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Article: Disfranchisement
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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DISFRANCHISEMENT
DISFRANCHISEMENT
is a denial of the right to vote. Before 1776, a higher proportion of Americans could vote than in any other country. Still, the vast majority of women and free persons of color were voteless, and white men who owned less than a certain amount of property, such as forty acres of land, or land or housing that would rent for forty British shillings per year, were also disfranchised. Property qualifications, which primarily affected younger men, were considerably loosened even before 1800 and were generally abolished in the 1820s and 1830s. By the Civil War, America enjoyed nearly universal white male adult citizen suffrage, and during the nineteenth ...