by John Gilbert McCurdy

July 8, 1776, was a festive day in Philadelphia. On that bright and sunny Monday, the entire city seemed to hum with revolution. Around noon a crowd gathered at the Pennsylvania State House to witness the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. Loud “huzzas” rose from the crowd and church bells began tolling. The celebration continued throughout the day, with proud patriots drinking to the health of the new country and lighting bonfires. Amid the merriment, Philadelphians made their way to the polls. July 8 was election day in Pennsylvania, and its citizens were choosing delegates to the commonwealth’s first constitutional convention. As voters queued, their ranks reflected the revolutionary spirit of the day. Propertyless men and foreign-born soldiers stood equal with the wealthy and privileged, thus marking a democratization of the electorate that would permanently expand suffrage in Pennsylvania.

The delegates elected on July 8 remained true to the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal.” Within a month, the delegates gathered and wrote a state constitution that historian Richard Beeman has labeled “the most radically democratic frame of government that the world had ever seen.” Among the most radical provisions of the document was a broad expansion of the electorate. Historically, only men who owned land or who had a significant amount of moveable property were allowed the vote, but the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 guaranteed any man who paid taxes the right of suffrage. While this shift may seem less than radical two centuries later, it marks the origins of universal suffrage in the United States and the belief that all citizens should be allowed a voice in the selection of their leaders.

By the time William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1681, suffrage in England and the American colonies was limited to men who owned substantial amounts of property. In the 1430s, Parliament required a 40-shilling freehold for suffrage, meaning that a voter had to be a native-born or naturalized subject of England and possess land or other property worth at least 40 shillings. Many of the American colonies had experimented with broader suffrage requirements at their founding. At first, Virginia granted all freemen the right to vote without regard to property. However, by the second half of the 17th century, most colonial governments had brought their suffrage requirements in line with the laws of England. Pennsylvania repeated this pattern when it was chartered. In the province’s first legal code, William Penn granted the right “of electing or being elected representatives of the people” to every man who owned 100 acres of land “or other resident in the said province, that pays scot and lot to the government.” “Scot and lot”—also written “shot and lot”—was a medieval term meaning the payment of taxes, and Penn likely included this proviso as a means of enfranchising merchants and urban residents whose situation kept them from owning large parcels of land. The broad suffrage requirements also reflected the spirit of liberty and equality that Penn hoped would infuse the colony. In constructing his “Holy Experiment,” Penn invited peoples of various nationalities and faiths to live in Pennsylvania. It is thus not surprising that the province’s first suffrage law did not restrict the vote based on nativity or religion.

In 1700, the Pennsylvania Assembly narrowed the province’s suffrage requirements. The law mandated that a voter be male, be at least 21 years of age, have resided in the province for two years, be a natural-born or naturalized English subject, and possess a 50-acre freehold or “fifty pounds lawful money of this government clear estate.” Although the new suffrage requirements made Pennsylvania consistent with the rest of the empire, their adoption may have resulted from a power struggle between William Penn and his colonists. By 1700, the colonists were growing increasingly defiant of Penn’s control, and they may have feared that the loose voter requirements would allow him to buy the votes of landless laborers and foreigners. Such ideas had long been accepted by English political thinkers and were the chief justification for limiting the electorate. If a man owned no property, it was reasoned, he had no vested interest in the society and thus would sell his vote to the highest bidder. A similar argument was used to exclude those who were not native born. In this, the antidemocratic direction of the 1700 law was justified as a means of preventing voter fraud and keeping power in the hands of colonists. 

It is difficult to know how severely the suffrage law of 1700 restricted the size of the provincial electorate. Because land was plentiful, historians estimate that between 50 and 80 percent of adult men were eligible to vote in Pennsylvania elections. Those prohibited from voting were primarily propertyless or foreign-born. The first group was excluded from the polity throughout America, as in most colonies not only did a man without property not vote, but he paid no taxes. The situation was different in Pennsylvania where, since 1696, the government had collected a poll tax on laborers who were not married. Tax rolls from Chester County reveal that propertyless bachelors were a sizable minority of colonial taxpayers and that they paid higher taxes than 80 to 90 percent of property owners. By the 1740s, Pennsylvania extended the poll tax to propertyless married laborers.

