The State Giveth and the State Taketh Away? The Antislavery Movement and the Black Franchise in the United States, 1691–1842

Abstract

Although the franchise is the centerpiece of U.S. democracy, serious scholarly study of the black franchise has been limited to the Reconstruction and Civil Rights eras. Consequently, the author examines black suffrage in the United States during 1691–1842 using event history methods and an original data set. Focusing on the neglected relationship between the antislavery movement and black suffrage, the author reports that disruptive and militant activism, warfare, and partisan politics influenced this phenomenon. There also is support for a generational model of movement success. The evidence clarifies two unsettled issues: (1) whether movements matter and (2) the impacts of conventional, disruptive, and militant protest on movement success. Moreover, as institutionalism predicts, voting rules spread across states through mimicry; and as group threat theory predicts, free black presence adversely affected black suffrage. The findings clarify why it took three and a half centuries for the American democracy to accept a race-blind franchise.