Democracy in Action

So what did government in the states look like at the time?  How democratic was it?  Let us begin with the issue that people today find most disturbing, the vote. Everywhere, the vote was limited to free males over 21.*  The vote was not necessarily limited to white males; only Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia had explicit racial restrictions on the vote.  Other states allowed black men to vote subject to the same property restrictions as white men, but their actual numbers were few.  New Hampshire had no property restrictions on the vote, but extended it to all adult male taxpayers, and Pennsylvania even allowed non-tax-paying sons of freeholders to vote, if over 21.  Georgia’s property requirements were so low as to be almost meaningless – 10 pounds of property or membership in a mechanical trade.  Nor did other states necessarily require land ownership to vote; all states except Virginia and Rhode Island accepted other forms of property as well, and, significantly, both these restrictions dated back to colonial times.  Property ownership was widespread in most states. 

Yet voters made up a distinct minority of the total population.   The Constitution set a maximum of one representative for every 30,000 inhabitants.  Madison, writing in New York, estimated the 30,000 people would include about 6,000 voters, while the dissenting minority of the Pennsylvania Convention estimated that Pennsylvania had approximately 70,000 voters out of a population of 400,000.  Why so few, in two states with few slaves?  One reason, obviously, is that denying the vote to women excluded half the population.  If women could vote on the same basis as men, instead of 5,000 to 6,000 voters out of 30,000 people, there would be 10,000 to 12,000.  But even that is only between a third and 40% of the population.  Where is everyone else?  One possible explanation is that the the United States had a high birth rate and a higher death rate among children than today, which made for a very young population.  If, in fact the median age at the time has been estimated at 16. This excludes over half  of the population on the basis of age alone.  The Right to Vote  estimates that no more than 6-70% of all adult white males could vote, although the proportion varied greatly in different state.**  New York presumably had a somewhat lower proportion of voters in its population than Pennsylvania because of property restrictions.  

In other regards, states differed widely in their degree of democracy.***  South Carolina was easily the least democratic state.  It was the only one that abandoned the old democratic principle of annual elections; elections for both houses of the legislature and the governor were held every two years.  The coastal swamps of South Carolina had the rice plantations that were the largest anywhere in the United States.  Black slaves made up an absolute majority of the population, several times larger than free whites.  In particular, the overwhelming majority of people in rural areas were slaves, with whites, including planters, clustered mostly in cities.  Yet South Carolina required ownership of 50 acres or the equivalent value in other taxable property to vote, which must have disenfranchised many urban whites, to say nothing of the slave majority, and given planters political domination in coastal areas.  Above the swamplands were mountainous areas populated by small farmers with few or no slaves.  These small farmers did vote, but, although they made up the great majority of South Carolina’s free population, the coastal areas held majorities in both houses.  South Carolina also required at 2,000 pound freehold to serve in the Senate and a 10,000 pound freehold to serve in the executive council, the highest property requirements in the country.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, was radically democratic.  All free male taxpayers over 21 or sons of freeholders over 21 could vote, with no property restrictions even on office holding.  There were few slaves in Pennsylvania, and slavery was in the process of being phased out.  Pennsylvania had a unicameral legislature elected to one-year terms with no “aristocratic” upper house.  All non-emergency laws were to be held over to the next session of the legislature and published in order for the public to consider them (and presumably instruct their legislators although, as we have seen, Pennsylvania’s large electoral districts made this difficult).  In short, the Pennsylvania legislature could be considered the upper house, with the people at large acting as the lower house.  Instead of a single governor, Pennsylvania had an executive counsel with one member elected from each county.  Supreme court judges served for seven-year terms instead of for life.

Rhode Island was also radically democratic, in a mostly old democracy sense.  Rhode Island had property restrictions on the vote, but property ownership was widespread.***  Local government was by town meeting, and town meetings, “bound their representatives by strict instructions, initiated legislation, and ratified or negated legislation by frequent use of the referendum.  All significant matters were effectively decided not by the two-house legislature but by the entire voting population in their town meetings.”  Georgia also had minimal property restrictions on the vote, a unicameral legislature elected annual, and a chief justice who served a one-year term.  However, Georgia was decidedly undemocratic insofar as it had large numbers of slaves.

---

*Not quite true.  New Jersey allowed unmarried women who were property holders to vote.  Alexander Keyssar:  The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United State, copyright 2000 by Basic Books, Table A.1, pp. 340-341.  All references to voting qualifications refer to the same source unless otherwise states

**Keyssar, p. 24.

***Once again, see The Debate on the Constitution, Notes on State Constitutions.  This is my source unless otherwise stated.

***Keyssar estimates that 75% of all adult males met the property requirements, p. 71.