The second group of disfranchised were the foreign-born, which in colonial Pennsylvania meant German. One hundred thousand Germans immigrated to America in the 18th century, the majority of whom settled in rural Pennsylvania. It took a special act of assembly to naturalize immigrants and, consequently, enfranchise them. Like the propertyless, many unnaturalized Germans paid taxes. Women, regardless of nativity or economic status, also were barred from the polls. Although women’s exclusion was hardly controversial, the justification for denying them suffrage was the same as it was for propertyless and foreign-born men—they lacked independence and thus it was feared they would surrender their votes to more powerful men.  

Pennsylvania’s suffrage requirements attracted few complaints in the colonial era. Perhaps complacency is not surprising given the fact that only 20 percent of eligible voters voted in most elections. However, the outbreak of the Revolution had the effect of exciting the population and stirring interest in the rights of suffrage. On April 24, 1775, news reached Philadelphia that Massachusetts minutemen had engaged the king’s soldiers at Lexington and Concord, thus beginning the American Revolution. The next day some 8,000 men met in Pennsylvania’s capital city and agreed to associate “for the Purpose of defending with Arms, their Property, Liberty, and Lives against all Attempts to deprive them of them.” Known as “Associators,” these men formed themselves into units and began training for war. Because pacifist Quakers had controlled the assembly since its inception, there was no Pennsylvania militia and thus this was the first time that most of these men had participated in military endeavors. Despite their inexperience at war, the Associators quickly proved themselves to be shrewd politicians. They elected officers and then organized a series of committees to represent their interests to the Pennsylvania Assembly. As war raged in Massachusetts, the Associators knew that they would soon face battle. Accordingly, they requested that the provincial government honor their sacrifice. They sent petitions to the State House requesting provisions for the widows of men killed in battle as well as laws making military service compulsory. By September, the Committee of Privates had become an effective mouthpiece for the Associators.

The fact that many of the men who associated were propertyless or foreign-born caused some Pennsylvanians to contemplate the rights and obligations of citizenship in the province. Were men willing to die for their country not at least entitled to the vote? In a letter to the April 29, 1776, edition of the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Packet, a reader who signed himself “Elector” pondered the longstanding custom of denying “the rights of voting to all persons who come from Germany, &c. until they have been naturalized” as well as “all men below the estate of fifty pounds.” At length he concluded that “every man who pays his shot and bears his lot is naturally and constitutionally an Elector,” adding that “every citizen who has armed and associated to defend the Commonwealth is, and should be an Elector.” In other words, he proposed that the payment of taxes and military service should be sufficient for suffrage.

As the war entered its second year and the calls for a formal declaration of independence increased, the colonial government of Pennsylvania became increasingly irrelevant. The provincial assembly refused to accede to the demands of the Committee of Privates when it convened in February 1776, leading the committee to form a shadow government. On May 15, the Second Continental Congress, then meeting at the State House in Philadelphia, advised the patriots to formally reject the colonial charters and write their own state constitutions. Patriots in Pennsylvania moved more quickly, and on June 18 a provincial conference gathered at Carpenters’ Hall. The purpose of the conference was to decide how delegates to the constitutional convention would be chosen. Obviously, delegates would have to be elected by the people at large, but who would be entitled to vote for these delegates? On the second day of the convention, a group of “German associators of the city and liberties of Philadelphia” presented a petition “praying that all associators who are taxables may be entitled to vote” for convention delegates. Within a matter of hours the convention approved the motion with the proviso that every voter take an oath foreswearing allegiance to King George III. In setting these suffrage requirements, the conference assured that only those committed to American independence would have a vote.

