areas of the free African American electorate and in voting behavior in state and local elections. Essentially, in New York of 1846, African Americans identified with the (Horace) Greeley-(William) Seward(Thurlow) Weed wing of the Whig party and the candidates whom those leaders backed. Also, not all of the free New York blacks voted for Whigs. Some voted for other anti-slavery parties like the Liberty and Free-Soil parties.30 What the research of Fox and Benson and Stanley does not tell us is that while the suffrage issue split the Whigs in New York, it eventually fragmented the Democratic Party there as well. Stanley did show that several predominantly Democratic communities voted in favor of the 1846 referendum, i.e., for the extension of unrestricted suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color, but he treated this as an exception. Stanley declared: “the leading prosuffrage county in the state, Clinton, was a Democratic county. Town-by-town results show that in two cities in Clinton County the number of pro-suffrage votes exceeded the number of combined Whig and Liberty votes . . . and . . . three of the ten pro-suffrage counties were Democratic. . . .”31
The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867 123
Stanley found that in a very competitive part of the state, Courtland County, the local newspaper, the Cortland Democrat, during this 1846 referendum election “announced its support of Negro suffrage and accused the Whigs of being ‘secretly’ hostile to giving the right of suffrage to the colored population . . . and . . . the Cortland County Democratic party resolved to abolish the property qualification for Negroes.”32 Finally, during the 1846 referendum election, an unusual observation was made. “A black Democratic club in Clifton Springs was continually mentioned as an illustration of fondness of blacks for the Democratic Party.”33 This is the earliest extant record to date of the formation of African Americans into a Democratic Party organization. Prior to the fragmenting of the Democratic Party over the suffrage issue and the splintering of the Whig party into two opposing groups, the Liberty Party was organized in the state of New York “on April 1, 1840, at Albany” with the purpose and intent “to overthrow slavery” in the nation.34 This new party attracted African American leaders from its inception to the founding convention and converted some of them to its banner in support of its state and local candidates. The unequivocal, principled stand of the Liberty Party on the anti-slavery issue expanded African American public policy options beyond the issue of suffrage rights. However, after the Liberty Party’s founding, Free-Menof-Color voters in New York saw limited electoral success and continual failures of the party at the ballot box both at the state and the national levels. According to Benson, who studied the Liberty Party in state elections, its share of election votes went from 0.6% in 1840 to 4.1% in 1847. The highest percentage came in the 1846 election, with 4.7%, and the average over the eight state elections of this period was 3.0%. From this election data Benson concludes that “the Liberty Party’s gain had actually been scored between presidential years, and the party’s numerical vote remained relatively stable between 1843 and 1847, inclusive, whether cast in a state or national election.”35 With this minimal level of electoral support, Field found that it “remained politically impotent, never winning a single elective office,” in the state.36 At the very moment that their strength and influence had stalled at the ballot box, Free-Men-of-Color came under great pressure not to align themselves with the Liberty Party because the leader of the abolitionist movement, William Lloyd Garrison, urged his members and followers to use “moral suasion” instead of political and electoral power to defeat slavery in the nation. The leading African American spokesperson, Frederick Douglass, initially agreed with this philosophy and urged fellow New Yorkers to follow this idea.37 Eventually Douglass broke with Garrison and supported partisan voting, but while he held the nonpartisan approach it dampened the vote from the African American community, despite the fact that lesser-known African American leaders in the state were quite active in and for the party. Therefore, given the continual failures of the Liberty Party at the ballot box in the state of New York, “desertions increased as skepticism rose and enthusiasm [waned]. Many anti-slavery proponents moved back to their old parties. Knowing that their vote was small and that the Liberty party was collapsing, Negro
leaders were not desirous of fixing their allegiance. They, too, moved on to a more influential party.”38 Some Free-Men-of-Color moved into the Liberty League with the famous white abolitionist Gerrit Smith and his 1848 political vehicle, the National Liberty Party, while others attended the founding convention of the Free-Soil Party. “The actual organization of this party [Free-Soil] began at its Convention in Buffalo, August 9, 1848, where an effort was made to unite the discontented elements of the Whigs, Democrats, the Barnburners, the Free Democrats, the Hunkers and the political Abolitionists. They resolved to inscribe on their banners, ‘Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men.’ ”39 At this founding convention, there were leading Free-Men-of-Color from throughout the state: “Samuel R. Ward, Henry Highland Garnet, Charles L. Remond, Henry Bibb, . . . Frederick Douglass . . . and . . . other colored gentlemen.”40 Three of these men, Garnet, Ward, and Douglass, were “permitted to give a speech, but none received any notable appointments,” to the convention organizational committees nor to the party’s national or New York state organization.41 This marginalization was just a harbinger of things to come for the African Americans. “Over 20,000 elected and self-appointed delegates poured into Buffalo for the August convention. Uniformly zealous, they were a heterogeneous lot . . . and they included three main groups: antislavery Whigs from New England and the Midwest, antislavery Democrats, including New York’s Barnburners, and Liberty men.”42 At earlier and separate conventions the New York Barnburner Democrats had nominated former president Martin Van Buren, while the Liberty Party men had nominated Senator John Hale of New Hampshire. However, at the August Convention the Barnburners “primarily wanted Van Buren; they were less concerned about the platform, which they thus used to pacify Libertymen and Whigs.”43 Thus, the convention nominated Martin Van Buren for its presidential candidate and Charles Francis Adam for vice president. The nomination of former Democratic president Van Buren caused great consternation among the Free-Men-of-Color at the convention and in the state of New York. The main historian of the party, Frederick Blue, has written: Opposition to Van Buren was based primarily on the contradictions between his past record and free-soil principles. As vice-president, in 1834, he cast the deciding vote in the Senate for a bill to suppress abolitionist literature in the slave states. As president, he opposed the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of the slave states. In the Amistad case he tried, through an executive order, to force the black mutineers back into slavery. He endorsed the gag rule, a rule many northerners considered to be a gross infringement upon freedom of speech. He insisted that slavery in the South be left to the discretion of the southerners.44 Beyond his previous actions on public policies for the free and slave African American communities, there were additional problems of his candidacy which alarmed the free colored voters.
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“Predictably, most of the platform addressed the slavery question. Although it pledged noninterference with slavery in the states where it existed, it incorporated [the] demand that the federal government divorce itself from slavery . . . in the District of Columbia . . . and the [federal] territories. . . . [I]t insisted that Congress bar slavery from all free territory and that there be ‘no more slave states and no more slave territory.’ ”45 With this type of platform and the past history of Van Buren, several of the African Americans at the founding convention were quite skeptical of Van Buren’s true commitment, as well as that of the party as a whole, to African American rights. Since “the party did not demand equal social and political rights for Free Negroes, as did the earlier [anti-slavery] parties,”46 Douglass and others severely criticized the party and urged African Americans not to support it because it had a very limited anti-slavery program and policy.47 According to historian Eric Foner, “it was because of the Barnburners’ opposition that no call for equal rights for free Negroes of the North had been included in the Free-Soil platform of August, 1848.” As for the reason given, Foner says, “the Barnburners had emphasized that their opposition to the extension of slavery was motivated solely by concern for the interests of free white laborers, who would be ‘degraded’ by association with ‘the labor of the black race.’”48 Like the Democratic, Whig, and Liberty parties, the Free-Soilers had individual party members who held prejudices and stereotypical views about racial inferiority. “Almost all accepted the prevailing belief in the Negro’s intellectual inferiority, and many were uneasy about the prospect of a permanent Negro population in their own states.”49 Nonetheless, several Free-Men-of-Color voted for the party in the state of New York and at the national level. “By 1850, the Barnburners had returned to the Democratic Party, leaving the Free-Soil party in the hands of former Whigs and Liberty men, who viewed more favorably the demand for equal rights by Northern Negroes. But the national Free-Soil platform of 1852 continued to avoid this issue.”50 The national convention of the party met on August 11, 1852, “at Pittsburgh for the purpose of nominating party candidates for national office. . . . One of the first acts of this convention was to elect Frederick Douglass a secretary by acclamation. He was also invited to speak on entering the hall.”51 In his speech he urged the party to take a stronger stand on equal rights for Free-Menof-Color. However, the platform of that year did not reflect stronger stands for equal rights for African Americans. After this election the Free-Soilers fell from political sight, leaving African American members to seek other partisan homes. The last party to emerge in the Antebellum Era in New York was the Republican Party. Formally organized in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854, the party surfaced a year later organizationally in New York. Phyllis Field, a historian of this era, wrote: “In 1855 the Republican Party appeared for the first time and provided a more permanent organizational structure for many of the fusion groups of the previous year. These new parties [Republican and others] attracted some former Democrats but also repelled many ex-Whigs, thereby changing the nature of the Democratic coalition, already hopelessly split between the Soft and Hard factions.”52 One year later during the party’s initial presidential
election in 1856, “a black state convention endorsed the Republican ticket. Henry Highland Garnet, the main speaker, admitted that the party was far from perfect, but it did come closest to positions on suffrage and slavery favored by blacks and should be supported ‘regardless of the unkind things uttered by some of the Republican leaders.’”53 Field adds on this point of an emerging alliance between Free-Men-of-Color and the fledgling Republican party in the state of New York: Certainly the Republicans had contributed support for equal suffrage in the legislature, but Garnet was also drawn to them by the increasing number of antiblack immigrants in the Democratic ranks: ‘The oppressed Irismen (sic), once naturalized, are the loudest shouters for Buch(anan) and Breck(enridge) and Slavery extension, and the bitterest foes of the negro.’54 The rising free African American partisan identification and allegiance with the Republicans did not stop with Garnet’s call. “By 1858 . . . a black suffrage convention met in Troy, New York, and advised ‘the eleven thousand colored voters of this state to concentrate their strength upon the Republican ticket for governor.’”55 Two years later, the newly created Republican Party and Free-Men-of-Color would be on the same side politically during the 1860 statewide referendum on suffrage rights for African Americans. Very early in the life of the nation, Free-Men-of-Color forged party affiliations that allowed them to vote at the state and local levels for candidates in their best interests. Then, gradually, these initial partisan affiliations transformed as the political context evolved, and African Americans began to ally themselves with the coalition that best fit their interests, concerns, and public policy needs. During the seventy years or so following independence, the American political party system was in the throes of forming, reorganizing, and evolving. Simply put, the American party system was in its infancy, and instead of political parties the nation had, in the words of James Madison’s Federalist Paper Number 10, factions: “By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregated interest of the community.”56 Although all of the founding fathers opposed these factions,57 personally or group based, they would evolve into the modern political parties visible starting around the 1840s.58
Michigan African American party affiliation in Michigan began, in part, with a free African American candidate for the state legislature. In Michigan, free African Americans were seemingly attracted to the Liberty Party in 1843 on the basis of the anti-slavery issues but were not allowed political participation. Historian Theodore Clarke Smith wrote: “At the State Convention a ludicrous incident occurred: two colored delegates were not allowed to participate in nominating because they were not legal voters [in the
The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867 125
state].”59 Although free African Americans acquired partisanship affiliation on the basis of issues, they were not allowed to vote. Hence, partisanship evolved even before the legal right to vote.60
Tennessee and North Carolina Moving from the Northwest to the South, we learn from the historical record how Free-Men-of-Color in Tennessee acquired their party voting behavior. Emil Olbrich wrote: “John Bell and Cave Johnson said that they were elected to Congress by the aid of colored men’s votes, the latter boasting that he owed his election in 1828 to one hundred and forty-four free negroes who worked in his mills.”61 Attraction to this personal faction/clique was not just due to economic employment, because Olbrich said that “opposing candidates, for the once oblivious of social distinction and intent only on catching votes, hobnobbed with the men and swung corners all with dusky damsels at elections balls.”62 What this insight tells us is that social recognition and decent treatment was extended to this voting segment of the African American community. In North Carolina, especially in selected counties, “it was said that there were 300 colored voters in Halifax, 150 in Hertford, 50 in Chowan, and 75 in Pasquotank,” who tended to vote for those abolitionists who spoke against slavery and for similar individuals who supported suffrage rights for the group.63 Again, here is voting behavior predicated upon personal factions/cliques. Since in both Tennessee and North Carolina the right of African Americans to vote was reversed in 1834 and 1835, respectively, party identification and affiliation never had a chance to evolve and mature to the extent that it did in places like New York.
Maine Finally, there are the states of New England, where from the beginning Free-Men-of-Color had the right to vote. The issue of suffrage rights never really entered into their faction or subsequent party voting behavior. The key issues here were matters of anti-slavery and other equal rights, like schools, employment, interracial marriages, and holding elective and appointed offices. One historian describes these other rights very vividly: [N]orthern Negroes found themselves systematically separated from the white community. They were either excluded altogether from railway cars, omnibuses, stage coaches, and steamboats, or assigned to special “Jim Crow” sections; they sat in secluded and remote corners of theaters; they could enter most hotels, restaurants, and resorts only as servants; and they prayed in ”Negro pews” in the white churches. Moreover, they were educated in segregated schools, punished in segregated prisons, nursed in segregated hospitals, and buried in segregated cemeteries.64 In battling these forms of racial discrimination the FreeMen-of-Color in Maine had choices, such as the Maine Liberty Party up until 1848, then the Free-Soil Party after it was organized on September 27, 1848, with “nearly two thousand
excited and hopeful delegates . . . participating in the business of organization formation.”65 Eventually, with the failure of the Free-Soil Party at the ballot box, “abolitionists changed the party designation from Free-Soil to Free Democracy. . . . Next, the Maine Free-Soilers allied themselves with other Free Democrats in the nation by adopting the platform drafted by the national convention of the Free Democracy of the Union at Pittsburgh in August, 1852.”66 Later, to improve their ballot box support the organization became the Liberty League. The Liberty League was commissioned to secure party unity, to circulate antislavery documents, and to keep lecturers constantly in the field. A constitution was drafted and a membership of twenty-cents levied. But despite its high aims and the seal of its founders, the League did not measure up to their expectations.67 Thus, in Maine the electoral context did not sustain the antislavery parties, and the abolitionists in the state had to finally re-name themselves the Free Democrats while others took up the banner of the anti-slavery Whigs. And by 1854, “the die had been cast—Liberty and Free-Soil lived on in the new Republican Party which was formed out of these elements” in the state.68 FreeMen-of-Color voters found in Maine’s political context little support for the anti-slavery third parties. Here, they had to align with the major parties.
New Hampshire The political situation was different in New Hampshire. The leading anti-slavery individual in the state during the Antebellum Era was John Hale, who began as an independent Democrat but found the party not as strong in its anti-slavery position as he wanted. He then exited the party to become a Liberty Party man, and later the presidential nominee of the Free-Soil Party in 1852. Initially, there was reluctance on his part to accept the third-party route simple because he “had been elected to the Senate by the New Hampshire legislature in a political bargain with the aid of Liberty, Whig, and Independent Democratic support. . . . He agreed with the Liberty party’s anti-extension position, but Liberty identification might label him an extremist and harm his Senate career before it even started.”69 Nevertheless, he accepted and became the type of political leader with whom some of the FreeMen-of-Color voters in the state wanted to align. Outside of the state, African American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, supported him.
Massachusetts In Massachusetts, Free-Men-of-Color voters had a host of individual anti-slavery leaders and political parties with which to affiliate in state and local elections. Individuals associated with the anti-slavery cause included people like John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John Palfrey, James Russell Lowell, Joshua Leavitt, John G, Whittier, and Charles Francis Adams, to name just a few. In terms of parties there were the “Conscience” Whigs, the Liberty Party, the FreeSoilers, Independent Democrats, and eventually the Republicans.
