So clearly established had the negro's right to vote become that many of the county clerks, in making their returns in 1833, failed to distinguish between black and white polls. But the right was not uniformly exercised. In a number of counties negroes had never voted. In general, however, they had been allowed the franchise, and their numbers were considerable. In Halifax County there were three hundred colored voters, in Hertford one hundred and fifty, in Chowan fifty, in Pasquotank seventy-five. In some counties they held the balance of power, and Mr. Daniel remarks that he found, after thirty years' observation, that they uniformly voted for men of character and talent. Their votes were eagerly sought for. opposing candidates, for the nonce oblivious of social distinction and intent only on catching votes, hobnobbed with the men and swung corners all with dusky damsels at election balls." 3

"The

The project to deprive the free negroes of the suffrage met with much opposition. This project was not the offspring of momentary caprice, but of a long pent-up feeling. In 1826 Bartlett Yancey had written Willie P. Mangum that there was hostility to free-negro suffrage in all the counties and in almost all the towns, and that this feeling was due largely to the work of colonization and abolition societies. But, on the other hand, it was urged in the North Carolina convention that some of those colored men, now to be disfranchised, had done service in the war of the Revolution. Some had taken the oath of allegiance. Some were freeholders, and these, with others, were taxpayers. They had been accustomed to exercise the

1 Debates in Convention of 1835, p. 30.

2 Ibid., 61, 69, 80, 353, 355. In Tennessee, Cave Johnson and John Bell said they were elected to Congress by the votes of colored persons (Sumner's Works, X, 192). In 1830 the free negro population of North Carolina was 19,543; of Tennessee, 4555. The North Carolina counties with a free negro population of more than 400 were: Beaufort, with 487; Brunswick, 408; Craven, 1003; Cumberland, 686; Granville, 759; Halifax, 2079; Hertford, 953; Northampton, 936; Davidson, with 471,

Orange, 619; Pasquotank, 1038; Robeson, 605; Wake, 833.

had the largest free negro population in Tennessee. Hawkins came next, with 386. 3 Buxton, Reminiscences of the Bench and Fayetteville Bar. 4 Debates, 61.

677 right, and deprivation would now be a hardship. They would be useful as a counterpoise to the slaves, should the latter plot rebellion for when the authorities of San Domingo in 1791 put free negroes for meritorious services, on the same footing as white men, it produced the happiest effect; but when the French government deprived them of this equality a few years later, it had the effect of throwing them into the ranks of the slaves. The convention was quite evenly divided on the question, and the debates were very earnest. Various property limitations were suggested by way of compromise, but the outcome was the adoption of the provision excluding all negroes from the suffrage, by a vote of 66 to 61.

This was the end of negro suffrage in North Carolina and in the South until the days of Reconstruction.

It will be of interest to compare the conditions of suffrage in the North and West to see if these states were any more liberal than those in the South. Omitting the eleven Southern states under consideration, we can divide all the remaining states into three groups: (1) Those that never established a color qualification for the suffrage; (2) those that established such a qualification, but only at a relatively late date; (3) those which limited the suffrage to white men from the beginning.

1. Maine, in 1820, and Rhode Island, in 1842, granted the suffrage to male citizens of the United States. There is no mention of color, but negroes might have been excluded, on the ground that they were not citizens; for in 1833 Chief Justice Daggett, of Connecticut, charged that "slaves, free blacks and Indians" were not citizens within the meaning of section 2, article 4, of the federal constitution. This anticipated the Dred Scott decision.2 There is no mention of color in the laws of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. But New

1 Debates, 354.

2 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 46. John F. Denny, of Pennsylvania, in his Inquiry into the Political Grade of the Free Colored Population under the Constitution of the United States, elaborately sustains the same view. The supreme court of Tennessee decided in 1838 that negroes were not citizens under the United States constitution (Kent, II, 301). On the other hand, see decision of the North Carolina supreme court, ante.

Hampshire found it necessary in 1857, and Vermont in 1858, to enact that negroes should not be excluded from the ballot.

2. Of the second group Delaware introduced the color qualification in 1792; Kentucky, in 1799; Maryland, in 1809 and 1810;1 Connecticut, in 1818; New Jersey, in 1820; and Pennsylvania, in 1838.