A week after the July 8 elections, the constitutional convention met in the West Room of the State House and began the process of writing Pennsylvania’s first republican frame of government. The convention’s 96 delegates represented all 11 Pennsylvania counties then in existence and reflected the dynamic demographics of the commonwealth. The delegates ranged in age from 24 to 70, professed a variety of Protestant faiths, and were employed as professionals, tradesmen, and merchants, with most men being farmers. Two-thirds had been born in Pennsylvania, although seven were naturalized Germans. To a man, they were patriots, and nearly half served the military in some capacity during the Revolution. To at least one outside observer, the conventioneers were “intirely unacquainted with such high matters” and “hardly equal to ye Task to form a new plan of Government.” To be sure, Benjamin Franklin presided over the proceedings and James Cannon, the document’s principal author, taught mathematics at what is now the University of Pennsylvania. However, commitment to the American cause often proved more important than education or experience in the selection of delegates.

On September 10, the constitution was published in Philadelphia. Paradoxically, the authors of the most democratic document did not put their work to a vote, but proclaimed it to the people as a fait accompli. Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 did not disappoint even the most ardent radicals. It proclaimed “that all free men having a sufficient evident common interest with and attachment to the community, have a right to elect officers, or to be elected into office” and guaranteed suffrage for all men age 21 and over who had lived in the commonwealth for a year and who had “paid public taxes during that time.” In this, Pennsylvania completely abolished all qualifications of property and nativity, thus opening the electorate to taxed bachelors and recent German immigrants. Interestingly, the constitution did not challenge the longstanding idea that a person had to demonstrate a commitment to the community in order to be an elector. Rather, it simply modified how this commitment was to be demonstrated—from the ownership of land and place of birth to the payment of taxes.

There were inconsistencies in Pennsylvania’s move toward universal suffrage. The sons of freeholders were allowed the vote even if they had not paid taxes, and the right to elect justices of the peace was confined to men who owned property. Despite these caveats, the constitution had the effect of dramatically expanding suffrage in Pennsylvania. Historians estimate that perhaps 75 percent of men in rural areas and 90 percent in Philadelphia became eligible to vote under the new frame of government. The majority of new voters were propertyless men and a plurality were taxed bachelors.

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 attracted considerable criticism for its radical nature. Numerous commentators attacked its unicameral legislature and absence of an independent executive, but others lamented the broad expansion of the electorate. A French observer doubted that the payment of taxes was sufficient to demonstrate allegiance and predicted that “a crowd of young men who did not enjoy the rights of citizenship in the other states would flock to Pennsylvania.” Future president John Adams also derided the abolition of property requirements as a slippery slope: “The same reasoning which will induce you to admit all men who have no property, to vote, with those who have, for those laws which affect the person, will prove that you ought to admit women and children.” Adams’s criticism was prophetic. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 enshrined the notion that suffrage should be extended to as many people as possible. Once the state enfranchised taxed bachelors and foreign-born soldiers because they rendered an obligation to the state, it made little sense to exclude those women who paid property taxes. In this, the implications of the constitution were as revolutionary as the document itself.

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 had a profound effect on the United States. Other states implemented taxpayer suffrage as they wrote their state constitutions. By 1792, 6 of the 13 original states allowed propertyless male taxpayers to vote in at least some statewide elections. Within a few years, however, taxpayer suffrage was replaced by the even more radical proposition that all men—and eventually all people—should be allowed to vote. Perhaps because it was the first state to expand the electorate, Pennsylvania was one of the last to allow true universal suffrage. Up until the 1930s, a person had to pay taxes in order to vote in the commonwealth.

Historians remain divided on the efficacy of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. Progressives at the beginning of the 20th century hailed it as a stunning achievement for democracy, while those at midcentury disparaged it as a recipe for mobocracy and disorder. Yet, the document and its suffrage requirements remain a bold statement of the framers’ commitment to the ideals of the American Revolution, and it marks the beginning of the process of placing the right of choosing the nation’s government in the hands of as many people as possible.

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Image: The voting rights clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, from Constitution of the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania . . . (Philadelphia, 1781). Dickinson Collection, Pennsylvania 1776-96.