Suffrage is the right to express an opinion by voting on political questions, applied in particular to the right to vote at parliamentary elections.
Restricted suffrage was the rule in America until well into the 19th century. Massachusetts and New Haven colonies for a time gave the suffrage to none but church members. In most of the colonies a freehold qualification prevailed, sometimes the 'forty-shilling freehold' of English law, sometimes a freehold of so many acres.
The constitutions made in the Revolutionary period mostly provided for the former in the Northern States, for the latter in the Southern, while New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Georgia had simply a requirement of tax-paying. The Constitution of 1787 left this matter entirely to the States, allowing all to vote for Congressmen in a given State who could vote for the members of the State House of Representatives. After 1789, the influence of democratic principles led to the abolition of property qualifications in Georgia in 1798; in Maryland in 1801 and 1809; in Massachusetts in 1821; in New York in 1821; in Delaware in 1831; in New Jersey in 1844; in Connecticut in 1845; in Virginia in 1850; in North Carolina in 1854 and 1868; in South Carolina in 1865; in Rhode Island, except in some municipal elections, in 1888.
The FifteenthAmendment forbids any State, or the United States, to deny the suffrage to any citizen because of race, colour or previous condition of servitude. The new States have mostly provided for manhood suffrage from the first, often even for the suffrage of aliens in process of naturalization. Research Suffrage
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Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
General Information
Research Suffrage
