Suffrage in the Post-Civil War United States

FAIN: FT-259564-18

Nicole Etcheson
Ball State University (Muncie, IN 47306-1022)

A book on disputes over suffrage for women, African Americans, and ex-Confederates in the post-Civil War era.

Before the Civil War, there was no right to vote. Voting was a privilege with each state deciding whether to set racial, gender, education, property, or naturalization requirements for its electorate. The Civil War destabilized this norm. Native-born white men lost the vote in some states because of service or aid to the Confederacy. African American men claimed suffrage based on loyalty, military service, and the need to protect their newly acquired freedom. Woman suffrage advocates hoped to advance their rights by exploiting the re-opened debate over suffrage. In ways previously unrecognized, these movements intersected and played off each other even as the federal government supplanted the states as arbiter of qualifications for what was increasingly defined not as a "privilege" but a "right." Moreover the effects of these Civil War suffrage disputes would linger well into the twentieth century, having ramifications for African American voting rights and women's rights.