“Expressly Recognized by Our Election Laws”: Certificates of Freedom and the Multiple Fates of Black Citizenship in the Early Republic

Black voters in early republican New York played a critical role in the development of antislavery politics, partisan practices, and definitions of citizenship in the nascent years of American democracy. As increasing numbers of black New Yorkers became free during gradual emancipation, more black men went to the polls. They often, if not always, voted for Federalists. In 1811, the Republican-led legislature enacted a controversial law requiring black men to obtain “certificates of freedom” before participating in elections; a second certificate law passed in 1815 further targeted New York City’s black voters. The paperwork produced by these two laws comprises a rich, underexamined source base. Surviving certificates demonstrate that black men voted throughout the state, at times holding the balance of power in rural areas and smaller cities that rarely capture scholars’ attention. Ongoing debates about the certificates and black voters’ political activities shaped prominent state politicians’ views of slavery and citizenship. Significantly, state representatives took these ideas to the U.S. Congress during the Missouri Crisis (1819–21). In 1821, proponents of black citizenship were disappointed both by the results of the Missouri Compromise and by New York’s new constitution, which erected stiff new property requirements for black voters. That said, black men’s decades of electoral participation created important and enduring minority conceptions of political belonging and equal citizenship.