Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

Republican Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania moved to insert the word white into the description of voter qualifications, “so as to confine the right of voting in Washington to white male citizens.” Republican moderates suggested a property requirement for all Washington voters, arguing that such a law would avoid both racial discrimination and the enfranchisement of thousands of propertyless freedmen. But the prospect of disenfranchising propertyless white men who already enjoyed the right to vote also elicited strong objections. Sumner proposed a policy that explicitly forbade racial discrimination in voting. Citing reports of “shocking” violence perpetrated against African Americans by white southerners, Sumner insisted that Congress’s policy toward Washington ought to “set an example of justice and humanity.” With Republicans unable to agree on a change, voter qualifications in Washington remained the same: white male citizens alone would be eligible to vote.