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Beginning in February 1844, African American abolitionist leader Henry Highland Garnet was invited to speak at the Liberty Party State Convention in Massachusetts. There, he endorsed the party as well as its state and local candidates. Later, African American leaders from other states, such as Douglass, were brought in to endorse national, state, and local candidates of the Free-Soilers and the Republicans. Thus, in Massachusetts, the Free-Men-of-Color voters had partisan identification, affiliation, and voting choices for national, state, and local elections. Consequently, this group of voters had choices of personal factions/ cliques and the anti-slavery parties, as well as the anti-slavery wings of the Whigs and the Democrats. Free African Americans could get their voting cues and affiliations from any individual or organization, including the anti-slavery societies and the state auxiliary of the National Negro Convention Movement. There was never a shortage of individuals or organizations in the state of Massachusetts. Collectively, the historical narrative offers useful insights and data on how Free-Men-of-Color shaped their voting behavior and party identification in the Antebellum period. The dominant issues that were important to this group—suffrage rights, anti-slavery matters, and equal rights—all had political avenues for opposition and protest and reform within the context of the state and local environs. By combining knowledge of the historical narrative from the state and local levels with that occurring on the national level, a picture of African American participation in the Antebellum period begins to develop.
African American Voting in Federal Elections, 1788–1866 Little evidence has been located on African American voting behavior in the first presidential election. Nevertheless, some information is available about the states that permitted popular voting in the presidential elections. By matching up the demography of the African American population with county-level voting for the presidential candidates/electors, some insight is possible.
First Federal Election In 1788–1789 only Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia allowed popular voting for the presidency. In this initial election only two states, Maryland and Pennsylvania, had popular voting statewide, while Delaware and Virginia allowed popular voting by some, but not all, of their internal election districts. New Hampshire allowed popular voting with the caveat that the state legislature would step in and make the choice if no candidate received an electoral majority. Massachusetts had popular voting within election districts, but then the state legislature would select between the top two popularly chosen candidates. By the time of this initial federal election, Free-Men-andWomen-of-Color could not vote in Virginia, but Free-Men-ofColor could vote in Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Therefore, of the ten original states that voted in this initial election, free African American males could have participated in five of these states. Although no evidence has yet been found to allow independent confirmation
of this electoral participation, population data shown in Table 6.3 indicates the size of the Free-Men-and-Women-ofColor population two years after the election and permits insight into the possibility of African American participation in the first presidential election. Recent historical research has uncovered rare county-level voting data in all of the five states where Free-Men-of-Color had the legal right to vote. Using the standard consensus estimate in historical research of taking 20% of the total population of free African Americans, this then becomes the estimate of the number of potential African American voters in the initial federal election of 1788–1789.70 In addition to this estimation procedure, several historical narratives and accounts for subsequent elections in some of the states in the Antebellum Era offer brief discussions of voting by Free-Men-of-Color in state and local elections.
Anti-Slavery Parties of the 1840s and 1850s Due to limited data, the historical narrative is sketchy and incomplete for the Free-Men-of-Color voters in the first federal election. After the rise of the anti-slavery political parties in the 1840s, the narrative becomes more complete because of better data and coverage of the Free-Men-of-Color party and voting activism. Anti-slavery parties allowed African Americans to participate in their national conventions. The Anti-Masonic party held the first national nominating convention in Baltimore, on September, 26–28, 1831; the Democratic Party became the first of the major parties to hold a national convention on May 21–23, 1832, also in Baltimore. The Liberty Party held its initial national convention on November 13, 1839, in Warsaw, New York. Both of the Liberty candidates, James Birney and Francis Lemoyne, declined the nomination for president. Then, on April 1, 1840, the Liberty Party held another national nominating convention in Albany, New York, and James Birney and Thomas Earle accepted the presidential and vice presidential nominations, respectively. Of this new national political vehicle “Negro leaders began to express interest in the Liberty Party and to associate themselves with it. Samuel Ringgold Ward . . . allied himself with this party,” along with Henry Highland Garnet, J.W. Loguem, and William Wells Brown.71 Both Logeum and Brown became lecturers for this new political party during the 1840 presidential campaign. These supporters faced a major obstacle in their community in the early 1830s when William Lloyd Garrison “established the Liberator [newspaper] and formed the New England Antislavery Society” because he forbade and “denounced all political activity.” “The Garrisonians were sure that moral suasion would overcome the slavocracy.”72 Politics for them did not operate from pure motives and actions disentangled from mundane obligations. Simply put, Garrison and his followers were opposed to the Liberty Party, and among his followers were many Free-Men-of-Color, including the great Frederick Douglass. Hence, such men became ambivalent about supporting this new political party. Some Negroes tried to remain in both camps, supporting both the moral suasionists and political activists. Due to the schisms among the free blacks, and “on account of its poor organization and the divisions among its ranks”
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and near total media blackout, the party received less than 7,053 votes, which was less than 1% of the total votes cast in the presidential election of 1840. Some of these votes were cast by Free-Men-of-Color.73 This led to further African American participation with the party in sundry state and local conventions and elections. However, the most historic moment came at its next national convention held at Buffalo, New York on August 30, 1843: Several Negro delegates were present. Among these were the distinguished public figures of Henry Highland Garnet, Charles B. Ray and Samuel R. Ward. Garnet was appointed on the committee on nominations of officers, . . . Charles B. Ray was appointed on the committee to make a roll of the convention and was elected one of the convention secretaries. Samuel R. Ward led the convention in prayer and delivered an address. This was the first time in American history that Negro citizens were actively in the leadership of a political convention.74 Besides making history as participants in a national convention, Garnet offered and got adopted a resolution. This, too, became another historic first. This resolution read as follows: Resolved, that the Liberty Party has not been organized for any temporary purpose, by interested politicians, but has arisen from among the people, in consequence of a conviction, hourly gaining ground, that gaining ground, that no other party in the country represents the true principles of American Liberty, or the true spirit of the Constitution of the United States.75 During the national convention, James G. Birney was once again nominated as the party’s presidential candidate, and Thomas Morris got the bid for vice president. Next, the party platform included two planks for African Americans. The 35th resolution read: Resolved, that this Convention recommend to the friends of Liberty in all those free States where any inequality of rights and privileges exist on account of color, to employ their utmost energies to remove all such remnants and effects of the slave system.76 The thirty-sixth resolution read: Resolved, that we cordially welcome our colored fellow citizens to fraternity with us in the Liberty Party, in its great contest to secure the rights of mankind, and the religion of our common country.77 No other political party, major or minor, up to this point had made use of a party platform to welcome African American political and electoral participation. In the 1844 presidential
election the party received 62,197 votes, about 3% of the total votes cast. Hence, in 1843–1844 the Liberty Party made history and would continue to do so in the national elections of 1848, 1852, 1856, and 1860. African American voting and participation continued in a dwindling manner throughout the life of the party. Other, smaller third parties, like the National Liberty Party and the Political Abolition Party, received support from the FreeMen-of-Color voters. But they in turn received competition from the Liberty Party and the new Free-Soil Party that arose in 1848.78 As noted earlier, at their founding national convention in Buffalo, New York, on August 9–10, 1848, “the discontented elements of the Whigs, Democrats, the Barnburners, the Free Democrats, the Hunkers, and the political abolitionists,” as well as free blacks, came together and helped form the Free-Soil Party.79 However, because so many different motives led to the founding of this new political party, with the dominant one being to attract more followers and voters than the Liberty Party, “the Free-Soil Party only went so far as to oppose the extension of slavery into newly acquired territories; to cull the support of Democrats and Whigs, it did not advocate action against states where slavery already existed.”80 Therefore, several of the free black delegates in attendance at this founding convention were like Samuel Ward, who urged in his “Address to the Four Thousand Colored Voters of the State of New York” that they not vote for the Free-Soil Party and its candidate, former president Martin Van Buren. In his address he stated: Vote according to your principles of abhorrence of slavery; vote in accordance with your desire for enfranchisement of all the colored men of the State; vote against the extension of slavery, by voting against its existence; vote with a party that is true to all the great interests of the crushed, poor, black or white, bond or free, a party that has not deserted us to rally around the standard of one of our most implacable foes; vote so as to maintain your own self-respect, so that your children shall not be ashamed to own you as fathers; . . .81 Ward wanted his community to vote for the Liberty Party. In fact, Douglass, who was also a delegate, agreed with Ward, and he editorialized in his newspaper urging his readers not to vote for the Free-Soil Party and Van Buren. In the 1848 presidential election the Free-Soilers captured 291,263 votes to 2,733 for the National Liberty Party. This was a much greater national showing than the initial Liberty Party effort. According to the historical record, “the Negro voters in New Bedford, Massachusetts, who were . . . between six hundred and seven hundred, were reported to have voted, ‘almost to a man,’ for the Free-Soil ticket. Frederick Douglass is the authority for the statement that this was the case in all parts of Massachusetts.”82 To obtain this level of support the majority of abolitionists and anti-slavery and Liberty Party men moved into the emerging Free-Soil Party and attracted the Free-Men-of-Color with them. However, not all of the Free-Men-of Color voters in 1848 went for the Free-Soilers and the smaller anti-slavery parties: “in Rhode Island, the situation was a different one. The Colored
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Voters in Providence are said to have ‘almost unanimously supported the [Zachary] Taylor ticket,’” the Whig candidate for president.83 Historically, the state “Law and Order” party (as the Whigs were named in Rhode Island) in 1842 restored suffrage rights to free black voters after they had been taken away in 1822. Thus, in the words of Frederick Douglass, who had traveled to the state during this crisis: “This circumstance has given the Whigs almost complete control of the colored voters; so that if the Whigs should nominate Satan himself, they might calculate upon a large dark vote in Rhode Island.”84 Accordingly, since the elites of the party knew this, they issued during the 1848 presidential campaign an address to the African American electorate in the state entitled “Address of the Whigs to Colored Voters,” which reminded them in no uncertain terms that this was not the time for them to show their “ingratitude.” However, in 1850, two years after the Free-Soil defeat, “the Barnburners had returned to the Democratic Party, leaving the Free-Soil Party in the hands of former Whigs and Liberty men, who viewed more favorably the demand for equal rights by Northern Negroes. But the national Free-Soil platform of 1852 continued to avoid this issue [equal rights for African Americans].”85 Historian Foner tells us that racial prejudices, which had plagued the party from its inception, continued to do so in the presidential election of 1852 simply because party leaders “realized that in a society characterized by an all but universal belief in white supremacy, no political party could function effectively which included a call for equal rights in its national platform.”86 When the second national convention of the Free-Soil party convened in Pittsburgh on August 11, 1852, and nominated John Hale for president and George Julian for vice president, several African American delegates were present. Douglass, who spoke to the convention, “was elected secretary of the Convention. Upon receiving the appointment he completely endorsed the party and its endeavors. . . . During the year, Douglass also entered the ranks of the old Liberty party and worked for both parties and their candidates throughout the elections.”87 Seemingly, Douglass took this unprecedented party activism because the convention “adopted a resolution favoring the enfranchisement of all men without regard to color.”88 In this the party’s final election appearance, it “polled 156,297 votes in the election; the Liberty party 72. . . . After this defeat, the Free-Soil party dissolved.”89 Afterwards, the Liberty Party, along with a couple of smaller anti-slavery parties, labored on, but all of them gave way in 1856 to a new party, the Republican Party.
The Republican Party On June, 17–19, 1856, the newly formed Republican Party met at Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia and nominated John Fremont for president and William Dayton for vice president. Historian Charles Wesley noted: “The participation of Negroes in early Republican Party politics is uncertain. In the first place, this party was not an anti-slavery political party. . . . It proposed not to interfere with slavery where it existed.”90 It was only opposed to the extension of slavery, like the Free-Soilers. As far as the extant historical record shows there were no free
black delegates at this initial Republican National Convention. There is no clear historical data on how Douglass and others responded to this new party. From the party’s inception in 1854, Douglass’s newspaper, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, carried notices about meetings of the party. But in the 1856 election, “there is no indication that any special effort was made to attract Negro voters nor to interest the American people in extending the suffrage to Negroes.”91 In the 1856 presidential election the party received 38.5% of the total votes cast and 114 electoral votes (compared to the 174 electoral votes for the Democratic Party) and instantly became the second major political party in the nation. Therefore, when the Republicans held their second national convention in Chicago on May 16, 1860, nominating Abraham Lincoln for president and Hannibal Hamlin for vice president, African Americans took notice but no delegates attended the convention. At nearly the same time, leading African American spokespersons were in attendance at a Political Anti-Slavery Convention in Boston on May 29, 1860. Later, on August 29, 1860, at the party convention of the Radical Political Abolitionists, the remnant faction of the Liberty Party, Douglass “was appointed to the business committee . . . and was chosen as one of two electors-at-large. Again this was the first time that an American Negro had been nominated for such a party position.”92 After the convention Douglass declared his support for his long time abolitionist friend Gerrit Smith, who would be running as the presidential candidate of the party. Douglass in this 1860 election eventually changed his mind as he watched the Lincoln campaign become clearer on the question of limiting the expansion of slavery vis-à-vis the Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas, who embraced each state’s electorate deciding the existence of slavery. Thus, Frederick Douglass, late in the campaign, “ended up endorsing Lincoln and campaigning for him in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa,” states where FreeMen-of-Color did not have suffrage rights.93 Nevertheless, Lincoln and the Republican Party won with 59.4% of the vote and 180 electoral votes, primarily because the Democratic Party in the election had split and splintered into three different factions, each one having its own set of candidates. Lincoln would win reelection in 1864, and white Lincoln delegates from the South were elected at the national convention, of Lincoln’s reelection. At the 1868 Republican National Convention, African American delegates would appear at a major political party convention for the very first time. And since 1868, African American delegates have been present at every one of the national conventions of the Republican Party.
Statistical Analyses for the Antebellum Era At this point, the historical literature and narratives that discuss and describe how the Free-Men-of-Color voted in national elections during the Antebellum Era comes to an end. This is very similar to the literature on their voting in the first federal election. Historians and political scientists have not focused on the years shortly after the 1860s. Thus, we now seek to determine if an empirical analysis can provide further insights and findings not embedded in the historical and political science literature.
