The franchise in early America was neither as open nor closed as many suppose. Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color. The British exported the working poor because they didn't have enough "work houses" or "poor houses" to deal with them all. Australia gets all the…
The franchise in early America was neither as open nor closed as many suppose. Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color. The British exported the working poor because they didn't have enough "work houses" or "poor houses" to deal with them all. Australia gets all the smack for this, but American colonies were more Jamestown, which was hell on earth for most, and less Plymouth. The point is that participation was land ownership, not white land ownership. And covenants forbidden the sale of land to anyone but whites was a much later thing.
“Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color.”
Okay, I’ll bite. Any data for that 75% figure? Are you arguing that there was an even *roughly* equal chance in the early 1700s that a slave in America would be white or black?
And no, to begin with, suffrage was limited specifically to white, land owning men. Then extended to white men whether they owned land or not, and only later to black people and women.
Sorry, weren’t you the one who specified the early 1700s? Now you’re talking about 1836?
Also, I take it that’s a “no” on the data for the 75% thing. You criticise me for making a joke about the 3/5 compromise, but then pull figures completely out of thin air?
Look, I get that American history isn't your thing, but conflating the 2 different things on dates on different topics is beneath your usually pristine logic. Which means you're gasping for breath here. This isn't Britain. There wasn't one law about almost anything, especially voting. But you can't find me a law that said black people cannot own property. There were even some in the South.
😅😅This may well be the most DARVO response I’ve ever seen.
You specified the 1700s both for suffrage/enfranchisement and “coming to America in chains.”
It’s okay to admit you’re wrong sometimes David. This level of intellectual dishonesty is unbecoming. I seem to remember ending a separate conversation with you for the same reason.
I invoked PROPERTY availability in the early 1700s. NO ONE had the franchise then. You might have heard, there was this thing called The King, who had absolute power to appoint officials who represented the Crown in the colonies. It was in all the papers... The point is that the Crown used America in the early 1700s much like they would later use Australia. The Pilgrim Myth might be closer to the truth for THEM (read Philbrick's Mayflower) but that colony was the exception. Jamestown was closer to the average experience. Admit you know nothing about the period and learn something with all that intellectual honesty.
“Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color.”
This is not a claim about "PROPERTY availability" or suffrage. It's a totally made up claim about slavery.
"Universal suffrage for ANYONE was unthinkable in 1787."
This is where you invoked suffrage. The United States was already independent of the King at this point. And yes, white, landowning men had suffrage. As I've provided ample evidence of.
"There were several black legislators in the US before the Civil War. The first was in 1836"
This is not proof of universal suffrage, and it's 49 years after 1787. Though yes, even in the 1780s there were limited examples of women and people of colour being able to vote in certain states, Universal suffrage didn't come for African Americans until the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.
Okay, I'm done here. I like engaging with people with strong opinions David, I consider it an opportunity to learn. But it's such a waste of time when the other person is only interested in winning and not in thinking.
I'm actually perfectly happy to admit when I don't know something. There are lots of things I don't know. That's one reason why I spend so much time talking to people; to learn.
But as I've proven many times, I actually have a pretty good knowledge of American history. At least the areas that I write about. And when I *don't* know something, I don't make blanket statements, or pull statistics out of my ass, or try to DARVO my way out of situations where I'm wrong, which means I don't have to get all defensive when I learn something new.
Anyway, as I said, I'm done here. Enjoy the last word. I won't read it,
NOW who won't read things? YOU equated chains and slavery, not me. YOU are the only one marking the argument I said there was universal suffrage. I always said suffrage was a mixed bag, even after 1781 or 1787.
Indentured servants, and convicts were the majority of early labor imports. The breakup of the feudal system, 75-100 years after Henry VIII really put a dagger into it, had English cities overrun with the poor and unemployed. And it was criminal to be one. The first vagrancy laws were enacted, but then the work houses (which can only be described as slavery) were overflowing. The New World gave the Crown a place to put these people. Chattel slavery evolved as exclusively African as the cotton and tobacco markets expanded beyond the capacity for white labor-- and when Muslim slave traders made that an irresistible market choice for many big farmers, and enslaving--or the next best thing-- white people fell out of fashion.
Got something that says that suffrage was ONLY white landowners? In local elections?
Remember, direct voting for anything else was party conventions and call kinds of complicate things. Women, for instance, voted in plenty of places before the Amendment, just as many had abortions before Roe Vs. Wade. Milestone universal dates are about as useful as acting like the Magna Carta had real significance to Welsh coal miners. Chains and slavery are NOT the same things. But read something real about Jamestown. White laborers could be killed for trying to escape, for one thing.
