Republicans and Black Suffrage in New York State: The Grass Roots Response

REPUBLICANS AND BLACKSUFFRAGE INNEWYORKSTATE: The Grass Roots Response Phyllis F. Field In 1860 free blacks in the United States enjoyed equal voting privileges with whites only in five New England states. Ten years later not only were all blacks free but the nation had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment. The Republican party had been instrumental in bringing about these changes. Throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction it had furnished almost the sole support for emancipation, black suffrage , and the termination of various other forms of racial discrimination . Yet the conduct of the Republicans during the struggle for black suffrage continues to arouse controversy among historians. Two contrasting images of the party have emerged. One is that of the Republicans as the vanguard of racial reform. Hans Trefousse, for instance, has shown Benjamin F. Wade to have been a man who overcame personal prejudice to support equal rights for humanitarian reasons. The other image is less favorable—that of the Republicans as cynical opportunists or men with more than a taint of racism.3 The mounting evidence of Republican reluctance to face racial issues squarely and frequent catering to white prejudice against blacks has led C. Vann Woodward to term the Republican commitment to equality as "lacking in clarity, ambiguous in purpose, and capable of numerous interpretations ."4 ' Uon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), p. 263. 2 H. L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade, Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963). 5 John H. and LaWanda Cox, "Negro Suffrage and Republican Politics: The Problem of Motivation in Reconstruction Historiography," Journal of Southern History, XXXIII (Aug., 1967), 303-330 is the most important historiographical survey of this literature. Relevant works since this article include Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Shvery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana, 1967); V. Jacque V'oegeli, Free But Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the Civil War (Chicago, 1967); and Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1970), ch. 8. 4 C. Vann Woodward, "Seeds of Failure in Radical Race Policy,'- Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CX (Feb. 18, 1966), 3. 136 The study of the racial views of Republicans has been primarily focused on the views of leaders. Relatively little effort has been made to analyze the divisions among rank and file Republicans, the sources of these divisions, the nature of the changes they underwent over time, and their impact on the party leadership. Perhaps the conduct of the Republican party on racial questions could be better understood if the base of the party pyramid received as much attention as its apex. Both before and after the Civil War a number of northern states held referenda on discriminatory portions of their state constitutions. These referenda provide a rare opportunity to examine grass roots responses to the question of racial discrimination and offer a different context in which to view the actions of political leaders. The following analysis is based upon three such black suffrage referenda held in New York State from 1846 through 1869. New York, while not typical of the entire North, was a large, socially and economically diverse, and politically important state. Its three referenda permit a study of change and continuity in voter reactions to black suffrage over time. The referenda were held at moments of great analytic interest. The first, in 1846, occurred before the formation of the Republican party but after the injection of the antislavery question into politics. The second, in I860, took place on the eve of the Civil War and the third, in 1869, at the climax of Reconstruction, after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment through Congress and its ratification by New York. County returns were available for all three referenda. In addition, township returns were located for a majority of counties in each referendum (over 80 per cent in the last two).5 Smaller and more homogenous than counties, they reveal a more precise view of group voting behavior in the referenda. The discriminatory clause in New York's constitution at which the referenda were aimed had...