The Ballot in North Carolina 1762 was cut down to fifty acres, " unsettled," or twenty-five having a house twelve feet square. The act of 1769 excluded women and free negroes from the suffrage. War compelled taxation. A poll-tax, in kind, was imposed in 1781-a half-bushel of wheat, or five pecks of oats, or two pounds of sound bacon; but later in the year the tax was fixed at ten shillings. Election by ballot was established by the North Carolina Assembly in 1743, and the political estate was given into the keeping of freeholders possessing each fifty acres of land and three months inhabitants of the county and six months of the province. The constitution of 1776 lengthened the time in the county to six months and in the State to twelve. A free male person thus qualified could vote for Senator. One paying "public taxes" could vote for a member of the House of Commons. Thus, free negroes possessed the constitutional right to vote.* In 1721 South Carolina gave the right to vote to free whites professing the Christian religion, who resided one year in the province, and owned fifty acres of land, or paid a tax of twenty shillings. Sixty years before the Revolution the right to vote was given to free white men who had resided six months in the province, who were worth realty to the value of thirty pounds, current money, and who professed the Christian religion. Ten years * For a discussion of this point, see debates in North Carolina Constitutional Convention, 1835. † Act of December 15, 1716. later the requirement was changed to fifty acres of land or the payment of taxes on a fifty-pound valuation; the religious qualification was as before. In 1745 the property qualification was raised to a freehold estate in a settled plantation, or three hundred acres of unsettled land, or taxed property worth sixty pounds.* Fourteen years later the alternative was allowed-an estate of sixty pounds in houses, or a tax of ten shillings. This was the law when the province became a State. Its first constitution omitted to prescribe qualifications for the elector. In its second, 1778, he was defined as a free white man, and no other, who acknowledged the being of a God, believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, who had attained the age of twenty-one years, had resided in the State a year before the election, possessed a freehold estate of fifty acres or a town lot for six months at least before the polls, or had paid a tax equal to the tax on fifty acres. The third constitution, 1790, modified the alternative to a tax of three shillings sterling. The qualification at the opening of the nineteenth century was, therefore, but little changed from that under the act of 1721. Georgia, the last of the colonies, was founded as the poor man's paradise. A white man worth ten pounds and a taxpayer, or "of any mechanic trade, could vote, by the constitution of 1777. The constitution of 1789-with great liberality for the age *May 25, 1745. + April 7, 1759. Aristocratic Democracy in Virginia -required only the payment of taxes and a residence of six months in the county. Kentucky, making both her constitutions almost at the close of the century, and free from colonial traditions, made the qualifications of the elector liberal. A free white man who had resided in the State two years, or for one year in the county in which he offered to vote, was an elector by the first constitution and also by the second, which specially excluded negroes, mulattoes, and Indians. In Tennessee—or, as it was originally called, Washington County, or District-the laws of North Carolina in force in 1795, when the new State was organized, were formally readopted with few exceptions.* The elector was, therefore, required to be a freeman and a freeholder, and for six months an inhabitant of the county in which he sought to vote. North Carolina traditions influenced Tennessee. Virginia traditions in Kentucky were not suffered to encumber the political estate. The new West was essentially democratic, as the first constitutions of Kentucky and Tennessee attest. But their democracy must be measured by the aristocracy that had so long prevailed in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and not by the democracy that developed in the country after 1800. In no State was democracy further advanced than in Vermont. There the political estate was committed to freemen who had resided in the *Scott's Laws, 2 vols., Knoxville, 1821. State one year, and who would take the oath to vote conscientiously and without fear or favor of any man.* This was manhood suffrage, the most liberal that had been granted in America thus far. The liberal States of the eighteenth century were New Hampshire and Vermont in the North and Georgia in the South. But there were other tests required of those whom the Revolution put in the place of the King. Not merely by the possession of property, nor by residence, nor because of age and racial advantage, were men made trustees of the political estate. A religious qualification was required. This, too, was a survival. For a century and a half, "being in church fellowship " had meant in Massachusetts membership in the Congregational Church. The Church of England was established in South Carolina by act of Assembly at the opening of the eighteenth century,† and its second constitution1778—while granting religious toleration, declared "the Christian Protestant religion" to be the established religion of the State. Connecticut and New Hampshire resembled Massachusetts in their provisions respecting church-membership as a political qualification; Virginia resembled South Carolina. But resemblance is not identity. In other States religious sects abounded and multiplied till public opinion resembled that which ruled in the federal convention when the qualifi *See Constitution, 1777. + See acts of November 4, 1704; December 18, 1708; April 8, 1710. Disappearance of the Religious Qualifications cations for office were under consideration; no religious qualification could be adopted that would please all the States; therefore all were abandoned. South Carolina, in its third constitution-1790abandoned its State religion, and granted freedom of worship to all sects whose practices were not consistent with the peace or safety of the State. The religious qualifications, so strong in some colonies for a time, in as far as they affected the voter, may be said to disappear with the abandonment of the first South Carolina constitution in 1790. The constitution of Massachusetts did not require church - membership. For a time public opinion did, but this encumbrance on the political estate may be said to have been fully satisfied before 1820.* The office - holding class was not exempted so early. Governors and legislators must give security, and none other was thought equal to the property and religious qualifications. No man known to be irreligious could have been chosen Governor of Rhode Island or Connecticut in colonial times. In public opinion this was an unwritten qualification. Had the office been elective in other colonies, probably the result would have been similar. The colonial period was one during which property, integrity, and religion were inseparable in the public mind. It may be said now that church-membership is no longer conclusive evidence of probity or integrity. A man is * Amendment, Art. vii. (proposed by constitutional convention, 1820; ratified April 9, 1821). See also Amendment, Art. xi., ratified November 11, 1833. |