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In order to gather the necessary empirical data, we turn to the United States censuses conducted during the Antebellum Era. First, we must take into account the limitations in the census data during this era. No gender breakdown by race was presented in the census data until 1820. Hence, there is no such data usable to isolate African American voters for the census years of 1790, 1800, and 1810. However, beginning with the 1820 census, the number and percentages of voting age Free-Men-of-Color in counties of every state that allowed them to vote is given. Next, we obtained the votes and percentages of the vote in counties of these states for each political party in every presidential election from 1828 through 1860. This county-level presidential voting data and Free-Men-of-Color population data have been combined for the first time ever and placed in Appendix A of this volume. Secondly, with this county-level census data and the countylevel presidential voting data, we can, for the first time, use the statistical technique of correlation to see if there is an association of the Free-Men-of-Color voters with any of the political parties that the historical literature illuminated. Typically, historians and political scientists correlate the total African American countylevel population with the county-level presidential vote. Such
an approach tends to overstate the relationship between the two variables because the total population includes women, children, and infirm individuals who did not or could not vote. For our analysis, we eliminated that problem by taking only African American males and using only the states where they had the legal right to vote to determine if a significant statistical correlation occurred. Our analysis shows that such a relationship occurred almost continuously in two states, Massachusetts and New York, for presidential elections during the Antebellum Era. Table 6.4 shows the strengths of those state-level correlations in a longitudinal manner. Although the correlations are low, this is to be expected simply because of the numbers; the electorate percentages of Free-Men-of-Color voters are small. However, the correlations are statistically significant. For example, Table 6.4 shows that at the 95% confidence level nearly 30% of each percentage increase of the vote in New York for Jackson in the presidential election of 1832 was associated with the presence of Free-Men-of-Color. Another example, in Table 6.5, shows that 42% of each percentage increase of the opposition vote in Pennsylvania against Jackson in the same election was associated with the presence of Free-Men-of-Color. The statistically significant correlations
Table 6.4 Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates in Massachusetts and New York, 1828–1860
State
Year
Number of Counties
Candidate
Political Party
Massachusetts
1828 1828 1832 1844 1844 1844 1848 1848
13 13 14 14 14 14 14 14
J.Q. Adams Others Clay Birney Clay Others Others Taylor
National Republican
1832
55
1832 1844 1848 1848 1848 1852 1852 1856 1856 1856 1860 1860
55 56 56 56 56 59 59 59 59 59 60 60
New York
Correlation
Significance Level
Whig
–0.7761 0.6911 0.5332 –0.6565 0.5540 0.7062 0.8448 0.5821
0.01 0.01 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.01 0.01 0.05
Clay
National Republican
–0.2938
0.05
Jackson Birney Cass Taylor Van Buren Hale Pierce Buchanan Fillmore Fremont Breckinridge Lincoln
Democratic Republican Liberty Democratic Whig Free Soil Free Soil Democratic Democratic American Know Nothing Republican S. Democratic Republican
0.2938 –0.5449 0.3169 0.4328 –0.4780 –0.4856 0.3719 0.4398 0.5166 –0.5778 0.4891 –0.4894
0.05 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
National Republican Liberty Whig
Sources: ICPSR Study No. 1, United States Historical Election Returns, 1824–1968, 2nd ICPSR ed. [Computer File], http://dx.doi.org:10.3886/ICPSR00001 (Ann Abor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, ICPSR Study No. 8611, Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840–1972 [Computer File], http://dx.doi.org:10.3886/ICPSR08611 (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; and Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (Charlottesville: University of Virginia), retrieved April 13, 2008. See Appendices 6.A.1–6.A.9.
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suggest that the historical literature is quite meaningful. These data tell us that at least in these two states Free-Men-of-Color voters were almost always either active or influential in these presidential elections. Table 6.5 reveals that in the states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Rhode Island Free-Men-of-Color voters were intermittently active in presidential elections. As we have mentioned, North Carolina and Pennsylvania African Americans lost the right to vote in 1835 and 1838, respectively. Thus, these limited voting data occurred in part because of legal realities. In Rhode Island, Free-Men-of-Color voters were denied their suffrage rights in 1822 but gained them back in 1842, so legal reasons also existed there. Finally, after establishing that a significant statistical correlation existed between free blacks and certain presidential parties, we performed some partial correlational analyses where we controlled
for competing party variables. We found that significant partial correlations existed for some years in Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. Table 6.6 indicates the presidential election years in which the partial correlations occurred and gives us the strength of those partial correlations. And while these partials occurred across time, they did so in only a selected number of years. Moreover, these partial correlations tell us that the relationships between the free black voters and these presidential parties held even when everything else was controlled for. Hence, out of our empirical analyses, we obtain the insight and suggestion that the data help to corroborate the findings and insights in the historical literature. African Americans in national elections voted for those candidates and parties that their political context and culture allowed them to identify and affiliate with, as well as for those who spoke to their interests about suffrage rights, slavery, and equal rights.
Table 6.5 Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, 1828–1860 State
Year
Number of Counties Candidate
North Carolina
1828
62
Others
Pennsylvania
1828 1828 1832 1832
47 47 49 49
Rhode Island
1852
5
Political Party
Correlation
Significance Level
0.5374
0.01
Jackson J.Q. Adams Jackson Wirt
Democratic Republican National Republican Democratic Republican Anti-Masonic
–0.4254 0.4254 –0.4934 0.4934
0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
Hale
Free Soil
–0.8833
0.05
Sources: ICPSR Study No. 1, United States Historical Election Returns, 1824–1968, 2nd ICPSR ed. [Computer File], http://dx.doi.org:10.3886/ICPSR00001 (Ann Abor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, ICPSR Study No. 8611, Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840–1972 [Computer File], http://dx.doi.org:10.3886/ICPSR08611 (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; and Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (Charlottesville: University of Virginia), retrieved April 13, 2008. See Appendices 6.A.1–6.A.9.
Table 6.6 Partial Correlations of Voting Behavior Percentages: Voting Age African Americans and Votes for U.S. Presidential Candidates, 1828–1860 State
Year
Number of Counties Candidate
Political Party
Correlation
Significance Level
New Hampshire
1848 1848 1848
8 8 8
Cass Taylor Van Buren
Democratic Whig Free Soil
–0.8928 –0.8928 –0.8918
0.017 0.017 0.017
New York
1832 1836 1836
55 55 55
Clay Harrison Van Buren
National Republican Whig Democrat
–0.2938 0.3067 0.3067
0.029 0.024 0.024
North Carolina
1828
62
Others
0.5297
0.000
Pennsylvania
1828
47
Jackson
Democratic Republican
–0.4254
0.003
Sources: ICPSR Study No. 1, United States Historical Election Returns, 1824–1968, 2nd ICPSR ed. [Computer File], http://dx.doi.org:10.3886/ICPSR00001 (Ann Abor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, ICPSR Study No. 8611, Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840–1972 [Computer File], http://dx.doi.org:10.3886/ICPSR08611 (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; and Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (Charlottesville: University of Virginia), retrieved April 13, 2008. See Appendices 6.A.1–6.A.9.
The African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America, 1788–1867 131
Summary and Conclusions on the African American Electorate in Antebellum and Civil War America With the establishment of the federal government at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, there was a new institutional player in the voting system in America. During the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, voting qualifications were essentially left to the colonial and local governments. Creation of a federal government, with two houses of congress and a presidency, led to voting becoming a national, as well as a state and local, matter. Although the national government left the matter of voting qualifications up to the states, the Constitution did establish an indirect voting qualification, the Three-Fifths Clause, for counting individuals to be represented by a seat in the House of Representatives. Such an indirect qualification sent a signal to the states about what they might decide to do about their African American populations. Nearly all of the new states that entered the Union—from the Northwest Territory, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Southwest Territory that were ceded to the United States after the Mexican War—prohibited, or eventually prohibited, free blacks from voting. Because the federal government set part of the electoral context with the Three-Fifths Clause, new states followed suit and discriminated against free blacks. How did free African Americans vote in the very first federal election? The historical record shows that in several of the thirteen original states some African Americans did vote and in other states, issues of central concern to the African American community arose even though they could not vote. But to be sure, there was limited African American voting in the earliest federal election. Since suffrage rights existed and had been exercised by free blacks in both the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, this form of political participation continued as the nation transformed. African American voting behavior at the state and local levels moved from political factions and personal cliques to the early precursor of national political parties, essentially the Federalists, and then to wings of the Whigs and eventually to the anti-slavery parties, and finally, to the Republican Party. There was also affiliation with the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic Party. The historical record shows significant African American support for several different anti-slavery parties. Finally, there is the matter of voting behavior in the subsequent federal elections after 1788–1789. Here, using both historical and empirical data, we show that the emerging political party system attracted continuous political and electoral participation throughout the Antebellum Era. Although African Americans could only exercise their suffrage rights in a limited number of states, there was a great deal of political activity. The rise of both major and minor political parties helped greatly in this early voting. The anti-slavery parties, particularly the Liberty and the Free-Soil parties, despite the fact that both exhibited racial prejudices, attracted and cued the Free-Menof-Color on how and for whom to vote to advance their cause. Still, during this time of change and transition, a number of the
original states were reconsidering the suffrage rights that they had granted to Free-Men-of-Color and began the process of reversals.
Notes 1. Charles Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of ConstitutionMaking, 1787–1865,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 32 (April 1947), pp. 159–160. 2. Merrill Jensen and Robert Becker (eds.), The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790, Vol. I (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), p. xi. 3. Gordon DenBoer, Lucy Trumbull Brown, and Charles Hagermann (eds.), The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790, Vol. II (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), pp. 444 and 447. 4. Jensen and Becker, p. 187. 5. Gordon DenBoer, Lucy Trumbull Brown, Alfred Lindsay Skerpan, and Charles Hagermann (eds.), The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790, Vol. IV (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 436. 6. Gordon DenBoer, Lucy Trumbull Brown, and Charles Hagermann (eds.), The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790, Vol. II (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), p. 373. 7. Ibid., p. 90. 8. Ibid., p. 116. 9. Michael Dubin, United States Presidential Elections, 1788– 1860: The Official Results by County and State (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2002), p. 2. 10. Ibid., p. xii. 11. Benjamin Quarles, Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 62. 12. Ibid. 13. Dixon Ryan Fox, “The Negro Vote in Old New York,” Political Science Quarterly Vol. 32 (June 1917), p. 254. 14. Ibid., p. 253. 15. Ibid., pp. 252–253. 16. Ibid., p. 253. 17. Ibid., p. 254. 18. Ibid., p. 256. 19. Ibid., p. 257. See also Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution-Making, 1787–1865,” pp. 157–158. 20. Quoted in Fox, p. 263, footnote 2. 21. Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 8. 22. Fox, p. 262. 23. Ibid., p. 263. 24. Benson, p. 320. 25. Ibid. 26. John Stanley, “Majority Tyranny in Tocqueville’s America: The Failure of Negro Suffrage in 1846,” Political Science Quarterly Vol. 84 (September 1969), pp. 415–416. 27. Ibid., p. 417. 28. Ibid (emphasis in the original). 29. Ibid., p. 419. 30. Charles Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 29 (January 1944), pp. 47–55. 31. Stanley, p. 422. 32. Ibid., and footnote 23. 33. Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 120. 34. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” p. 39. 35. Benson, pp. 135–136 (emphasis in the original).
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36. Field, p. 83. 37. On this point see Benjamin Quarles, “The Breach Between Douglass and Garrison,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 23 (April 1938), pp. 144–154. 38. Hanes Walton, Jr., The Negro in Third Party Politics (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company, 1969), p. 15. 39. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” pp. 52–53. 40. Ibid., p. 53. 41. Walton, p. 15. 42. Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 338. 43. Steven Rosenstone, Roy Behr, and Edward Lazarus, Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 53. 44. Frederick Blue, The Free-Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848–54 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 61. 45. Holt, p. 339. 46. Walton, p. 16. 47. Wesley, pp. 54–58. 48. Eric Foner, “Politics and Prejudices: The Free-Soil Party and the Negro, 1849–1852,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 50 (October 1965), p. 239. 49. Foner, p. 240. See also Eric Foner, “Racial Attitudes of the Free-Soil Party in New York,” New York History Vol. 46 (October 1965), pp. 311–329. 50. Foner, “Politics and Prejudices: The Free-Soil Party and the Negro, 1849–1852,” p. 240. 51. Wesley, p. 64–65. 52. Field, p. 86. 53. Ibid., p. 95. 54. Ibid. 55. Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1972), p. 84. 56. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2006), p. 52. 57. Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), Chapter One. 58. Samuel Eldersveld and Hanes Walton, Jr., Political Parties in American Society, 2nd Edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000), pp. 43–64. 59. Theodore Smith, The Liberty and Free-Soil Parties in the Northwest (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1897), p. 58. 60. Ronald Formisano, “The Edge of Caste: Colored Suffrage in Michigan, 1827–1861,” Michigan History Vol. 56 (Spring 1972), pp. 19–41. See also, Willis Dunbar with William Shade, “The Black Man Gains the Vote: The Centennial of ‘Impartial Suffrage’ in Michigan,” pp. 42–57.
61. Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912), p. 40. 62. Ibid., pp. 39–40. 63. Ibid., pp. 42. 64. Leon Litwack, “The Abolitionist Dilemma: The Antislavery Movement and the Northern Negro,” New England Quarterly Vol. 34 (March 1961), p. 50. 65. Edward Schriver, “Antislavery: The Free-Soil and Free Democratic Parties in Maine, 1848–1855,” New England Quarterly Vol. 42 (March 1969), p. 83. 66. Ibid., p. 86. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., p. 94. 69. Frederick J. Blue, The Free-Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848– 54 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 12. See also Richard Sewell, “John P. Hale and the Liberal Party, 1847–1848,” New England Quarterly Vol. 37 (March 1964), 200–223. 70. For a discussion of the one-fifth estimate consensus see William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 83, footnote b, and p. 105, footnote c. 71. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Antislavery Political Parties,” pp. 39–40. 72. Walton, The Negro in Third Party Politics, p. 10. 73. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” p. 40. 74. Ibid., p. 44–45. 75. Ibid., p. 45. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Walton, The Negro in Third Party Politics, pp. 17–20. 79. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” p. 52–53. 80. Rosenstone, Behr, and Lazarus, p. 51. 81. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” p. 54–55. 82. Quoted in ibid., p. 57. 83. Ibid., p. 57. 84. Ibid., p. 57–58. 85. Foner, “Politics and Prejudices: The Free-Soil Party and the Negro, 1847–1852,” p. 240. 86. Ibid. 87. Walton, The Negro in Third Party Politics, p. 19. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in the Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” p. 71. 91. Ibid., p. 72. 92. Ibid., p. 73. 93. Walton, The Negro in Third Party Politics, p. 20.
CHAPTER 7
The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1788–1870 The Politics of Total Reversals: Denial of Suffrage Rights in Eight States during the Antebellum and Civil War Eras
134
Table 7.1 Number of Petitions For and Against African American Suffrage Rights in Pennsylvania: Selected Counties by Submission to the 1837–1838 State Constitutional Convention
136
The Politics of Partial Reversals: The Abridgement of Suffrage Rights in New York and Rhode Island
137
The Politics of Reversal: Granting Suffrage Rights in Louisiana: 1838–1860
139
Map 7.1 Rapides Parish, Louisiana 1840
139
Table 7.2 Presidential Election Vote and Voting Age African American Male Population in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, 1828–1860
140
Figure 7.1 Percent of Presidential Vote in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, for the Major and Third Political Parties, 1836–1860
141
Summary and Conclusions on the Reversals of African American Suffrage Rights
141
Map 7.2 States that Reversed Suffrage Rights for African Americans during the Antebellum Era
141
Notes 142
134
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A
constant problem for the early African American electorate was the retention of their suffrage rights. During the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Antebellum periods African Americans saw the ballot extended to them, then denied to them, then given back to them, by colonies, states, and the federal government. Indeed, the acquisition and retention of suffrage rights has been a significant part of the African American political agenda in every era. In elections prior to the Fifteenth Amendment (1788–1870), African American suffrage rights were denied in spite of the promises of freedom and liberty outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Andrew Jackson, as the leader of the Democratic Party, transformed his political organization from a party of elites to a party of the masses using the theme that the “common man” should vote for and run his own government.1 For President Jackson and his disciples, the older idea of a “stakeholder” or “property-based” electorate was inimical to America’s system of democratic government. Citizenship, not property, increasingly became the basis for voting. Yet it is precisely during this era, when mass political participation began, that the greatest number of states totally or partially reversed suffrage rights for Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color.
The Politics of Total Reversals: Denial of Suffrage Rights in Eight States during the Antebellum and Civil War Eras During the struggles to expand and broaden suffrage rights to a greater proportion of the white populace, eight different states reversed themselves and removed existing suffrage rights from Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color. Prevailing in this era in America were reform movements to eliminate property and taxpaying requirements to vote. Put differently, the concept of a “stakein-society” as the essential qualification for suffrage rights came under increasing attack after the Revolutionary War, initially by the militiamen. Slowly and gradually, these soldiers of the war attracted workingmen to their reform movement, and together they pressured and lobbied the state legislatures to eliminate the property and tax requirements. The final factor, which helped the reform movement to succeed, was the leadership of Andrew Jackson, from his failed presidential election bid in 1824 through his two terms in the White House that ended in 1837. Although the reform movement succeeded in some places before Jackson, elsewhere it needed the Jackson presence to undercut a recalcitrant opposition. Ironically, the reform movement to expand and extend suffrage to the “common man” resulted in the denial of suffrage rights to Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color who had possessed these rights in both Colonial and Revolutionary America.
