universal white suffrage

Examples of universal white suffrage in the following topics:

• From Property to Democracy

  • The exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates over half of white men were barred from voting.
  • In some states, free men of color (though the property requirement in New York was eventually dropped for whites but not for blacks) also possessed the vote, a fact that was emphasized in Justice Curtis's dissent in Dred Scott v.
  • At the same time, convention delegates relaxed religious and property qualifications for whites.
  • Alabama entered the union in 1819 with universal white suffrage provided for in its constitution.
  • Its actions in the late 19th century, however, disfranchised poor whites as well as blacks.

• State Constitutions

  • Universal white male suffrage, or minimal property requirements for voting or holding office (New Jersey enfranchised some property-owning widows, a step it retracted 25 years later)
  • The new constitution substantially reduced universal white-male suffrage, gave the governor veto power and patronage appointment authority, and added to the unicameral legislature an upper house with substantial wealth qualifications.

• Jackson's Democratic Agenda

  • Andrew Jackson expanded suffrage, encouraged settlement of the West, and encouraged the economy through laissez-faire policies.
  • Jacksonian democracy was built on the general principles of expanded suffrage, manifest destiny, patronage, strict constructionism, Laissez-Faire capitalism, and opposition to the Second Bank of the United States.
  • The Jacksonians believed that voting rights should be extended to all white men.
  • By 1820, universal white male suffrage was the norm, and by 1850, nearly all voting requirements to own property or pay taxes had been dropped.
  • Manifest Destiny was the belief that white Americans had a destiny to settle the American West with yeoman farmers and to consolidate political control over lands from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

• The Democratization of the Political Arena

  • During the Jacksonian era, suffrage was extended to (nearly) all white adult male citizens.
  • Expanded Suffrage: The Jacksonians believed that voting rights should be extended to all white men.
  • By 1820, universal white male suffrage was the norm, and by 1850 nearly all requirements to own property or pay taxes had been dropped.
  • An important movement in the period from 1800 to 1830—before the Jacksonians were organized—was the expansion of the right to vote to include all white men.
  • Voter turnout soared during the Second Party System, reaching about 80 percent of the adult white men by 1840.

• The Dorr Rebellion

  • The Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island was an uprising of men who wanted to see greater, faster expansion of white male suffrage.
  • Under Rhode Island's charter, only white male landowners could vote.
  • By 1829, 60 percent of the state's white men were ineligible to vote (as were all women and most non-white men), meaning that the electorate of Rhode Island was made up of only 40 percent of the state's white men.
  • Those who wished to extend white male suffrage argued that the charter was un-republican and violated the U.S.
  • By 1841, Rhode Island was one of the few states without universal suffrage for white men.

• The Campaign for Suffrage

  • The movement for women's suffrage gained new vitality during the Progressive Era.
  • More than 200 NWP supporters, known as the "Silent Sentinels," were arrested in 1917 while picketing the White House.
  • Their opposition to women's suffrage was subsequently used as an argument in favor of suffrage when German Americans became pariahs during World War I.
  • Anti-suffrage forces, initially called the "remonstrants," organized as early as 1870 when the Women's Anti-Suffrage Association of Washington was formed.
  • This political cartoon about suffrage in the United States depicts four women supporting suffrage on a steamroller crushing rocks labeled "opposition."

• The Feminist Movement

  • The first wave refers to the feminist movement of the nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, which focused mainly on women's suffrage .
  • It seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper-middle-class white women.
  • Such discrimination on the basis of sex is barred in the workplace by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in colleges and universities that receive federal funds by Title IX.
  • It has also led to increased employment opportunities for women at more equitable wages, as well as broad access to university educations.
  • First-wave feminists marching for women's suffrage.

• Ida B. Wells

  • Wells was active in the women's rights, women's suffrage, and anti-lynching movements.
  • She was active in the women's rights and women's suffrage movements, establishing several notable women's organizations.
  • Wells attended a school for freed people called Shaw University, now Rust College, in Holly Springs.
  • During the altercation, three white men were shot and injured.
  • Wells found that blacks were lynched for such reasons as failing to pay debts, not appearing to give way to whites, competing with whites economically, and being drunk in public.

• Abolitionism and the Women's Rights Movement

  • Many women involved in the early abolitionist movement went on to be important leaders in the early women's rights and suffrage movements.
  • The 1848 Seneca Falls convention is one of the key early moments in the suffrage and women's rights movement in the US.
  • A more progressive and radical strain of abolition maintained that rights and moral standing were universal, and that whether people were of African or European decent, men or women they were all due to equal treatment and rights.
  • The role of Black women in the suffrage movement was also sometimes problematic.
  • For example, both emancipated women who had been slaves and free women of color were active in the abolitionist movement, but as the women's movement grew there was often resistance on the part of the increasingly middle class, educated, white leadership to include Black women.

• Gender and Social Movements

  • The feminist movement refers to a series of campaigns on issues pertaining to women, such as reproductive rights and women's suffrage.
  • It focused on de jure (officially mandated) inequalities, primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).
  • If first-wavers focused on absolute rights such as suffrage, second-wavers were largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination.
  • Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist " definitions of femininity , which (according to them) over-emphasized the experiences of upper middle class white women.
  • In 1948 the UN issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights which protects "the equal rights of men and women", and addressed both equality and equity issues.