The right of the negro to vote was disputed under the old constitution of Pennsylvania prior to 1838. It was held that "freeman" was used in a political sense, that it did not mean one who was free of condition merely, and that a negro could not be in Pennsylvania a freeman in this sense. The supreme court, in Hobbs vs. Fogg, in 1837, declared that a negro or a mulatto was not entitled to vote.2

It is certain that negroes voted in the early years of Maryland. Evidence was given in the Baltimore county court about 1810, that a certain free black of that county had voted and had been allowed to give evidence in a case in which white persons were concerned. We hear of a free black who was accustomed to vote in Baltimore and did not know of the amendment of 1810 until his vote was challenged. It is said that he thereupon addressed the crowd about the polls "in a strain of true and passionate eloquence." 3

New York made an honest effort to help the negro to the ballot. There was no color line in the constitution of 1777; but by a law enacted first in 1811 and reenacted in 1814, a negro, on offering to vote, had first to produce a certificate of freedom. The constitution of 1821 further differentiated between black and white electors, and enacted that no negro should vote unless he had been a citizen for three years, and had for a year possessed a freehold worth $250 above all encumbrances and had actually paid a tax on the same. In 1846, the question of equal suffrage for the two races was sub

1 It was provided in 1783 in Maryland that no colored person freed after that date, nor the issue of such, should vote.

2 Kent, II, 301. Chief Justice Gibson, in delivering the opinion, credits the report of a decision in 1795, that negroes could not vote. Hurd, II, 70, 72.

3 Brackett, The Negro in Maryland, 186.

mitted to the people separately, in the shape of a constitutional amendment, and was rejected by 223,834 to 85,306. It met the same fate in 1860, by 337,984 to 197,503, and again in 1868, by 282,403 to 249,802.1

3. None of the other states and territories that had organized governments in 1861 had ever granted the ballot to the negro. This includes California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana,2 Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota (which declares that "no member of this state shall be disfranchised" and then limits the ballot to "whites and persons of Indian or mixed white and Indian blood"), Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin.4

From this survey of the North and West, it is evident that few of the states that fought for the Union were then willing to grant suffrage to the negro on equal terms with the whites. Five of the New England states had granted him the privilege in form. It was not perfect even here, for Chanceller Kent says in the sixth edition of his commentaries, published in 1848, and this statement is quoted with approval by Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, that in no part of the country except Maine did the negro, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites in the exercise of civil and political rights. The middle states had all ultimately withdrawn or restricted the right to vote. All the new Western states, including those where slavery was forbidden by the Ordinance of 1787, had refused the negro the suffrage. Some required negroes to be registered; one (Ohio) to give bond that they

Poore, 1334, 1343, 1350, 1353; Hurd, II, 54, 55.

2 Illinois by the constitution of 1848, and Indiana by that of 1851, forbade free negroes to migrate to the state and forbade masters to carry slaves into the state for the purpose of freeing them. These sections had previously formed part of the statute law.

3 The privilege was not denied to those that were more than half white. In 1859 a law was passed requiring judges to reject the offered vote of a person "who has a distinct and visible admixture of African blood."

+ Hurd, II, 122. A decision of the supreme court of Wisconsin made in 1866, in the case of Gillespie vs. Palmer, held that the right of suffrage had been extended to negroes in that state by the vote of the people at the general election held Nov. 6, 1849. Poore, 2022, 2030.

5 Dred Scott decision, 22; so in Kent, 10th ed. (1860), II, 298.

would not become a public charge; two (Indiana and Illinois) even forbade them to enter their borders and forbade masters to bring slaves there for the purpose of giving them freedom. Nor was this feeling of repugnance overcome by the war. In 1865 Connecticut gave a majority of 6272 against negro suffrage; in 1867 Ohio voted it down by 50,620, Kansas by 8923 and Minnesota by 1298.

III. The Evolution of Negro Suffrage.

White manhood suffrage was recognized in none of the original thirteen states in 1776. After the adoption of the Federal Constitution the tendency was steadily toward the extension of the franchise. But the South had not arrived at universal suffrage for white men in 1860. North Carolina (from 1854) and Georgia (from 1789) required the payment of taxes and Florida (from 1838) required military service, as prerequisites for voting. There was little thought of uniform suffrage for black and white in any part of the Union. Negro suffrage was one of the results of the war. The constitutional history of the Civil War is summarized in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, in which may be traced the gradual growth of the sentiment of the nation concerning slavery and the political rights of the negro. The victory of the federal armies sealed the fate of slavery, and this was expressed in the thirteenth amendment. The Republican victory in the elections of 1866 led to the incorporation of impartial or negro suffrage in the Reconstruction Acts; and the victory of the same party in 1868 led to the incorporation of impartial suffrage in the constitution. The fourteenth amendment advanced the negro to the status of a citizen, but did nothing affirmatively to confer the suffrage upon him; it aided him negatively by imposing a penalty on his exclusion. Nor did the fifteenth amendment give him the right to vote; it merely invested the citizen of the United States with the right to be exempt from discrimination in the exercise of the elective