Expanding democracy
A democratic experiment
While contemporary Americans are accustomed to praising the enduring nature of the country’s democratic system of governance, the original American republic was far less democratic than our current iteration. Estimates vary but it seems clear that no more than 20%, and possibly closer to 10%, of the American population could vote with the ratification of the Constitution and the establishment of our current system of government. Almost all states initially imposed property, tax, and religious requirements for white men to vote with near total bans on voting for women and free African-Americans. In 1800, only 3 states enshrined universal adult white male suffrage - Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Vermont. During the course of the next 20 years, particularly in the wake of the severe economic crisis known as the Panic of 1819, more, but not all, states removed property and/or tax requirements for voting, and by 1828, Maryland removed its remaining religious requirements for voting. Seeking more residents and greater political influence, western frontier states removed property and tax requirements more quickly than more established states.
Incomplete democracy
As noted above, the frequently lauded expansion of voting rights in antebellum America was almost entirely confined to adult white men. In the early 1800s, New Jersey abolished the right of propertied widowed women to vote and many northern states restricted or eliminated the right to vote for free African-American men during the first half of the 19th century. Under the prevailing laws, Native Americans were ineligible for American citizenship and thus precluded from voting. The thousands of Mexican citizens who rapidly came under American legal dominion in the wake of the Mexican-American War were not systematically excluded from voting, although there is significant evidence to indicate patterns of discouraging new citizens and immigrants from voting.
Robert Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania, March 14, 1838