Delaware Delaware was the first state, in 1792, to reverse previously granted suffrage rights for African Americans. This occurred in the very same year that Delaware dropped its property qualifications on whites for voting. “The constitution of 1792 employed the language, ‘Every white free man,’ to describe the voter. No other state constitution excluded Negroes from the electorate
during this period.”2 Delaware, in making the transition from its colonial charter to its first state constitution, reversed suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color while dropping property qualifications for white males. Delaware, one of the original thirteen colonies, had set in motion a trend toward reversals, the Revolution notwithstanding.
Kentucky The border state of Kentucky, which, like Delaware, entered in the Union in 1792, denied suffrage rights to African Americans seven years later in 1799. The new Kentucky state constitution in that year “recognized equality in the foundation of a social compact only in the case of ‘free men’ and confined the right to vote to free white male citizens.”3 The state had not enacted a property or tax qualification and did not enact one in its new 1799 state constitution. African Americans in Kentucky had the right to vote for only seven years.
Maryland Following Kentucky two years later, Maryland, in 1801, reversed its suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color by legislative statute while—almost simultaneously—eliminating its property qualification by statute. Of Maryland’s situation, one scholar writes: “Under the Maryland Constitution of 1776, free Negroes had been allowed to vote if they met certain property qualifications. In 1783 a state statute restricted this right to Negroes who were free prior to that year,”4 and “later the right to vote was specifically restricted to free whites in this state by a constitutional amendment of 1801 and by acts of 1802 and 1810.”5 The 1810 denial was a constitutional act, as was a second exclusion of Free-Menof-Color in a subsequent constitution in 1851. Maryland, like Delaware, expanded white suffrage by dropping its property qualification even while it ended African American suffrage rights.
New Jersey New Jersey originally permitted both Free-Men-of Color and Free-Women-of-Color to have suffrage rights. Previously, only Virginia had briefly permitted Free-Women-of-Color to vote, a right halted in 1699. New Jersey stood alone in providing the vote to both black men and women, but like other states it also had a property and/or tax qualification to vote. In 1807 when the state legislature passed a statute to deny Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color the vote, it also re-enacted an earlier (1776) property and/or tax qualification for the vote by free white males. Thus, when New Jersey denied free African Americans suffrage rights, it also maintained restrictions on the white male electorate. Historian Marion Thompson Wright noted of New Jersey that “in the years, 1776–1807, many of the instances of voting by Negroes came to light through contested elections which caused widespread public comment,” due to the fact that voting by the Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color had influenced the outcomes.6 A second motive behind the elimination of suffrage rights was partisan conflict: Because of the feeling existing among Democrats that Federalists were making use of Negroes in their efforts to win at the polls, the Democrats resisted in many cases the extension of suffrage to Negroes. Where the franchise was being
The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights, 1788–1870 135
exercised by them, Democrats sought to impose restrictions on their use of this privilege.7 A third factor arose: “in 1804, due to the activities of the Society of Friends and other liberal persons, the Legislature had passed a law providing for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the state.”8 The emancipation of slaves would cause larger numbers of Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color to become eligible to vote. New Jersey at the time had the largest percentage of FreePeople-of-Color in the nation, some 2%. The loudest complaints came following the election of 1802. A leading New Jersey politician, John Condict, argued that an 1802 deadlock in state politics was allegedly caused by the exercise of voting rights by Free-People-of-Color. Condict argued that “the vote of a Negro slave, herself the property of another slave, elected one of the Hunterdon [County] members on that occasion [1802], produced an equality of parties in the legislature, and deprived the state of a governor for a year.”9 This and other complaints of the difference made by the African American vote in hotly contested races converged with the state election of 1806, which produced more complaints and ultimately led to the reversal of state policy on suffrage rights. “Following the election of 1806 in which fraudulent balloting was said to have been rife, action was taken to restrict suffrage to free white males.”10 Thus, in this 1806 election, “women and girls, black and white, married and single, with and without qualification, voted again and again.”11 As a result the legislature passed a statute eliminating suffrage rights for African Americans. By 1844, a new state constitution replaced the statute to the same effect. Of the reversal in New Jersey, Wright said: “the Whigs and Republicans were more tolerant toward Negroes than were the Democrats. For many years even the Whigs or Republicans were lukewarm in the matter of including Negroes in the electorate. The Democrats were inexorable in their determination to deny the freedmen the privilege of white citizens.”12
Connecticut The year in which Connecticut was long assumed to have reversed its policy of suffrage rights for African Americans— 1814—has recently been proven incorrect. Political scientist James Adams wrote in 1925 that “Connecticut continued under . . . [its] old [colonial] charter, and in [that] state the qualifications for electors were fixed from time to time by legislative enactment.”13 Using this approach, he demonstrated that “at the May session of the Connecticut legislature in 1814, it was enacted that ‘no person shall be admitted a freeman in any town in this state, unless, in addition to the qualifications already required by law, he be a free white male person.’”14 Then “in the May session of 1818 it was again provided in an amendment to the election law that only ‘white male’ inhabitants might be made freemen [voters].”15 Thus, “in the constitution convention of the same year . . . the original draft, excluding Negroes, was then submitted and passed by a vote of 103 to 72. This race distinction was renewed in the constitutional amendment of 1845.”16 Emil Olbrich opined: “Connecticut’s Negro population was 8,041 with 267,161 white persons, and it is possible that Negro voters were becoming inconveniently numerous.”17 It is also
highly possible that simple racial prejudice was the underlying cause for this reversal in policy.
Tennessee The first state of the future southern Confederacy to reverse suffrage rights for African Americans during the Antebellum Era was Tennessee in 1834. There, Free-Men-of-Color had been voting for some thirty-eight years. Two men, John Bell and Cave Johnson, had credited their elections to Congress to “the aid of colored men’s votes, the latter boasting that he owed his election in 1828 to one hundred and forty-four free negroes who worked in his mills.”18 Despite this rather positive regard of two elected officials for black suffrage rights, mass sentiment and public opinion was changing against anti-slavery, and toward pro-slavery, ideas. Emil Olbrich wrote: “During the twenties, the anti-slavery agitation in the North and the growing pro-slavery sentiment in the South, produced throughout Tennessee, strong manifestation of opposition to negro citizenship. The laws against free negroes became stricter, and at length, on December 16, 1831, the legislature forbade them to enter the state. . . .”19 This law also declared that “slaves should not be freed except on condition that they be removed from the commonwealth as soon as they might be emancipated.”20 Thus, the constitutional convention of 1834 passed a white-only clause by a vote of thirty-three to twentythree. With this action, Tennessee had reversed suffrage rights in their state.
North Carolina North Carolina was the seventh state in which total reversal occurred. This southern state, which had been one of the thirteen original colonies, followed Tennessee by one year in denying suffrage rights to Free African Americans in 1835. In fact, North Carolina was one of those states that had multiple reversals. The state “gave blacks this freedom, the right to vote, in 1667 and withdrew it in 1715. This withdrawal was repealed in 1734 but the right to vote was again withdrawn in 1835.”21 The denial of African American suffrage rights in North Carolina, as in many other states, occurred simultaneously with the expansion of white suffrage rights as the state dropped property qualifications for white males in voting for candidates for the state House of Representatives and governor. Property qualifications were retained in voting for the state senate, requiring “freehold of 50 acres for 6 months prior to elections.”22 Olbrich tells us that when the constitutional convention began on June 12, 1835, “The friends of the African seem to have had no hope of securing for him equal voting privileges with white men. They put forth all their efforts to secure a property qualification that would permit some negroes to retain the valued right and offered several propositions looking to that end.”23 Some even pointed out how the limited number of free voters appeared inconsequential, with only “300 colored voters in Halifax [county], 150 in Hertford, 50 in Chowan, and 75 in Pasquotank,” but to no avail.24 When the debate ended over suffrage rights for free blacks, they had permanently lost their suffrage rights. And with this action, no southern state except Georgia left Free-Men-of-Color with the right to vote.
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Pennsylvania Two factors stand out in the reversal of suffrage rights for FreeMen-of-Color in Pennsylvania in 1838. First, there was a race riot in the city of Philadelphia in 1834, which generated significant racial antagonism and sentiments against Free Blacks. Thus, when the new state constitutional convention convened in 1837, “stridently racist views were galvanized by the fear of black migration: in New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, convention delegates claimed that enfranchising blacks would only encourage freedmen and runaway slaves to flock to their state.”25 Secondly, there was a complaint and subsequent court case lodged by the loser of an election in Bucks County. Of this conflict, historian Charles Wesley wrote: “In 1837, a candidate for office in Bucks County, who was defeated, claimed his opponent’s seat because Negroes had been permitted to vote for him and that such an action was contrary to law.”26 Another added “that the year before they had come within twelve votes of electing their candidate to congress.”27 Said criticism and protest caused the Democrats of this county to meet in convention and [to decide] that they would petition the legislature to oppose the voting of Negroes, that they would use the courts to prevent this activity by Negroes and that they would amend the constitution to this effect. In December [1837] the court decided that the election was legal and that the right of the Negro to vote in the state depended upon the interpretation of the constitution in its use of the word freeman.28 “In the fall of 1776,” when the colonial charter was transformed into a state constitution, that convention “produced the most democratic constitution in the thirteen original states: it abolished property requirements and enfranchised all taxpaying adult males as well as the nontaypaying sons of freeholders.”29 Under this initial state constitution, Free-Men-of-Color retained their suffrage rights. They were considered freemen. Therefore, “in Pennsylvania, in 1837, there were many Negro voters. It was roughly estimated by a member of the convention that some hundreds of colored men voted in York County, and some thirty or forty in Bucks county.”30 To halt this voting, the Democrats of Bucks County, after having lost in the courts, took their fight to the state constitutional convention on May 2, 1837. The first round of debate over the suffrage issue adjourned on July 14 but reconvened on October 17. In the interim, on July 8, eighty Free-Men-of-Color in Pittsburgh sent a petition entitled “Memorial of the Free Citizens of Color In Pittsburg and Its Vicinity Relative To the Right of Suffrage Read In Convention.” It immediately “aroused public interest, newspapers discussed the question and popular excitement spread over the whole state.”31 But the convention adjourned six days later without taking any action. In response to the petition, numerous other petitions and memorials were submitted to the convention when it reconvened on October 17, 1837. Table 7.1 reveals the fifteen counties whose residents submitted petitions for or against granting suffrage rights. There were seventy petitions (63.6%) against continuing to extend suffrage rights to African Americans and forty
Table 7.1 Number of Petitions For and Against African American Suffrage Rights in Pennsylvania: Selected Counties by Submission to the 1837–1838 State Constitutional Convention African American Suffrage Petitions
County Bucks
Number Against Suffrage
Number in Favor of Suffrage
Included an African Amercan Community Submission*
Total
26
7
33
Chester
0
15
15
Dauphin
0
1
1
Lancaster
0
1
1
Luzerne
1
4
5
Lycoming
0
1
1
Mifflin
2
2
4
Montgomery
18
2
20
Philadelphia
14
6
20
Schuylkill
1
0
1
Susquehanna
1
0
1
Washington
0
1
1
Westmoreland
5
0
5
York
2
0
2
70
40
110
63.6%
36.4%
Totals Percentages
Source: Adapted from Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912), p. 53. * All petitions submitted by African American communities were in favor of African American suffrage rights.
petitions (36.4%) for continuing to extend suffrage rights to African Americans. At least two of the petitions, both of which were for continuing suffrage rights, came from African American groups. But clearly, statewide public opinion was strongly against the continuance of suffrage rights for African Americans. However, this did not deter African American protest. In Chester and five other counties in the state, petitions for continuing African American suffrage rights outnumbered those in opposition to the continuation of suffrage rights. In Philadelphia, Frederick Hinton, an activist in the National Convention Movement and cofounder of the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons joined forces with Reverend Charles W. Gardner, who was temporary pastor at the African Presbyterian Church. They began on June 5, 1837, drafting a petition to send to the state constitutional convention from Philadelphia. This petition was completed shortly after the “mass meeting of blacks held at the Bethel A.M.E. Church in” the city.32 A well-known Whig politician, James Biddle, presented the document to the convention on January 8, 1838, “shortly before the Pennsylvania Constitution Convention passed the black disenfranchisement amendment (Article III, Sec. 1), and can be viewed as a last-ditch effort by blacks of Philadelphia to persuade the convention body not to adopt the measure.”33 The convention decided “on January 27, 1838, by a vote of 77–45 that the suffrage should be limited to whites.”34
The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights, 1788–1870 137
In terms of the voting at the constitutional convention, one scholar reports it as follows: The convention was composed of senatorial and representative delegates. Of seven representative delegates from Philadelphia city, where the number of blacks was largest, four voted against the dis-franchising amendment. One out of eight from Philadelphia county, two of three from Bucks county, four of six from Lancaster, one of two from Adams, and all four from Chester also voted on the side of the black man.35 Pennsylvania became the last state to deny suffrage rights to African Americans in the Antebellum period. Although denied their long held suffrage rights, African Americans did not give up without a fight. Two months later, on March 14, 1838, a mass meeting of African Americans assembled at “the Presbyterian Church on Seventh Street below Shippen [Street]” to prepare a report protesting their disenfranchisement. “The report was adopted unanimously by the assembled audience. It is known as the Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania.”36 While this petition, like the others, had no effect, African Americans continued to protest. “Between 1839 and 1851 a total of eighty-one petitions and memorials by blacks on the voting issue reached the legislature.”37 It was not until 1873, some thirty-five years later, that their suffrage rights were fully restored. Out of Pennsylvania’s reversal came a political figure who would eventually have a tremendous impact on the issue of African American suffrage: Thaddeus Stevens. In fact, he was a delegate to the 1837–1838 state constitutional convention that stripped Free-Men-of-Color of their suffrage and did not even enter into the debate. But “when the constitution was finally adopted however, he refused to sign it because he could not sanction any discrimination on account of race or color.”38 According to Olbrich: Thaddeus Stevens, a native of Vermont, and a graduate of Dartmouth College, had come down into Pennsylvania and established himself as a lawyer in York county near the border of Maryland. Here he observed the workings of the fugitive slave law, saw one of the worst aspects of negro servitude, helped defend colored men claimed as fugitives, and developed an intense hatred of slavery.39 With this background Stevens entered the U.S. House of Representatives and became a major anti-slavery legislative force but also a restorer of the suffrage rights lost in the Antebellum period.
The Politics of Partial Reversals: The Abridgement of Suffrage Rights in New York and Rhode Island If the denial of African American suffrage rights was widespread, it was not necessarily inevitable. The Antebellum Era was the age of party formation and competition. Thus, it should come as no surprise that one of the issues over which parties competed was the suffrage right for Free-Men-of-Color. In the North, debate
about suffrage rights took place between the Federalists and their Democratic opponents in New York (1799–1821), between the Democrats in both of their manifestations (Jeffersonian and Jacksonians) and their Whig opponents (1832–1850), between the Northern Whigs and their opponents (1832–1852), and between the anti-slavery parties and their opponents (1840–1860). In the two northern states where partial reversals of suffrage rights occurred, New York and Rhode Island, there was a partisan debate and struggle in these electoral contests over suffrage.