Ah, what a surprise you’re eager to “reject it out of hand” because of an opinion you dislike instead of addressing the facts. Maybe American history isn’t your thing😉
Anyway, I’m sure there’s something equally trivially unacceptable with all of these sources that all say the same thing…
Such a surprise that you know more about American voting than you do, since managing campaigns in all kinds of areas from urban to rural is my JOB. But go ahead, enlighten on how it's just my OPINION on how hard it is to vote in the US. So yes, I can reject it out of hand, just like a physicist might be able to tell you from a stupid title that an article is wrong.
I’m not taking a position on how hard it is to vote in America. As you earlier pointed out, and now seem to be forgetting, America is a big place and one perspective is very unlikely to cover all of it.
It’s perfectly possible, for example, for one person’s experience of voting to be quite different to another’s and for neither of them to be “wrong.” This is a matter of opinion and personal experience.
But when we’re talking about the facts of suffrage in the 1700s, this is no longer just a matter of opinion. Your experience of voting systems today is totally irrelevant. And as neither of us were there, we have to defer to the enormous historical record rather than spinning claims and statistics out of thin air.
And no, no physicist worth their salt, or simply no moderately intelligent person, would take a position on an article when they’ve only read the title.
So if I sent you a stupid article saying Trump Really Won, He was Robbed in the title, you would read it all to find out if it were true? Voter suppression is the same myth for the Left in the US as Voter Fraud is for the Right. In fact, in urban areas it can be harder NOT to vote than to vote if you are black. People from the local Democratic Party may knock on your door on election day and say, "We see you haven't voted yet, we are here with your ride to the polls." With electronic poll books, etc, that level of turnout effort is possible. That's been going on for at LEAST 25 years (the first time I saw it employed for one of my candidates) And in a great deal of states now, you have same day registration, so anyone can be taken to either the clerk's office or the polls. So, yes, I dismiss article out of hand that hint that problems for minority voting continue to the present day.
The franchise in early America was neither as open nor closed as many suppose. Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color. The British exported the working poor because they didn't have enough "work houses" or "poor houses" to deal with them all. Australia gets all the smack for this, but American colonies were more Jamestown, which was hell on earth for most, and less Plymouth. The point is that participation was land ownership, not white land ownership. And covenants forbidden the sale of land to anyone but whites was a much later thing.
“Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color.”
Okay, I’ll bite. Any data for that 75% figure? Are you arguing that there was an even *roughly* equal chance in the early 1700s that a slave in America would be white or black?
And no, to begin with, suffrage was limited specifically to white, land owning men. Then extended to white men whether they owned land or not, and only later to black people and women.
There were several black legislators in the US before the Civil War. The first was in 1836. Do you think he couldn't vote?
Sorry, weren’t you the one who specified the early 1700s? Now you’re talking about 1836?
Also, I take it that’s a “no” on the data for the 75% thing. You criticise me for making a joke about the 3/5 compromise, but then pull figures completely out of thin air?
Look, I get that American history isn't your thing, but conflating the 2 different things on dates on different topics is beneath your usually pristine logic. Which means you're gasping for breath here. This isn't Britain. There wasn't one law about almost anything, especially voting. But you can't find me a law that said black people cannot own property. There were even some in the South.
😅😅This may well be the most DARVO response I’ve ever seen.
You specified the 1700s both for suffrage/enfranchisement and “coming to America in chains.”
It’s okay to admit you’re wrong sometimes David. This level of intellectual dishonesty is unbecoming. I seem to remember ending a separate conversation with you for the same reason.
And Jesus, DARVO? Look in the mirror, Bub.
I invoked PROPERTY availability in the early 1700s. NO ONE had the franchise then. You might have heard, there was this thing called The King, who had absolute power to appoint officials who represented the Crown in the colonies. It was in all the papers... The point is that the Crown used America in the early 1700s much like they would later use Australia. The Pilgrim Myth might be closer to the truth for THEM (read Philbrick's Mayflower) but that colony was the exception. Jamestown was closer to the average experience. Admit you know nothing about the period and learn something with all that intellectual honesty.
“Before the early 1700s, if you came to America, the odds you came in chains were about 75% Of ANY class or color.”
This is not a claim about "PROPERTY availability" or suffrage. It's a totally made up claim about slavery.
"Universal suffrage for ANYONE was unthinkable in 1787."
This is where you invoked suffrage. The United States was already independent of the King at this point. And yes, white, landowning men had suffrage. As I've provided ample evidence of.
