Secondary Source
“The baseline of this part of the story can be set in the years just before the American Revolution, when all but one of the North American British colonies maintained an age-old system restricting the vote (for all but some local elections) to property-owning men. The assumption that underlay this system was that voting could be entrusted only to those who had a tangible stake in their society, and in an agricultural and paternalistic world this meant, primarily, those men who owned freehold estates above a certain acreage or assessed value. Seven of the thirteen colonies adhered to the letter of this tradition, while five, recognizing the growing populations of their towns, counted other forms of property. South Carolina, while maintaining a fifty-acre freehold qualification, extended the franchise to less-propertied men who paid taxes of at least twenty shillings.”
- Stuart M. Blumin, Historian, “Making (White Male) Democracy,” 2018