New York Of the politics of partial reversals in New York, historian Phyllis Field wrote: The Age of the Common Man . . . theoretically began a new era in American politics, one in which all men became equals, and the requirement that voters own property was abolished forever. Following the trends of the times, New York in its 1821 constitutional convention changed its suffrage provisions. Non-propertyholding white males gained new rights, but, at the same time, black males found their right to vote restricted by a freehold qualification.40 This freehold qualification was a property qualification for Free-Men-of-Color of only $250 dollars. Professor Field concluded: “As has happened many times in American history, egalitarian ideals did not cross the color line.”41 What were the political motives that caused this partial reversal at the 1821 convention? Pioneering historian Emil Olbrich wrote: “In New York, in 1785, two-thirds of the senate and a majority of the assembly were in favor of forbidding negroes to vote; but the suffrage was preserved to black men by a veto of the Council of Revision.”42 Then, at the state legislative session in 1811, a law was passed that required each Free-Manof-Color to prove that he had been emancipated in order to have a right to vote. Later in 1814, a new section was added to that law, which applied only to New York City, “provided that certificates of freedom should be recorded in the office of the registrar; and that a copy of the record should be the certificate of freedom which a free black was required to produce at elections before he could vote.”43 Seemingly, political motives lurked behind these institutional requirements and the 1821 partial reversal. Olbrich noted, “in 1813 the votes of three hundred free negroes in New York City decided the election in favor of the Federalists and determined the character of the state legislature.”44 Then, he wrote, “one hundred and sixty-three Negroes . . . voted in New York at the spring election of 1821. There were more than five hundred, however, who tried to vote, and it was estimated that if all property qualifications were abolished, there would be twentyfive hundred Negro electors in the city of New York alone.”45 Historian Alexander Keyssar added: In New York . . . Republican factions were hostile to black voting between 1810 and 1820, in part because they feared (correctly) that blacks would constitute a
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Federalist voting bloc, especially in New York City; politically active blacks, throughout the North, tended to support the Federalists because of their opposition to slavery.46 Therefore, given the evolution of several new institutional restraints as well as these political motives, it should come as no surprise that, despite a vigorous debate at the 1821 convention, the new constitution partially reversed the right of African Americans to vote in the state. Of these new legal requirements historian Wesley says that a free African American male “had to own real estate worth two hundred and fifty dollars and he had to be a citizen of the state for three years, although no property qualification was required of whites and only one year of residence was required of them.”47 With these new legal requirements, Free-Men-of-Color had their suffrage rights partially reversed by a heightened property and residence requirement. This outcome could be seen as a victory of sorts, because in the legislative debates, a minority had sought the restriction of suffrage rights to white males only.
Rhode Island The elimination of African American suffrage rights, which nearly happened in New York in 1821, did happen a year later in Rhode Island during the struggle for the expansion of suffrage rights beyond property holders. Thus, following Connecticut in 1817, which eliminated suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color, and New York which severely restricted black suffrage in 1821, “Rhode Island altered its franchise law in 1822 so that only white male adults were eligible to be ‘freemen,’” those citizens designated eligible to vote in state and local elections.48 However, about twenty years later, Free-Men-of-Color in Rhode Island would be re-enfranchised as a result of the struggle to expand suffrage rights in the state to non-propertyholding males. Two historians state: “The Negro in Rhode Island regained the right to vote in the political turmoil resulting from a movement to expand the suffrage for whites. . . .”49 After the Revolutionary War, Rhode Island had not written a new state constitution but let its original colonial charter stay in force, which had limited voting only to property holders, i.e., “those who owned real estate valued at $134 or rented property for at least $7.”50 Those who had fought in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 sought suffrage reforms, and by the 1820s they were joined by the workingmen and “by sympathetic freeholders, the most famous of whom was Thomas Dorr.”51 This political activist, Dorr, had strenuously “supported the anti-slavery movement and worked for Negro rights,” but at the crucial moment of the creation of the Rhode Island Suffrage Association in March, 1840, found that “he could not overcome the ‘white only’ attitude of most in the suffrage movement,” which reconstituted itself in 1841 as the Suffrage Party in the State.52 Immediately, “in 1841, the Suffrage Party held a series of mass meetings and called an extralegal convention to write a constitution for the state. They held an election in July for delegates to the Suffrage or People’s Convention, and declared the voting to be open to all male citizens regardless of nativity or race.”53
When the African American political activists in Rhode Island tried to join the Suffrage Party led by Dorr and attempted to influence the inclusion of Free Blacks as voters, they quickly learned that the party was anti-Negro. “In early October,” 1841, the party’s convention “proposed to liberalize the franchise for all white-males, including foreign born, but excluded the Negro.”54 Although African Americans petitioned the convention to drop the “white only clause,” it was to no avail, and the convention proceeded to write a new state constitution with this clause in it. At the November, 1841, convention of the Dorr-led Suffrage Party, further entreaties and protests were made, and a concession was offered that after the proposed constitution was put forth to the Rhode Island male electorate in December and possibly approved, the party would put the Free-Men-of-Color matter itself to a referendum. Despite the exhortations of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and other free African Americans who joined with the local Rhode Island AntiSlavery Society to cry for a reconsideration, the party approved its state constitution by a vote of 13,944 to 52. The Dorr-led constitutional convention did not establish a new constitution in Rhode Island; indeed, it constituted a political rebellion against the sitting and duly elected and constituted government already in place. The government, “in November, 1841 . . . [called] a Legal [freeholders] Convention” to write their own new state constitution, “and like the [Suffrage Party] People’s Constitution the draft proposal excluded Negro suffrage. . . . The Legal Convention reconvened in February, 1842, to complete the drafting of its constitution.”55 On March 21–23, 1842, they submitted their new constitution to the electorate of Rhode Island, but it was rejected. Once it was rejected, the Dorr-led Suffrage Party quickly moved to hold elections for state officials under their extralegal constitution in April 1842. In response, the state government, with promises of military support from President John Tyler (a Whig), passed a series of bills known as the Algerine Law “which levied heavy penalties on anyone accepting office or exercising power under the [Suffrage Party] People’s Constitution.”56 The Dorrites, on the other hand, were encouraged by declarations of support from Democrats such as Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. 57 The election was held despite the legal threats, Dorr was elected governor, and some of his supporters won seats in the state legislature. To ensure that they could take the seats of power, Dorr and his group “led an attempt to seize the Providence Arsenal. The attack fizzled and the Dorrites scattered . . . and Dorr fled from the state.”58 In the aftermath of the failed insurgency, the Legal Constitution group, renamed “themselves the Law and Order Party . . . called a new constitutional convention . . . and scheduled the election of delegates for August and . . . opened the voting to all native male citizens.”59 The convention drafted a new state constitution and deleted the word “white.” African Americans joined this new movement and, when this state constitution was accepted by voters in 1842, found their suffrage rights restored. J. Stanley Lemons and Michael McKenna, two historians of Rhode Island who have documented these events, wrote that the conservative members of the Law and Order Party “were more prejudiced against the foreign-born than they were against the Negroes. For their part, the blacks resented the Suffrage Party’s concern for the foreign-born voter while excluding native
The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights, 1788–1870 139
Americans only on the basis of color.”60 They added: “as a result of Negro support in the Dorrite disruptions, the Law and Order Party incurred an obligation to the black community which was repaid with the franchise. . . . The convention voted 45–15 to drop ‘white’ from the suffrage clause. The [new] constitution was approved in November, 1842 by a vote of 7,024–21, and Negroes voted almost unanimously for it.”61 Yet the Rhode Island grant of suffrage rights to African Americans carried a property qualification. In fact, when the Civil War began, only New York and Rhode Island still had property qualifications and only for African Americans.
The Politics of Reversal: Granting Suffrage Rights in Louisiana: 1838–1860 When Louisiana became a state in 1812, it denied suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color in its state constitution. However, the political elites of both major parties, Democrats and Whigs, mustered African Americans to the polls from 1838 until 1860 in Rapides Parish, located in central Louisiana.62 (A parish in Louisiana is equivalent to a county. See Map 7.1 for the location of Rapides Parish.) In Rapides Parish, partisans condoned an illegality, and the state government allowed it to happen. Free-Menof-Color were allowed to vote in this parish/county for some twenty-two years leading up to the Civil War. Historian Roger
Map 7.1 Rapides Parish, Louisiana 1840
0
100
200
miles
Claiborne
CLAIBORNE CLAIBORNE
Shreveport NATCHITOCHES NATCHITOCHES
Natchitoches
Catahoula
CATAHOULA CATAHOULA
Rapides
Avoyelles Baton Rouge
St Landry Calcasieu
CALCASIEU CALCASIEU
ST ST LANDRY LANDRY
New Orleans
0
100
200
miles
Sources: Adrian B. Ettlinger, The AniMap Plus County Boundary Historical Atlas, Version 3 Release 2, http://www.goldbug.com (Alamo, CA: Goldbug Software, 1991–2008), and Carville Earle, Historical United States County (HUSCO) Boundary Files, http://www..ga.lsu.edu/husco .html (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University GeoScience Publications, 1991–1999).
Wallace Shugg suggested that this situation was not unheard of: “despite the restriction of the franchise to white men in every ante-bellum constitution, local elections were sometimes so bitterly fought that rival candidates called Negroes to their aid.” He gives Rapides Parish as an example.63 The population of Free-Men-of-Color in Rapides Parish began from several emancipated slaves who migrated to central Louisiana from North Carolina in 1804 “and squatted on public lands. Their children were so closely related that when nearly sixty of them voted, a generation later, only a dozen answered to different names.”64 This group of Free-Men-and-Women-ofColor lived in an area known as “Ten Mile Precinct,” along Ten Mile Creek, which today is in Allen parish. Moreover, “relations between the Negroes and poor whites of this region were not so unfriendly as to prevent considerable miscegenation, for the color of their progeny was admitted to be no clue to their race.”65 By 1838, these light-skinned FreeMen-of-Color began “passing” for white voters in local, state, and federal elections. Only in 1857, some nineteen years after it had commenced, did a public outcry against this practice surface from the white community. Of this affair, Shugg wrote: The scandal of such people voting was first aired in the Louisiana press by the American or local KnowNothing party in a desperate effort to discredit the Democratic candidate in 1857. Colonel Robert A. Hunter, the nominee, was called an ”African suffragate” in affidavits filed by citizens of Rapides. They accused him of having armed and mustered Negroes to the polls in the Presidential election of 1856, and of now being ready to repeat this fraud in behalf of the Democratic State ticket.66 Court documents of the trial revealed that to prove their charges, members of the Know-Nothing party offered depositions from “a Democrat and nine old residents of the parish.”67 At the trial, these witnesses refused to blame Colonel Hunter, but they did say under oath “that more than two score ‘Africans’ had cast ballots in previous elections.”68 In addition, these witnesses for the Know-Nothing party let it be known that the names of these African voters “could be found in a register known as ‘Boyce’s list,’ and the so-called ‘Ten Mile precinct’ had been especially created to provide them with a safe and ostensibly legal polling place.”69 At the trial, “Colonial Hunter . . . did not deny that his party had enlisted the suffrage of a few colored people. With all the candor of a seasoned politician, he simply demurred.”70 Hunter, who was the defendant, got help from “the Democratic district attorney” simply because the sympathetic prosecutor “neglected to introduce enough evidence to prove that the defendants were colored.”71 Both the Democratic defendant and district attorney got even more help from “the Democratic Judge, who would not permit the jury to draw obvious conclusions from their appearance.”72 Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Democratic Party won their case, upholding their electoral victory over the Know-Nothings and upholding the votes of the Free-Men-of-Color.
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Later, “before an audience of conservative planters,” Colonel Hunter declared that it was the Whigs who had first marched Negroes to the polls in 1838: Since the constitution at that time limited the franchise to white men who had paid taxes or purchased public land, and the Negroes of Ten Mile Precinct were not tax-payers, public land was entered in their names by Whig politicians to give them some legal ground for voting. Three years later, in 1841, ”some of the Democratic boys got in among them and changed them over to their side.“ The Whigs, as surprised as they were indignant, ”kicked up against it, and a trial ensured,“ but the Democrats never failed thereafter to collect all the free Negro votes in Rapides.73 Writing about the outcome of the 1857 election, Shugg noted that: In his campaign for Treasurer in 1857, ”Ten-Mile Bob“ Hunter, as he was dubbed by his opponents, carried the parish by sixty-eight votes—presumably colored— and along with the rest of his ticket swept the State by several thousand—unquestionably white. In Rapides Parish, it is plain to be seen, free men of color held the balance of power at the polls.74 By 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, a traveling correspondent to the area wrote in the New Orleans Crescent newspaper that in Rapides Parish “about eighty colored men are voted at the Ten Mile by the unterrified Democracy whenever an emergency demands their loyal aid in carrying an election.” Thus, the 1857 trial did not stop this de facto granting of suffrage rights to FreeMen-of-Color, albeit illegally, by the two parties.
The situation of African American voters in central Louisiana contrasts with their fate in its largest city. In the 1840s, shortly after this voting began in Rapides parish, the Free-Menof-Color in New Orleans, who “were reputed to own one-fifth of the taxable property in New Orleans, . . . [petitioned] for admission to the municipal franchise.”75 The Conservative Whigs of the city refused to “allow urban Negroes to vote legally and for their own interest.”76 Owning property, paying taxes, and having light-colored skin were not enough in and of themselves to make an exception and permit the granting of suffrage rights for free African Americans in the big cities of Louisiana. Hence, the lone exception in the state was in the rural area of Rapides parish because of party competition. How many Free-Men-of-Color voted in Rapides parish in these contests? The extant historical record says sixty-eight in 1857 and “about eighty” in 1860. Table 7.2, using data from the 1820 through the 1860 censuses, sheds some further light on the subject. In 1820, the Census Bureau began to enumerate Free Blacks by gender. Thus, Free-Men-of-Color made up 3.5% of the population in 1820 and 1830, 5.6% in 1840, 2.3% in 1850, and less than 1.0% in the 1860 decade. From this table, it is clear that the Free Black males peaked in electoral strength in 1840 and began a steady decline in the parish thereafter, reaching their lowest level in the year just before the Civil War. This gendered data suggest, but do not confirm, two potential possibilities about the discrepancy. Either Free-Women-of-Color were allowed to vote to make up the difference between the census data and the vote, or male slaves voted and were declared to be Free-Men-ofColor for this election. And as shown in Map 7.1, the city of New Orleans was too far away to bring in Free-Men-of-Color from the Orleans Parish. Maybe Free-Men-of-Color were brought in from parishes adjacent to Rapides Parish. Since the political elites were already engaged in illegal activity by permitting these Free-Menof-Color to vote, these other possible illegal voting subterfuges do
Table 7.2 Presidential Election Vote and Voting Age African American Male Population in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, 1828–1860 African American Election Year
Total Vote
Winning Party
Census Year
Total Population
Total Electorate
White
Male Votersa
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Electorate
Males Votersa
Percent of Total Population
Percent of Electorate
1828
324
Democratic
1820
6,065
620
22
0.4%
3.5%
598
9.9%
96.5%
1832
250
Democratic
1830
7,575
664
23
0.3%
3.5%
641
8.5%
96.5%
1836
295
Whig
1830
7,575
664
23
0.3%
3.5%
641
8.5%
96.5%
1840
857
Whig
1840
14,132
1,062
60
0.4%
5.6%
1,002
7.1%
94.4%
1844
1,005
Democratic
1840
14,132
1,062
60
0.4%
5.6%
1,002
7.1%
94.4%
1848
926
Democratic
1840
14,132
1,062
60
0.4%
5.6%
1,002
7.1%
94.4%
1852
1,024
Democratic
1850
16,561
1,417
32
0.2%
2.3%
1,385
8.4%
97.7%
1856
1,347
Democratic
1850
16,561
1,417
32
0.2%
2.3%
1,385
8.4%
97.7%
1860
1,754
S. Democratic
1860
25,360
2,706
57
0.2%
2.1%
2,649
10.4%
97.9%
Sources: ICPSR Study No. 1, United States Historical Election Returns, 1824–1968, 2nd ICPSR ed. [Computer File], http://dx.doi:10.3886/ICPSR00001 (Ann Abor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, ICPSR Study No. 8611, Electoral Data for Counties in the United States: Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840–1972 [Computer File], http://dx.doi:10.3886/ICPSR08611 (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), retrieved June 2002; and Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Historical Census Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (Charlottesville: University of Virginia), retrieved April 13, 2008. a
Male Voters = number of eligible male voters.
