DV - Early Republic - Facts, Vocab Flashcards
The Evolution of the Right to Vote: Progress and Regression
think about how a topic like ‘progression and regression’ would need to cover the entire period
ex: franchise expanded throughout the first half of the period. It was central because of the territorial expansion taking place, wherein new territories were integrated into statehood. however there needed to be a debate about the right to vote, as it was not in the constitution.
at the level of the state, there were debates taking place where people sought to define and re-define the suffrage, making it one of its demands. in this sense, the evolution of the right to vote throughout the 19th century can be seen as a history of progression and regression, of the expansion of suffrage and its restriction, resulting in the inclusion and exclusion of various groups.
these histories are intertwined
The expansion of white male suffrage
the expansion took place gradually, with property qualifications and residency requirements easing. non-citizen white males, for example, could sometimes vote. and as a result, many states, by the 1820’s had almost universal white male suffrage
“an earned right,” i.e. a privilege justified by economic contribution, participation in the 1812 War (right to vote being conditional upon this, showing that patriotic attachment corresponds to willingness to confront British aggression), gave incentive/insurance to crush slave revolts; as well as attracting immigrants/voters, esp. party politics
restrictions included: women and blacks
other transformations: secret ballot became more common, turnout increased
Increasing restrictions
NY, 1821: universal white male suffrage; property qualifications for free Black men
Except for Maine, no new State enfranchised Black men after 1820
by 1828, 8 states out of 24 enfranchised Black men.
1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford SC decision denied Blacks citizenship.
1838: Pennsylvania
NY, 1821: universal white male suffrage; property qualifications for free Black men
At the Constitutional Convention of New York, in 1821, the right to vote was discussed and the property qualification was adopted.
Same time as the Missouri Compromise (federal legislation that balanced desires of northern states to prevent expansion of slavery in the country with those of southern states to expand it; admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state; declared a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel; the legislation passed on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820.
Except for Maine, no new State enfranchised Black men after 1820
by 1828, 8 states out of 24 enfranchised Black men
Dred Scott v. Sandford
1857, Supreme Court decision dening Blacks citizenship, whether they were free or slaves.
It held they were not considered citizens when constitution was drafted and inferred that the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them.
Pennsylvania in 1838
The 19th century is a fundamental period in understanding a shift to a deeper racial consciousness away from the previous emphasis on the social class of people. During the 1830s the Pennsylvania anti-slavery movement underwent a drastic transition with a large influx of non-Quakers, coinciding with an increasing radicalization. This resulted in a subsequent ideological divide; the Quakers continued to favour petitions and non-violent means of trying to gradually attain emancipation; “immediatists”, on the other hand, wanted instant unconditional freedom.
Prior to the 1838 Pennsylvania constitutional convention, the Pennsylvania constitution state that “In elections of the citizen every freeman… shall enjoy the rights of an elector.” The problem, as often is with constitutions, was that there were varying interpretations of this. Most white men interpreted this as meaning that only free white men could vote. The African-American community, however, believed this entitled them the right to vote. As such they voted in previous elections, albeit it in rural areas as they feared violent backlash from angry white urban mobs.
The 1838 convention was held with its original primary goal of reforming the tax and ownership restrictions placed on suffrage in order to enable the impoverished citizens of Pennsylvania to vote. However, due to the intense political turmoil target towards Black Philadelphians, thousands of white citizens petitioned the convention to restrict suffrage to whites, and on 20 January 1838 their wish was granted as the constitution was amended to be restricted to “white freemen.”[2] John Z Ross tried to justify the convention’s actions in an official statement by proposing that although “all men are free and equal” this does not apply to black citizens in a political sense, “only in a sense of nature”. He argued that this was what was best for the communities’ “security and happiness” and further added that Black men should not be able to vote as he did not believe that they have any “conceptions of civil liberty”.
Woman Suffrage and the Women’s Rights Movement: From Margins to Center
From the domestic to the public sphere
how women’s franchise became a question in the late nineteenth century
there was a dual movement of progression and regression, showing it was part of a larger, national conversation, in which systemic racism was present (in both the North and the South)
Woman suffrage at the center of the women’s rights
movement
Ideals and ideologies which were meant to consign women to domestic and private spheres de facto pushed them outward into the public sphere
ex: contributed to the expansion of female education (e.g. Emma Willard and Catherine Beecher who were educators and forces in opening teaching profession to other women); ideals were used to argue women would be better educators for the children of others; these two women never married, opened schools, and fought for women’s education; justified Republican Motherhood from viewpoint of someone who had never married nor had children; against franchise.
Catherine Beecher
educator and force in opening teaching profession to other women)
ideals were used to argue women would be better educators for the children of others
-lost husband and never married
-opened Hartford Female Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, and another in Cincinnati
-fought for women’s education: founded the Ladies’ Society for Promoting Education in the West and the American Women’s Educational Association. The latter sought to recruit and train teachers for frontier schools and send women into the West to civilize the young.
-justified Republican Motherhood from viewpoint of someone who had never married nor had children; against franchise. Hartford Female Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut
“If all females were not only well educated themselves but were prepared to communicate in an easy manner their stores of knowledge to others; if they not only knew how…
…to regulate their own minds, tempers, and habits but how to effect improvements in those around them, the face of society would be speedily changed.” – Beecher, Suggestions Respecting Improvements in Education
“Woman’s great mission is to…
…train immature, weak and ignorant creatures to obey the laws of God; the physical, the intellectual, the social and the moral.” – Beecher, An Address to the Christian Women of America
Emma Willard
worked in several schools and founded the first school for women’s higher education, the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York.
“Who knows how great and good a race of men may yet arise from…
…the forming hands of mothers, enlightened by the bounty of their beloved country?”
A Plan for Improving Female Education | 1819
“Cult of True Womanhood” (Welter, 1966)
According to Barbara Welter, an American History scholar
from the City University of New York, there were four major parts of this new ideal of womanhood. They consisted of piety or religiosity, purity, submissiveness and domesticity (Welter 152). “Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife-woman” (Welter 153). These characteristics, which were thought necessary for all “good and proper women,” laid the groundwork for a growing group of middle class women and their families, giving a much desired stability during otherwise turbulent, quickly changing times.
They were contradictory, and they posed many dilemmas.
Among them, it deprived them of direct participation in the debates around suffrage while allowing them the opportunity to speak in public as mothers. Through this role, their voices were accorded legitimacy and authority in society, as well as moral superiority.
It also relied upon essentialist arguments that women will purify society, perhaps suggesting that their influence was tied to this moral superiority (and once again something to be earned).
“cult of domesticity” (Kraditor, 1968)
-part of a broader nineteenth-century northern middle-class ideology of “separate spheres”
-identified womanhood with the private or domestic
sphere of the home and manhood with the public sphere of
economic competition and politics.
-defined the home as a space governed by women’s sentimental, moral and spiritual influence,
-contributed to definitions of manliness and sought to control male passions at a time when the market revolution, urbanization, westward migration, and partisan politics removed traditional communal restraints on male behavior.
-provided a powerful conceptual rationale for organizing (and reorganizing) social relations.
-expressed middle-class Americans’ discomfort with the kinds of social relations fostered by market capitalism.
-insisted on the separation of the private, or domestic, sphere from the public sphere was intended to prevent the intrusion of market forces into the home and the commodification of personal relations yet assigned men exclusive purview of the public realm and defining them as naturally inclined to competition and aggression
-legitimated an amoral and acquisitive male individualism
-used diametrically opposed definitions of masculinity and femininity to create a coherent middle-class value system that embraced the apparently conflicting forces of competitive capitalism and moral behavior.