"There were several black legislators in the US before the Civil War. The first was in 1836"
This is not proof of universal suffrage, and it's 49 years after 1787. Though yes, even in the 1780s there were limited examples of women and people of colour being able to vote in certain states, Universal suffrage didn't come for African Americans until the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.
Okay, I'm done here. I like engaging with people with strong opinions David, I consider it an opportunity to learn. But it's such a waste of time when the other person is only interested in winning and not in thinking.
I'm actually perfectly happy to admit when I don't know something. There are lots of things I don't know. That's one reason why I spend so much time talking to people; to learn.
But as I've proven many times, I actually have a pretty good knowledge of American history. At least the areas that I write about. And when I *don't* know something, I don't make blanket statements, or pull statistics out of my ass, or try to DARVO my way out of situations where I'm wrong, which means I don't have to get all defensive when I learn something new.
Anyway, as I said, I'm done here. Enjoy the last word. I won't read it,
NOW who won't read things? YOU equated chains and slavery, not me. YOU are the only one marking the argument I said there was universal suffrage. I always said suffrage was a mixed bag, even after 1781 or 1787.
Indentured servants, and convicts were the majority of early labor imports. The breakup of the feudal system, 75-100 years after Henry VIII really put a dagger into it, had English cities overrun with the poor and unemployed. And it was criminal to be one. The first vagrancy laws were enacted, but then the work houses (which can only be described as slavery) were overflowing. The New World gave the Crown a place to put these people. Chattel slavery evolved as exclusively African as the cotton and tobacco markets expanded beyond the capacity for white labor-- and when Muslim slave traders made that an irresistible market choice for many big farmers, and enslaving--or the next best thing-- white people fell out of fashion.
Got something that says that suffrage was ONLY white landowners? In local elections?
Remember, direct voting for anything else was party conventions and call kinds of complicate things. Women, for instance, voted in plenty of places before the Amendment, just as many had abortions before Roe Vs. Wade. Milestone universal dates are about as useful as acting like the Magna Carta had real significance to Welsh coal miners. Chains and slavery are NOT the same things. But read something real about Jamestown. White laborers could be killed for trying to escape, for one thing.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/voting-rights-throughout-history/
Yeah, anyone who says it's still hard to vote in the US if you're a citizen can be rejected out of hand. It's the kind of crap you debunk every day.
Ah, what a surprise you’re eager to “reject it out of hand” because of an opinion you dislike instead of addressing the facts. Maybe American history isn’t your thing😉
Anyway, I’m sure there’s something equally trivially unacceptable with all of these sources that all say the same thing…
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/the-founders-and-the-vote/
https://www.history.com/news/voter-registration-elections-president-midterms
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-evolution-of-voting-rights-in-america
https://reagan.blogs.archives.gov/2022/03/29/road-to-the-voting-rights-act-voting-rights-from-1789-to-1869/
Such a surprise that you know more about American voting than you do, since managing campaigns in all kinds of areas from urban to rural is my JOB. But go ahead, enlighten on how it's just my OPINION on how hard it is to vote in the US. So yes, I can reject it out of hand, just like a physicist might be able to tell you from a stupid title that an article is wrong.
I’m not taking a position on how hard it is to vote in America. As you earlier pointed out, and now seem to be forgetting, America is a big place and one perspective is very unlikely to cover all of it.
It’s perfectly possible, for example, for one person’s experience of voting to be quite different to another’s and for neither of them to be “wrong.” This is a matter of opinion and personal experience.
But when we’re talking about the facts of suffrage in the 1700s, this is no longer just a matter of opinion. Your experience of voting systems today is totally irrelevant. And as neither of us were there, we have to defer to the enormous historical record rather than spinning claims and statistics out of thin air.
And no, no physicist worth their salt, or simply no moderately intelligent person, would take a position on an article when they’ve only read the title.
So if I sent you a stupid article saying Trump Really Won, He was Robbed in the title, you would read it all to find out if it were true? Voter suppression is the same myth for the Left in the US as Voter Fraud is for the Right. In fact, in urban areas it can be harder NOT to vote than to vote if you are black. People from the local Democratic Party may knock on your door on election day and say, "We see you haven't voted yet, we are here with your ride to the polls." With electronic poll books, etc, that level of turnout effort is possible. That's been going on for at LEAST 25 years (the first time I saw it employed for one of my candidates) And in a great deal of states now, you have same day registration, so anyone can be taken to either the clerk's office or the polls. So, yes, I dismiss article out of hand that hint that problems for minority voting continue to the present day.