The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights, 1788–1870 141 Map 7.2 States that Reversed Suffrage Rights for African Americans during the Antebellum Era
Figure 7.1 Percentage of Presidential Vote in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, for the Major and Third Political Parties, 1836–1860
Percent of Presidential Vote
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1836
ME
VT NH MA
Wisconsin Territory
RI
NY MI
1840
1844 1848 1852 Presidential Election Year
% Democrats
% Whigs
1856
1860
New Jersey OH
IN
IL
Delaware Delaw are
% Third Party
Mary land Maryland
VA MO
Kentucky
Sources: Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836–1892 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), p. 494, and Michael J. Dubin, United States Presidential Elections 1788–1860: The Official Results by County and State (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2002), pp. 144 and 170. Calculations by the authors. Note: In 1856, the third-party candidate was former U.S. president Millard Fillmore, who appeared on the ballot in Rapides Parish as an American ("Know Nothing") Party candidate. John C. Breckinridge, of the splinter Southern Democratic Party, was the third-party candidate in 1860.
Connecticut
Pennsylvania
Iowa Territory
North Carolina Tennessee SC AR MS
GA
AL
LA
0
not seem out of the realm of the possible. In the decade between 1840 and 1850, this vote could have been quite influential in local and state elections. Hence, there is little wonder that the local party elites seized the moment to enhance their political power and impact. Finally, extant parish-level presidential voting data as shown in Figure 7.1 offer additional insights. In 1836 and 1840 the Whig party carried the parish, while in 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856 the parish was won by the Democratic Party. These presidential electoral outcomes nearly parallel the historical narrative about party victories at the state level and again suggest that the Free-Menof-Color vote served as a balance of power factor that helped both the Whigs and the Democrats to win. And the closeness between these two data sources further supports that there may be some validity to the stories about Free-Men-of-Color voting in Rapides parish between 1838 and 1860.
Summary and Conclusions on the Reversals of African American Suffrage Rights States, during the Antebellum Era, were just one of the institutional players that impacted suffrage rights. The new federal government made possible by the 1787 Constitutional Convention determined suffrage rights in the territories. These included the Northwest Territory, the territory conveyed by the Louisiana Purchase, and later the lands obtained after the Mexican War. In these areas, the federal government, specifically Congress, had the power to determine suffrage rights. Speaking on this point, historian Olbrich informed us that “the Federal Government passed the last act permitting negroes to vote in the territories in 1809 in organizing the Territory of Illinois.”77 Map 7.2 shows the states where suffrage rights were reversed—whether totally or partially—during the Antebellum
Florida Territory
100 200 miles
States Reversing African American Suffrage United States 1842
Sources: Hanes Walton, Jr., African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 16, and Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 349–353, Table A4.
period. In all, the reversals took place in eight states and three territories administered by the federal government. Reversals took place in each and every region of the country. They occurred in the New England area, in the Middle Atlantic area, in the Border States, and in the South. They occurred in states with very small populations of Free-Men-and-Women of Color as well as in states with supposedly large free populations. Reversals took place in slave states and non-slave states. They took place in areas where all of the adjacent states permitted Free Blacks to vote. And they took place in states such as Tennessee and North Carolina in order to conform to the cultural habits and patterns in the region. Thus, geographically and demographically, there were no great distinctive markers and characteristics. Even historical traditions of letting African Americans vote in the Colonial and Revolutionary eras did not prevent some of these reversals. In these reversals, one sees the role and function played by the emerging political parties. The Democrats and the Whigs, present at the local and state levels, played roles, and where these national parties did not exist, the local parties affiliated with one or the other of the rising parties.
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Partisan competition could occasionally work in favor of suffrage, even without changing the law, as we saw in Louisiana. Partisan competition in the end mattered more than the law. Moreover, on no occasion in Rapides Parish in Louisiana did the state government step in and uphold state law prohibiting actual suffrage for free African Americans. Their voting continued for nearly a quarter of a century. Or partisan competition could change the law, as shown by Rhode Island, the one reversal that was overturned. Conservative whites in Rhode Island granted suffrage rights to African Americans because of their antipathy toward foreign whites and aliens as well as their need to stay in power against the reform movement in the state. Prejudice in this case was stronger against other whites than it was against free African Americans. And the flexibility and dynamic leadership of African American leaders in the state also contributed. Initially, they tried to join the reformers, only to be rebuffed, but they just as quickly switched sides and joined the “Law and Order Party.” The time frame is important to observe. All of the reversals at the state level were over and completed by 1838. Every state that engaged in the politics of reversals finished its changes within four decades in the new century. Only the reversals of the federal government came long after state action. And in terms of the nature of the times, the Post-Revolutionary War period and the coming “age of the common man,” the elimination of one barrier to suffrage rights—property-holding—was coupled with the erection of another—denial of suffrage rights to Free-Menand-Women-of-Color. Almost in every case these two contradictory changes went hand-in-hand. Reformers in Antebellum America carefully and intentionally left out the African American electorate. All kinds of factors intertwined in these reversals—political and personal motives; race, racial fears, and racial competition; partisan competition, lost elections and the fear of black migration to states with suffrage rights; and, needless to say, the matter of social distinction—those with the vote could use it to distinguish themselves from those without it. Usually, these factors worked in conjunction with each other to produce the reversals that mostly limited the extent of the African American electorate. In closing, it is worth considering another factor that helped to overcome these reversals in the end: personality and determined leadership. Thaddeus Stevens, the congressman for Lancaster, Pennsylvania, became a leader of Congressional Reconstruction as well as a legislative force behind the three Civil War Amendments that granted federally mandated suffrage rights for African Americans during post-Civil War America. Congressman Stevens in this quest helped to displace his own state’s reversal of 1838 and all of the others. And in the final analysis these reversals (at the time, these acts were not called disenfranchisement, yet this is exactly what they were) in the northern and southern states before the Civil War were the precursors to the South’s Era of Disenfranchisement (1888–1901). This new period of reversal came at the end of the Era of Black Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877 and effectively ended that era. However, just as the earlier reversals in the northern and southern states were undone by the Civil War
Amendments, particularly the Fifteenth Amendment, so would the Civil Rights Acts of the twentieth century finally undo the Era of Disenfranchisement.
Notes 1. John Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 104–122. 2. Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912), p. 10. 3. Ibid., p. 21 (emphasis in original). 4. Margaret Law Callcott, The Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870– 1912 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 3, footnote 1. 5. Charles Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of ConstitutionMaking, 1787–1865,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 32 (April 1947), p. 154. 6. Marion Thompson Wright, “Negro Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776–1875,” Journal of Negro History, Vol. 30 (April 1948), pp. 168–224. Quote on p. 174. 7. Ibid., p. 175. 8. Ibid., p. 177. 9. Ibid., p. 175. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., pp. 223–224. 13. James Adams, “Disfranchisement of Negroes in New England,” American Historical Review, Vol. 30 (April 1925), p. 545. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Olbrich, p. 24. 18. Ibid., p. 40. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Hanes Walton, Jr., Black Politics: A Theoretical and Structural Analysis (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1972), p. 33. 22. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 345. 23. Olbrich, pp. 42–43. 24. Ibid., p. 43. 25. Keyssar, p. 57. 26. Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution-Making, 1787–1865,” pp. 162–163. 27. Olbrich, p. 51. 28. Wesley, “Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution-Making, 1787–1865,” p. 163. 29. Keyssar, p. 18. 30. Olbrich, p. 51. 31. Ibid., p. 52. 32. David McBride, “Black Protest Against Radical Politics: Gardner, Hinton, and their Memorial of 1838,” Pennsylvania History Vol. 46 (April 1979), pp. 155–156. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., p. 163. 35. Olbrich, p. 68. 36. Herbert Aptheker (ed.), “The Appeal of Forty Thousand Disfranchised Citizens of Pennsylvania,” in his A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States: From Colonial Times Through the Civil War (New York: Citadel Press, 1967), pp. 176–178. 37. McBride, p. 158, footnote 44. 38. Olbrich, p. 69. 39. Ibid., p. 68. 40. Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 19.
The Reversal of African American Suffrage Rights, 1788–1870 143
41. Ibid. 42. Olbrich, p. 29. 43. Ibid., p. 30. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Keyssar, p. 56. 47. Charles Wesley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 29 (January 1944), p. 35. 48. Ibid. 49. J. Stanley Lemons and Michael McKenna, “Re-enfranchisement of Rhode Island Negroes,” Rhode Island History Vol. 30 (February 1971), p. 3. 50. Keyssar, p. 71. 51. Lemons and McKenna, p. 7. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., p. 8. 55. Ibid., p. 9. 56. Ibid., p. 10. 57. Keyssar, p. 74.
58. Lemons and McKenna, pp. 10–11. 59. Ibid., p. 11. 60. Ibid., pp. 11–12. 61. Ibid., p. 12 62. Roger Wallace Shugg, “Negro Voting in the Ante-Bellum South,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 21 (January 1936), p. 360. 63. Ibid., p. 359. 64. Ibid., p. 360. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., pp. 360–361. 67. Ibid., p. 341. 68. Ibid., p. 361. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., p. 362. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., p. 363. 76. Ibid. 77. Olbrich, p. 69.
CHAPTER 8
Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870 The Nature and Scope of the Statewide Referenda, 1846–1870
146
Figure 8.1 Number of Referenda on Suffrage Rights for African Americans in States and Territories, 1846–1870
147
Table 8.1 Referenda on Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color in States and Federal Territories, 1846–1870
147
States with Multiple Statewide Referenda for Suffrage Rights, 1846–1870
148
Table 8.2 Results of Four Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Wisconsin, 1846, 1849, 1857, and 1870
149
Figure 8.2 Results of Four Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Wisconsin, 1847–1865
150
Table 8.3 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in New York, 1846, 1860, and 1869
151
Figure 8.3 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in New York, 1846–1869
151
Table 8.4 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Minnesota, 1865, 1867, and 1868
151
Figure 8.4 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Minnesota, 1865–1868
152
Table 8.5 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Michigan, 1850, 1868, and 1870
153
Figure 8.5 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Michigan, 1850–1870
154
Table 8.6 Results of Two Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Iowa, 1857 and 1868
155
Figure 8.6 Results of Two Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Iowa, 1857–1868
156
States with Single Statewide Referenda for Suffrage Rights, 1862–1868
156
Table 8.7 Results of Five Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Illinois (1862), Connecticut (1865), Kansas (1867), Ohio (1867), and Missouri (1868)
157
Figure 8.7 Results of Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Illinois, Connecticut, Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri, 1862–1868
157
The Failure of Suffrage Rights Referenda in Federal Territories after the Civil War, 1865–1868: Congress Steps In
157
Table 8.8 Results of Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Six Federal Territories and the District of Columbia, 1865–1868
157
Summary and Conclusions on African American Suffrage Referenda Prior to the Fifteenth Amendment
158
Map 8.1 States and Territories that Held Referenda on Suffrage Rights for African Americans, 1846–1870
159
Notes 159
146
D
Chapter 8
uring the Antebellum Era (1788–1860) and prior to the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), numerous states used referenda to determine if the white electorate in these states wanted to allow African American Free-Men-of-Color to have suffrage rights. Instead of state legislatures and/or constitutional conventions deciding on suffrage rights, referenda in these states allowed the voting populace to determine suffrage rights for African Americans. New York, for example, which had property qualifications only for Free-Men-of-Color, held three referenda on the question of removing said qualifications. Reversals, the loss of existing suffrage rights, were decided by state legislatures via legislative statutes, and by constitutional conventions placing “white only” clauses in the new state constitutions, which were then ratified by popular vote. Ratification, however, was for the entire document and not for or against specific clauses in a new constitutional document. Ten states and seven federal territories—prior to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment—submitted some twenty-seven suffrage referenda to their voters for approval. These referenda took the decisionmaking powers on suffrage rights away from elected officials and convention delegates and placed it in the hands of the white electorate. Twenty-seven total black suffrage related referenda were placed in the hands of the white electorate between 1846 and 1870, with multiple referenda being conducted in some states. Wisconsin, which had the most, held four separate referenda in 1847, 1849, 1857, and 1865, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court had to finally adjudicate the matter. The Dakota Territory and four states held one referendum each in 1867. None of the seven federal territories, which included the District of Columbia, held more than one referendum each prior the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. A referendum in New Jersey was blocked by the state legislature before it could take place. Of the twenty-seven referenda, only one state (Minnesota in its third referenda in 1868) and one territory (the Dakotas in 1867) approved suffrage rights for African Americans prior to the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment. Michigan in its third referendum approved suffrage rights after the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment. New York, which held three referenda, the last occurring in 1869 (one year before the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment), refused in all three referenda to lift the property qualification imposed only on Free-Men-of-Color. It would take the Fifteenth Amendment to remove the property qualification in New York and to grant the right to vote in the other states and territories. The last three reversals of suffrage rights that were not referenda-driven occurred in Tennessee in 1834, North Carolina in 1835, and Pennsylvania in 1838. Yet the launching of statewide referenda did not occur until 1846. A number of factors caused this reconsideration. The National Negro Convention Movement, founded in 1831, and the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1833, spawned the larger abolitionist movement and crusade. In 1840 the creation of the Liberty Party launched a host of additional anti-slavery political parties. The Convention Movement with its broad-based and very active and aggressive state auxiliaries—along with the more radical and militant
anti-slavery parties—began the hue and cry for equal voting rights for African Americans.1 Black Abolitionists, many of whom became activists in the anti-slavery political parties, along with their allies submitted petitions, memorials, and prayers and engaged in pressure group activity upon state legislative and power elites to regain those suffrage rights denied them during the reversal period.2 The anti-slavery parties made a full-scale attack upon slavery and the extension of slavery to the new states and territories. Suffrage rights became a major political issue alongside the problem of slavery. Simply put, the reversal of suffrage rights soon produced an opposite reaction, the demand for suffrage rights and/or the restoration of denied suffrage rights.3 Another factor was the rise of mass-based political parties, the Democratic and Whig political parties. According to Professor John Aldrich’s pioneering work on the rise of the mass-based party, by 1828 six states had an organized Democratic party, four more in 1832, eight more in 1836, and an additional seven in 1840.4 These mass-based parties were driven by key issues. The Democratic Party, with a few exceptions in different states, took a tough, hard-line stance against both suffrage rights for Free-Menof-Color and any anti-slavery position or rhetoric. This continuing position of the initial mass-based party mobilized African American activists in the opposite direction, to support for the anti-slavery Whigs, Liberty, and Free-Soil parties. With these major and minor parties behind them, Free-Men-and-Womenof-Color fought for and got reconsideration of their suffrage rights by way of the referenda movement from 1846 until 1870.5
The Nature and Scope of the Statewide Referenda, 1846–1870 Figure 8.1 offers a longitudinal examination of the years from 1846 to 1870, in which statewide (or territory-wide) referenda occurred. The first occurred in New York in 1846 and the last in Michigan in 1870. The graph shows a clustering of referenda in the post-Civil War era. Illinois was the only state to hold a suffrage referendum during the Civil War period. In 1865, the year that the Civil War ended, three states and two federal territories held referenda. A referendum was held in Nebraska in 1866, while in 1867 three state referenda were held and another in a federal territory, for a grand total of four. (New Jersey never actually held a referendum because it was blocked by the state legislature.) The largest number of referenda ever held in a single year occurred in 1868, when referenda were held in four states and three federal territories, for a total of seven. Finally, Michigan held its third referendum in November 1870, some eight months after the Fifteenth Amendment had been adopted and ratified. Overall, in the period from 1865 to 1870, there were referenda in thirteen states and seven federal territories for a grand total of twenty in six years. Indeed, the end of the Civil War set off a rash of these suffrage rights referenda. Prior to this time period there had never been more than one referendum held in a single year, except in 1857 when referenda occurred in both Wisconsin and Iowa, and no referenda had been held between 1850 and 1856. Table 8.1 provides the votes and percentages for each of the state and federal territory referenda. Rank ordering the
Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870 147 Figure 8.1 Number of Referenda on Suffrage Rights for African Americans in States and Territories, 1846–1870 8 7
Number of Referenda
6 5 4 3 2 1
70
69
18
68
18
67
18
66
18
65
18
64
18
63
18
62
18
61
18
60
18
18
59
58
18
57
18
18
56
55
18
54
18
53
18
52
18
51
18
50
18
49
18
48
18
47
18
18
18
46
0 Year
Source: Table 8.1.
Table 8.1 Referenda on Suffrage Rights for Free-Men-of-Color in States and Federal Territories, 1846–1870 Against
Votes in the Federal Territories
In Favor
Year
State
Votes
Percent
1846
New York
224,336
72.4%
85,406
27.6%
Denied
1860
345,791
63.6%
197,889
36.4%
Denied
1869
282,403
53.1%
249,802
46.9%
Denied
14,615
65.9%
7,564
34.1%
Denied
1849
4,075
43.6%
5,265
56.4%
Approveda
1857
45,157
58.6%
31,964
41.4%
1865
55,454
54.3%
46,629
32,026
71.4%
1868
110,582
1870
50,598
1847
1850
Wisconsin
Michigan
Votes
Percent
Territory
Votes
Percent
1865
Colorado
4,192
89.8%
476
10.2%
Denied
1865
DC
7,333
99.5%
36
0.5%
Denied
1866
Nebraska
3,938
50.6%
3,838
49.4%
Denied
1867
Dakotas
(……………. Data not found …………….)
Approved
1868
Washington
(……………. Data not found …………….)
Denied
Denied
1868
Idaho
(……………. Data not found …………….)
Denied
45.7%
Denied
1868
Montana
(……………. Data not found …………….)
Denied
12,840
28.6%
Denied
60.7%
71,733
39.3%
Denied
48.3%
54,105
51.7%
Approved
Iowa
49,387
85.3%
8,489
14.7%
Denied
1868
81,119
43.5%
105,384
56.5%
Approved
1865
Minnesota
14,838
54.9%
12,170
45.1%
Denied
1867
28,759
51.2%
27,461
48.8%
Denied
29,906
43.2%
39,322
56.8%
Approved
211,405
84.9%
37,548
15.1%
Denied
1862
Illinois
1865
Connecticut
33,489
55.2%
27,217
44.8%
Denied
1867
Kansas
19,600
65.1%
10,529
34.9%
Denied
1867
Ohio
255,340
54.1%
216,987
45.9%
Denied
1867
New Jersey
1868
Missouri Totals
In Favor
Year
1857
1868
Against
Outcome
(…………. No referendum held ………….)
Deniedb
74,053
57.3%
55,236
42.7%
Denied
1,962,933
60.1%
1,303,540
39.9%
Totals
15,463
78.0%
Votes
4,350
Percent
22.0%
Outcome
Sources: Adapted from Emil Olbrich, The Development of Sentiment on Negro Suffrage to 1860 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1912); William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969); Phyllis Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982); John Mohr (ed.), Radical Republicans in the North: State Politics During Reconstruction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); and Richard Curry (ed.), Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962). Referendum data for Kansas in 1867, and for Missouri and Iowa in 1868, are from The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1967). In addition, the following articles were consulted: Michael McManus, "Wisconsin Republicans and Negro Suffrage: Attitudes and Behavior, 1857," Civil War History Vol. 25 (March 1979), pp. 36–54; John Rozett, "Racism and Republican Emergence in Illinois, 1848–1860: A Re-evaluation of Republican Negrophobia," Civil War History Vol. 22 (June 1976), pp. 101–115; Ronald Formisano, "The Edge of Caste: Colored Suffrage in Michigan," Michigan History Vol. 56 (Spring 1972), pp. 19–41; Marion Thompson, "Negro Suffage in New Jersey, 1776–1875," Journal of Negro History Vol. 33 (April 1948), pp. 168–224; Charles Wesley, "Negro Suffrage in the Period of Constitution Making, 1787–1865," in his Neglected History (Ohio: Central State College Press, 1965), pp. 41–55; S. B. Weeks, "The History of Negro Suffrage in the South," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 9 (December 1894), pp. 671–703; and Alice Hahn, "The Exercise of the Electoral Franchise in Iowa in Constitutional Referendum, 1838–1933" (master's thesis, Drake University, 1933). Calculations by the authors. The governor of Wisconsin set aside the referendum outcome that favored suffrage after claiming that he did not understand the results, thereby denying suffrage rights. Later, the state supreme court upheld the outcome that had been rendered by the electorate. a
The New Jersey legislature decided against allowing a state referendum, deliberating instead within their body to directly withhold suffrage rights from African Americans. b
148
Chapter 8
percentages for these referenda at the state level shows that the range in favor of suffrage rights for African Americans went from a low of 14.7% in Iowa in 1857 to a high of 56.8% in Minnesota in 1868. The mean for the state level support stood at 40.7%. Conversely, the table shows that the percentages of the opposition (those against African American suffrage) ranged from a high of 85.3% in Iowa to the low in Minnesota of 43.2%. The mean number of individuals voting against suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color stood at 59.3%. Voting data and percentages exist for only three of the seven federal territories that held suffrage referenda. In those territories, the range of percentages in favor of extending suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color moves from a low of 0.5% of the voters in the District of Columbia to a high of 49.4% in the Nebraska territory. The mean vote for suffrage rights in these three territories stands at 20.0%. Likewise, the table shows that the range for vote percentages against suffrage rights went from a high of 99.5% to a low of 50.6%, with the mean standing at 80.0%. Interestingly, of these twenty-seven referenda, the nation’s capital voiced the greatest opposition to suffrage rights for Free-Men-ofColor. The District of Columbia, as the Border States of Maryland and Missouri had before and during the war, attracted a lot of white southerners, many of whom came to the District of Columbia primarily to spy for the Confederacy as well as to promote and lobby for their anti-slavery causes. Only four of the twenty-seven total referenda (three states and one territory) were approved: in the Dakota Territory in 1867 (although no data are available), in Iowa and Minnesota in 1868, and Michigan in 1870. An 1849 Wisconsin referendum approved suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color, but the governor set the results aside and denied that approval. (In 1866, the Wisconsin supreme court retroactively overturned the governor’s action and validated the referendum results.) Therefore, with only four successful suffrage rights referenda out of the twenty-eight considered by votes either popular or legislative, the success rate is only 14.3%; and if one counts the 1849 vote in Wisconsin the rate of success rises to 17.9%. Thus, it is amply demonstrated that most American states and territories, more than eight out of every ten times they had the opportunity, evidenced a strong majority opposition to granting or (in the case of New York) enhancing African American suffrage rights.
States with Multiple Statewide Referenda for Suffrage Rights, 1846–1870 If the longitudinal data offer empirical evidence on public opinion and sentiment about opposition to suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color, then further empirical evidence can be seen in those states that had multiple statewide referenda on the issue.
Wisconsin Wisconsin had the greatest number of statewide referenda, four, over a eighteen-year period from 1847 to 1865. The state’s second referendum, in 1849, actually resulted in approval of suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color, but the governor set the decision aside because a technicality arose that grew out of the second state constitutional convention held in Madison in December, 1847. “Debate on Negro suffrage began in earnest on January 3,
1848. It was neither extended nor extreme.”6 It ended with a final resolution that read: The Legislature shall at any time have the power to admit colored persons to the right of suffrage, but no such act of the Legislature shall become law until the same shall have been submitted to the electors at the next general election succeeding the passage of the same, and shall have received in its favor a majority of all the votes cast at such election.7 Shortly after this convention finished with the new state constitution, “it was approved by the voters without fanfare. The resolution about Negro suffrage received little attention. Wisconsin became the thirtieth state in the Union, and the first legislature acted on the resolution during its first session. Without significant debate, it authorized a referendum on Negro suffrage at the general election of 1849.”8 In this second referendum election on suffrage rights, “5,265 citizens voted ‘Aye’ and 4,045 voted ‘Nay’ on this issue, 31,759 voted in the gubernatorial election. Fifty-two hundred was not a majority of 31,700, not ‘a majority of all the votes cast at such election.’”9 Immediately, the State Board of Canvassers delivered a decision that neither the letter nor the spirit of the resolution had been met. The Governor simply set the outcome of the election aside, declaring that he did not understand what the election results meant. Then, “late in 1855, some Milwaukee Negroes gathered together to seek a way out of the impasse. At the time, there were only about 100 colored people in the city. . . . They resolved to distribute petitions for signatures throughout the state requesting the legislature to hold another referendum to give Negroes their ‘God-given right . . . most unjustly withheld from us as men.’”10 To get the signatures, the group enlisted others: One Charles Russell was authorized to gather signatures throughout the state. Russell got busy immediately and traveled to Janesville, Beloit, Madison, Liberty, Prairie, and Portage [counties] acquiring signatures. . . . [Further] the use of newspapers to publicize the effort and the appointment of an agent to secure signatures were two steps symbolizing a new awareness of political action by the Negro in Wisconsin. 11 During the time of the third referendum, African Americans— despite their even smaller population numbers—brought in the well-known and highly respected black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond to speak and lecture to both the black and white communities about the need to give suffrage rights to Free-Men-of-Color. Hence, they introduced a new tactic to generate support for this third referendum, which both houses of the Wisconsin legislature put on the ballot for the November 1857 election. Additional support for “Negro suffrage” came from the newly organized Republican Party during this referendum election. Of the political party that arose around this issue historian Michael McManus has written:
Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870 149 During the months between the passage of the suffrage resolution and the state party conventions, Democratic partisans made a determined effort to insure that the Republican party would be unable to avoid the ‘nigger question’ in the coming campaign. Insisting that enfranchisement of the Negro was a cardinal principle of Republicanism, they defied the Republican leadership to proclaim so publicly.12
The Negro suffrage resolution went down to defeat. The complete returns show that 45,157 votes were cast against the measure, 31,964 in favor. In the general election . . . the Republicans recaptured the governorship by fewer than 100 votes out of 90,000 ballots cast. They also eked out narrow victories for two other state offices. The Democrats won four state offices and confidently predicted the rapid demise of the ‘nigger party.’19
At their August 1857 state party convention, the Democrats adopted the following plank: “Resolved, That we are unalterably opposed to the extension of the right of suffrage to the Negro race, and will never consent that the odious doctrine of Negro equality shall find a place upon the statute books of Wisconsin.”13 The Republicans at their state convention on September 2, 1857, responded to the Democratic Party’s challenge not by putting a plank on Negro Suffrage in their platform but instead by demanding “the complete abrogation of the Fugitive Slave Law, the restriction of slavery to the states where it already existed, the admission of no more slave states, and the prohibition of slavery from all territories under federal jurisdiction.”14 Nevertheless, although the party did not take up in a formal manner the “Negro Suffrage” issue, “of the 34 Republican [news]papers whose position it was possible to ascertain, 29 supported Negro suffrage, 3 opposed it, and 2 were neutral. Twelve Republican papers mounted FOR EXTENSION OF SUFFRAGE on their bannerhead.”15 Therefore due to the vagueness, ambiguity, and indirect manner of the Republican Party response to the “Negro Suffrage” issue, the Democratic party launched an all-out effort to tie the party to the issue anyway and thereby defeat the statewide referendum in the 1857 election. Accordingly, the party “chided the feeble effort of the Republicans to disguise their stand and insisted that they had ‘swallowed the nigger whole, wool, boots, breaches and all.’ The Democrats also attempted to capitalize on white fears and hatred of the Negro. They fulminated against the ‘absurd and revolutionary’ Republican belief that Negroes could be elevated from their ‘condition of inferiority . . . to the white race.’”16 Historian McManus added:
In this election, the referendum and the general election were two separate voting items, and while the Republicans won at the state level they lost on the suffrage issue. Using the ecological regression statistical technique, historian McManus estimated that Republican and Democratic voters who participated in the gubernatorial election voted in a slightly different manner. About three-fifths (61.6%) of Republican voters supported the suffrage issue, while 10.4% opposed it, and some 28.0% did not vote in the referendum. As for Democrats, fully three-fourth (74.7%) opposed the issue, 5.6% supported for the suffrage issue, and 19.7% did not vote at all on the issue.20 Table 8.2 summarizes the results of all four of Wisconsin’s referenda on African American suffrage. But even after two defeats and one questionable victory, African Americans in the state of Wisconsin did not give up the fight for suffrage rights. “Late in January 1865, one hundred and two Negroes asked the legislature to authorize another referendum on Negro Suffrage. . . . The legislature responded with a bill authorizing another referendum on Negro suffrage. . . . On March 31, the Assembly passed the bill, 55–32, . . . and the Senate . . . passed it, 24–8. Three days later, the Governor returned the bill, signed the law.”21 This fourth referendum, coming as it did immediately after the Civil War, captured national attention together with other northern referenda. “President Andrew Johnson was more than passively interested in the conventions of Northern states, anxious to retain support for his Reconstruction plans. His friends in New York and Pennsylvania had already reported to him. His chief lieutenant in Wisconsin, Senator James R. Doolittle, was about to take charge in Wisconsin.”22 Senator Doolittle, who like President Johnson had been a Democrat before becoming a Republican, “embraced gradual emancipation and colonization, espousals, which were not altered by the facts of war.”23 Thus, at the state
The Democracy added to this bleak picture by assuring white Wisconsin that social equality and amalgamation naturally would follow the elevation of the Negro to political equality. . . . Finally, the Democrats courted Wisconsin’s large immigrant population. They claimed that the Republicans cared more for Negroes than foreigners, that they would subordinate their needs to those of Negroes.17 Finally, during this 1857 referendum election, “Republicans and Democrats were not alone in voicing their opinions on the suffrage questions. Wisconsin blacks demonstrated their increasing political awareness by ‘sending forth their orators’ to rally support for the measure. Predictably, the Democratic press ridiculed their efforts and referred to the black spokesmen in highly disparaging terms.”18 Thus, in such a heated and conflicted electoral contest, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
Table 8.2 Results of Four Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Wisconsin, 1846, 1849, 1857, and 1870 For Suffrage Rights
Against Suffrage Rights
Year
Votes
Percent
Votes
Percent
Total Votes
Outcome
1847
7,564
34.1%
14,615
65.9%
22,179
Denied
1849
5,265
56.4%
4,075
43.6%
9,340
Denieda
1857
31,964
41.4%
45,157
58.6%
77,121
Denied
1865
46,629
45.7%
55,454
54.3%
102,083
Denied
Source: Table 8.1. The governor of Wisconsin set aside the referendum outcome that favored suffrage after claiming that he did not understand the results, thereby denying suffrage. Later, the state supreme court upheld the outcome that had been rendered by the electorate. a
Chapter 8
convention of the Union Party (the renamed Republican party) in Wisconsin, the senator became “chairman of the committee on resolutions . . . [which] reported out the Doolittle resolution on suffrage” that sought to forestall the matter.24 Moreover, “Doolittle reported the affair to the President . . . [and] in blocking the minority report favoring Negro Suffrage and Congressional Reconstruction, Doolittle had provided his White House mentor with another state endorsement of Johnson’s national policies. . . . If Northern states refused to support Negro suffrage, there was less chance of it materializing in the South.”25 In this 1865 election, the Union party “was a mixture of Republicans and War Democrats, hot abolitionists and lukewarm anti-slavery men welded together by the stress of war and the elusive Madison Regency, a powerful political cabal.”26 With this wide ranging electoral coalition, the Union Party did not take a foursquare stand on the “Negro suffrage” issue any more than the Republicans had before the party’s name had changed during the Civil War. The so-called radical wing of the party, however, did take a stand for “Negro suffrage.” “The Radicals suffered sharply from the Union party’s calculated and successful strategy to isolate and ignore the Negro suffrage issue, even though it was on the ballot.”27 Thus, in the election both the Union and the Democratic gubernatorial candidates maneuvered so as to avoid taking a direct stand on the issue. In this silent election on “Negro suffrage,” the Union/ Republican Party candidate Lucius Fairchild won the governorship, and the Democrats defeated the suffrage amendment by 9,000 votes. The election results showed that: Out of fifty-seven counties, thirty-eight went for Fairchild and only twenty-four for suffrage; fourteen of Fairchild’s counties voted against suffrage and no county voted for the Democrats and suffrage. In all fifty-seven counties Fairchild led suffrage, polling more than 12,000 more votes than the suffrage ‘ayes.’ The soldiers’ vote, tabulated separately, gave Fairchild a 6 to 1 majority and suffrage a 6 to 1 setback.28 Still, this fourth defeat did not deter African Americans in the state. In Milwaukee, African American leaders were expecting a defeat and prepared for it by calling on October 9, 1865, a meeting to determine “the most practicable means to secure a fair and impartial expression of the voters at the coming fall election for the amendment to the constitution granting to all men the right of suffrage irrespective of color.”29 This call was signed by seven members of the community. The meeting was held and several resolutions were passed. “One of the signers of the call also helped to draft the resolution. His name was Ezekiel Gillespie and, like all of the men involved in the meeting, he was a Negro. . . . In January, he had signed one of the petitions to the Legislature requesting that a referendum on Negro suffrage be authorized.”30 It was his action at the meeting of colored men that led to this new legal strategy: Gillespie marched up to the board of registry of voters in his ward and asked that his name be placed on the list
as a voter. The board refused on the grounds that he was a person of ‘mixed African blood.’ On election day in November he appeared at the polls and offered his vote to the inspectors of election of the ward, Henry L. Palmer and associates. They refused it. Not quite three weeks later, Gillespie was in the office of an attorney, notarizing a statement that he had been prohibited from voting.31 His attorney filed a legal suit against the inspector of elections of that ward. “The case of Gillespie v. Palmer et al. was neatly arranged. Gillespie had appeared at the polls on election day in November armed with two affidavits, one explaining why he was not registered and one affirming, on behalf of two ‘householders,’ that he was a resident of the ward.”32 Once filed, the case “moved through the county court on a demurrer filed by the defendants, the inspectors of election of the seventh ward. . . . The case on appeal [went] to the [state] Supreme Court, January, 1866 session. . . . On February 15, the case was tried before the Supreme Court in Madison.”33 Then, by the end of March 1866, the three-member state supreme court rendered its decision, with two justices agreeing and one justice writing a separate concurring opinion. The court noted: “the simple majority by which the voters had favored Negro suffrage seventeen years ago was sufficient. Not only was the Negro of Wisconsin now empowered to vote, but irony of ironies, he had possessed that right since 1849.”34 Historian McManus opines: “to the more than 1,500 Negroes of Wisconsin, it was justice.”35 Therefore, in the first election where African Americans could vote, April, 1866, “in Madison . . . there were only about forty eligible Negro voters . . . and . . . a few Negroes voted the Democratic ticket, but most of them followed the Union party. And some, undoubtedly, exercised their newly won right by not voting.”36 Figure 8.2 shows that support for suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color in Wisconsin increased between the initial referendum of 1847 and 1849 by 22.3 percentage points. Then between 1849 and 1857 there was a decline of 15.0 percentage points, and between 1857 and 1865 a rise of white voter support of 4.3 percentage points. In terms of percent of votes cast, the Figure 8.2 Results of Four Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Wisconsin, 1847–1865
Percent Voting for African American Suffrage Rights
150
60%
56.4%
50% 40%
41.4%
45.7%
34.1%
30% 20% 10% 0%
1847
1849
1857 Year
Source: Table 8.1.
1865
Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870 151
highest level of support came in the second referendum with 56.4% and the lowest level of support was at the initial referendum in 1847. The last two referenda had greater support than the initial effort but did not reach the level of the second referendum. Ultimately, African American leaders had to go to court to resolve the referenda vote in the state in 1866.
New York New York was the very first state in Antebellum America to hold a statewide referendum on African American suffrage. Like Minnesota and Michigan, New York would hold three statewide suffrage referenda. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies and had allowed African Americans to vote since the Colonial Era. The three statewide referenda in New York concerned a property qualification that restricted suffrage rights, namely requiring ownership of $250 worth of property. Table 8.3 compares the 1846, 1860, and 1869 statewide suffrage referenda in New York. It includes the total number of votes cast in these special referenda elections, the votes for the elimination of property qualifications for Free-Men-of-Color, the votes against the elimination of property qualifications, as well as the percentages for and against. In all three cases, the referenda were voted down. Not surprisingly, “the most dedicated group supporting equal suffrage proved to be New York’s black community. Not only
Table 8.3 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in New York, 1846, 1860, and 1869 For Suffrage Rightsa
Against Suffrage Rights
Year
Votes
Percent
Votes
Percent
Total Votes
1846
85,406
27.6%
224,336
72.4%
309,742
Outcome Denied
1860
197,889
36.4%
345,791
63.6%
543,680
Denied
1869
249,802
46.9%
282,403
53.1%
532,205
Denied
Source: Table 8.1. The three statewide referenda in New York concerned a property qualification that restricted suffrage rights, namely requiring ownership of $250 worth of property. a
Percent Voting for African American Suffrage Rights
Figure 8.3 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in New York, 1846–1869 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%
Source: Table 8.1.
46.9% 36.4%
did they actively lobby the [state constitutional] convention itself, but they also issued public addresses and letters throughout the referendum campaign to explain why they wanted and needed the franchise.”37 On the occasion of each of these three suffrage rights referenda, the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass “lobbied not only the white community but the state legislature, governor and the African American community as well.”38 In fact, the protest and lobbying efforts of African Americans in New York became the model for all of the other referenda states. Also notable in New York, African Americans who could meet the property qualification requirement voted in these statewide referenda. In Figure 8.3 one sees a linear rise in support for suffrage rights. Between the initial referendum of 1846 and the second one in 1860 support rose 8.8 percentage points and between 1860 and 1869 there was a rise of 10.5 percentage points. Yet despite the well organized African American efforts in New York, success was never achieved. All three of the referenda failed.
Minnesota Minnesota’s three suffrage referenda all came after the Civil War, between 1865 and 1868.39 This differentiates it from the other states with three or more suffrage referenda votes—Wisconsin, New York, and Michigan—each of which held at least one referendum before the war. In terms of partisan support, Minnesota reflected the common trend of Republican support for the issue and Democratic party opposition. Table 8.4 provides results for the three suffrage referenda held in Minnesota. Each time a referendum failed, the Republican-dominated state legislature authorized a new one. In the initial referendum of 1865, people voted against giving suffrage rights to blacks, with a majority of 2,670. In the second referendum in 1867 there was a smaller majority of 1,298 in opposition. Finally, in 1868, voters approved the third referendum with a majority of 9,416 votes. This time 56.8% of the white electorate voted to give African Americans the right to vote. To ensure passage on the third try, state Republicans had placed “the suffrage question on the presidential ballot to discourage ticket splitting, and concealing the issue by labeling the question not ‘Negro suffrage’ but rather ‘revision of section 1, article 7.’ ”40 Not only had “Minnesota Democrats termed the referendum a swindle,” they voted against the issue. 41 Gillette has written: “The hard core opposition to Negro suffrage came from ten counties along or near the Mississippi River. All these counties were strongly Democratic and voted against Negro Table 8.4 Results of Three Statewide Referenda on African American Suffrage Rights in Minnesota, 1865, 1867, and 1868
27.6%
For Suffrage Rights
1846
1860 Year
1869
Against Suffrage Rights
Year
Votes
Percent
Votes
Percent
Total Votes
1865
12,170
45.1%
14,838
54.9%
27,008
Denied
1867
27,461
48.8%
28,759
51.2%
56,220
Denied
1868
39,322
56.8%
29,906
43.2%
69,228
Approved
Source: Table 8.1.
Outcome
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Chapter 8
suffrage in all three referendums. . . . Yet Hennepin county [Minneapolis], with a large proportion of the state’s Negro population, was consistently progressive, favoring Negro suffrage in all three elections, though by a close margin in 1865.”42 Gillette closes with the interesting observation that “it would thus appear that at least in Minnesota people opposed Negro suffrage more out of Democratic sympathy than out of fear of Negro presence.”43 Figure 8.4 shows the rise in the percentage of the white electorate that voted for suffrage rights for African Americans. Between the initial and second referenda there was a rise of 3.7 percentage points, and this increase in the rate of support was maintained between the second and third referenda, with a rise of 8.0 percentage points. Clearly, the strategy of choosing a presidential election year with the popular Ulysses S. Grant as the candidate worked quite favorably in achieving passage of the referendum. Figure 8.4 Results of Three Statewide Suffrage Rights Referenda in Minnesota, 1865–1868
Percent Voting for African American Suffrage Rights
60% 50%
56.8% 45.1%
48.8%
40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
1865
1867
1868
Year Source: Table 8.1.
Michigan Michigan held three referenda on Negro suffrage, but the early political context in the state became over time mired in the racism of a Negrophobic white majority. Historian Ronald Formisano, the leading scholar of caste in this state, found that “for some three decades before the Civil War this northwestern frontier state, where the egalitarian ethos otherwise reigned supreme, denied black citizens the right to vote. But almost continuously from 1835 to 1861 a black and white vanguard of reformers challenged this mainstay of caste, and even the very assumptions upon which it rested.”44 Formisano continued his description of the unusual political context in Michigan: Michigan’s experience supports the propositions that the broader the political movements against slavery extension became, the more free black rights were left out of them; . . . In the 1850s, particularly, sectional conflict between North and South, and white social group antagonisms within Northern society caused a heightening of racial consciousness, white fears, and
resistance to amelioration. White allies became defensive, cautiously pragmatic, or indifferent. By 1860 the colored suffrage issue in Michigan had become almost the sole property of blacks.45 There is another unique feature in the Michigan political context. “Colored suffrage . . . became politically intertwined with the issue of ‘alien suffrage,’ and interacted symbolically with the status of ethnic minorities, especially foreign immigrants.”46 This issue of giving aliens suffrage rights arose in a major way at the state Constitutional Convention of 1835. At that Convention, “Democrats favoring alien suffrage held a strong majority but failed to dominate proceedings completely because of an intraparty split.” One Democrat, Ross Wilkins of Lenawee County, wanted to strike “out the word white from the franchise article” and permit both aliens and blacks to have the right to vote. Another Democrat at the convention, John Norvell, was a “champion of Alien suffrage,” but opposed blacks having the right to vote. The matter came to a vote and the “Wilkins’ amendment failed by a vote of 63 to 17 with the few identifiable Whigs [who opposed alien suffrage] joining the Democratic bloc in opposing it. Democratic supporters of colored suffrage joined the Democratic bloc in opposing it. Democratic supporters of colored suffrage, however, tended also to be those who opposed alien suffrage.”47 Formisano wrote that “these patterns would reappear: supporters of alien suffrage tended to oppose nonwhite [Free-Men-of-Color] voting while advocates of colored suffrage tended to oppose non-citizen voting [alien].”48 This matter of alien suffrage rights, like party cohesion and unity in Minnesota, became the dominant issue and feature of the Negro suffrage struggle in Michigan. In fact, the first time that the suffrage issue surfaced was in 1834 when the Legislative Council of the then Territory of Michigan “briefly enfranchised Indians and ‘persons of color’ who paid taxes. . . . But the very next day the Council excluded non-whites as it broadened white suffrage to allow all free, white male inhabitants above 21 and three months resident to vote. . . . A minority of three Whigs and two Democrats opposed this bill, because they wanted voting limited to citizens and extended to non-whites.”49 Thus, Michigan, even before it entered the Union as a state, had barred Free-Men-of-Color from suffrage rights. The next time that the suffrage rights issue surfaced in Michigan was “in 1840–41 [with] the new Liberty party and its organ, the Ann Arbor Signal of Liberty, [making] colored suffrage the leading issue of abolition’s domestic war on slavery by launching a petition directed at the state legislature.”50 Each year after the formation of the Liberty Party, “local abolition societies and churches all over the state sent petitions to the legislature . . . praying that the legislature” would provide suffrage and other civil rights for Free-Men-and-Women-of-Color.51 The African American population in the state, inspired by the African American suffrage struggles in Pennsylvania in 1838 and New York in 1837, became increasingly politically active. Hence, “by 1842 Detroit had a Colored Vigilant Committee, formed to wage ‘moral and political warfare’ for equal rights.” Also, the National Negro Convention Movement was revitalized in 1843
Suffrage Referenda prior to the Fifteenth Amendment, 1846–1870 153
and resumed national meetings in that year. Therefore, its state auxiliaries also became reactivated. “In its wake Michigan’s ‘Colored Citizens,’ like those of other states, held a state convention in October at Detroit.”52 After an eleven-day meeting, this state convention adjourned and sent another petition to the state legislature requesting suffrage rights. 53 While the state legislature had simply ignored prior suffrage petitions, there was a decision to respond to the 1843 submission— by denying it. A year later, in 1844, “hundreds of white voters over the entire state joined in the petition campaign. The legislators ignored them but the flow revived the next year, finally triggering two more opposing reports.”54 Nevertheless, the struggle for suffrage rights did not stop in 1845. For “in 1846 another black and white petition campaign elicited one more round of reports from the legislature on colored suffrage,” which again rejected the matter.55 A concern that surfaced in several of these legislative opposition reports were instances where Free-Men-of-Color had voted illegally in selected cities and counties despite the ban. One report noted that “Negroes appear to have voted in county elections in Washtenaw . . . and in Detroit in 1844.”56 When the other anti-slavery parties arrived in the state, the petition trend which the old Liberty Party set into motion was not carried on. “In 1848 Free Soilers and Whigs cooperated in congressional and local elections. By 1849 the two parties united on candidates for state office: their platform wholly ignored racial political equality.”57 Moreover, their candidate, Whig–Free Soiler Flavius Littlejohn, who had previously been a Democrat, “assumed black inferiority and opposed black suffrage” and never retracted this stance during the gubernatorial campaign.58 Thus, the new anti-slavery party in the state conveniently dropped the issue of Negro suffrage. Yet suffrage sentiment remained alive, especially among black leaders and white moral reformers. When a constitutional convention gathered in 1850, long petitions from all over the state arrived asking suffrage extension. A state convention of colored citizens assembled at Marshall in March to voice its grievance of taxation without representation.59 When the 1850 state Constitutional Convention had completed its business, “the convention as expected retained white suffrage, though it allowed detribalized Indians to vote and decided to submit colored suffrage to a popular referendum. Over 71.4 percent of the 44, 914 votes cast in the state went against colored suffrage.”60 Table 8.5 reveals the votes and percentages for and against suffrage rights for Free-Men-of-Color in the 1850, 1868, and 1870 suffrage referenda. Only 28.6% of the white voters supported suffrage rights in the initial 1850 referendum. Opposition votes amounted to nearly three-fourths of the white electorate (71.4%). Clearly, the white v