Voting Rights in Ohio: Part one
By April Roush
11-21-21
April gives us a well documented lesson on the history of voting rights in Ohio. She shows us how race and gender have influenced voting rights since Ohio became a state and leaves us with a hopeful message. Stay tuned for Part two in January.
An unfinished, rigorous debate as to who may have a voice, who may have a vote, and what might shout over the top of those voices and votes has been underway in the United States since the formation of the nation’s identity. We commonly zero in on one of four pivotal moments in history in this debate: the constitutional convention and the 3/5ths abomination; the incomplete promises of the fourteenth amendment; the suffragists’ strong but limited legal arguments; and the Civil Rights era victories on paper that have been weakened by acts of the flesh. Our country, since inception, has been built on DNA encoded with an identity crisis, a parentage making its home on stolen land, and the RNA (how things are done) of insufficient liberty.
As such, we as a society recognize on some level that the threshold for who votes has had low water lines and higher water lines, and that there are locks and dams in play affecting that level. One scenario many Ohioans may not be aware of is that in 1802, an assembly of area representatives in the small Northwest Territory town of Chillicothe nearly made Ohio one of the first states to grant free black men the right to vote*. The series of meetings held to draft an Ohio Constitution and propose it to then President Thomas Jefferson and the US Congress (triggered by the state having 60,000 in settler population) defined state Congressional and Governor terms and other administrative measures. Only counties meeting a population threshold were allowed a voting member in the state proposal resulting in 35 votes. Like the Northwest Ordinance in place prior to statehood, the newly drafted Ohio Constitution prohibited slavery or indentured servitude, but failed to grant a voting right to free black men along with free white men**. The motion to grant such voting rights to free black men failed to pass- by a vote of 17 for, 18 against. You read that right; in 1802, for lack of one county vote, Ohio would have granted free men the right to vote, regardless of whiteness. Ohio has been at the cusp of progressive policy in voting rights since its United States conception date, and Ohio’s General Assembly has tugged the rope back and forth again and again, favoring and disfavoring freedoms in turn.
Importantly, the vote that lacked by one was ultimately proved to be the correct humanitarian position. The struggle to more fully embody the words of the declaration of independence’s promises granting societal members the unencumbered rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ was salient at the time that a new state was being added to the barely ten year old nation.
Our state, although it may seem stable and stagnant to the momentary eye, has been locked in a fierce battle over voting rights ever since that constitutional draft was ratified by 32 of the 35 county attendants. Of record, two abstained and one voted against (Ephraim Cutler, cofounder of Ohio University in Athens) on the basis that it did not go far enough on canals, education, or voting rights.
The debate was far from over, but those who might think the Civil War was the next battle in this war over legal voting status would be wrong by a long shot. Once the state constitution was ratified and an Ohio General Assembly was seated; the first assembly created what was called the Black Laws, prohibiting persons of color from serving on juries or providing testimony in court, and requiring every person who was black, specifically, to register with the state and pay a fee ratifying and formalizing their free status within two years. The law was reauthorized in 1807 with penalties attached for transgressions.
While historians and public record reviews seem to find almost no instances of these registrations being enforced, the overall impact of the law in both versions was to send a cold message to black people about Ohio’s welcome mat. Interestingly, though, the black population in Ohio (with the registration laws on the books but rarely enforced) doubled nearly every ten years to the point that Ohio counted as fourth and then third in all states in terms of population of black citizens in 1840 and 1850 respectively. Some credit the reputation of the state as even more unwelcoming to slave owners and also a pattern of interrupting attempts at kidnappings of free black persons.
One way the early Ohio laws (1803 to the Civil War) greatly oppressed people of color was in legal matters. Since there had to be a white witness to present testimony in court, property and personal violations went largely uncharged and unprosecuted. A New York newspaper called The Colored American documented accusations in the 1830’s, calling for evidence and witnesses, often to no avail. Riots in Cincinnati by white racist citizens resulted in relocations and recoveries of neighborhoods and communities in Cincinnati including the ultimate creation of the first integrated place of higher education, Oberlin College. Simultaneously, abolitionists in Ohio began to meet, speak and print on the cause. The Philanthropist, a Cincinnati abolitionist paper, was run by a reformed slave owner who moved to Ohio from Kentucky to publish for freedom for one and all. Ohio continued to be a hotbed of opposing forces on the issues of immigration into the state, voting rights, education, and competition in small business.
Using a rear view mirror, we see the irony of voting for persons (men only at the time) of color beginning to vote in Ohio as a result of a law meant to limit the legal standing of persons of color (of any age or stated gender). The court case of a woman, at the time referred to using the anachronistic term ‘mulatto’, with testimony given against her by a man of reportedly both black and white heritage as well, but considered ‘less white’, won an appeal to the Ohio State Supreme Court when she challenged her guilty conviction on the basis that the man ‘shouldn’t have been allowed to testify’. Interestingly, in its decision, the Ohio State Supreme Court in Gray vs Ohio (1834) stated that ascribed membership to being white, ‘mulatto’, or black should be granted with the err to the access of full rights (ambiguously referred to as more white than not white) whenever in dispute, such that it was clear that *to do the opposite would be a denial of rights* if it was incorrect. On the basis of this law as precedent, county election officials in more abolition-leaning counties allowed men who self-reported as mostly of white heritage to vote, resulting in more heated debate, more court cases around 1840 firmly upholding the registrations, and the rise of Salmon P Chase.
Chase, who was widely regarded as one of the key white anti-slavery legal and political figures in the country, won the office of Governor of Ohio 1856-1860 in part thanks to an impressive turnout of men who had registered under the Gray vs. Ohio findings and subsequent Supreme Court assurances. He took office (1855 election) as Harriet Beecher Stowe had just published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in installments and as shifts in popular opinion about the institution of slavery developed, the inalienable rights of those who were cruelly enslaved, and some of the prejudices about property ownership and business charters eased. These changes were certainly led by more progressive policies and community building in Cleveland.***.
These gains would not go unfettered in the future… The tide rolls out and rolls back in, with serious stakes for many, and yet the expanding of humanitarian aims always prevail on the whole. Can we safely say that people have called Ohio a battleground state due to the close elections of modern times and yet, hasn’t it been a battleground state for the sake of humanity and the universality of voting rights all along? It appears that we can.
We can also surmise from the pattern of the human, fearful limits placed at each point, wherein the “Black Laws” did not apparently deter people from moving to Ohio; wherein the refusal of bearing witness resulted in a State Supreme Court interpretation that opened a gate to the ballot box; wherein the unenforced request for registrations may have hampered some or allowed for intimidation, but ultimately was overridden by the State supporting people who were fugitive from enslavement, and to the election of an anti-slavery Governor; wherein racist riots occurred alongside work of abolitionist newspapers and preachers alike; wherein the publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was like an empathetic answer to the cruel call of the Fugutive Slave Law, that… humanity prevails. Not only has it prevailed, but often the undoing of the cruel limitations of the liberty of others is accomplished by pulling one thread of fabric of oppression, unraveling it by means of a sure and persistent grasp. We can gain conviction from this truth.
*In 1802 four states granted black property owners the right to vote; however two of those states revoked those rights in the Jacksonian era of the 1830’s…
**so long as they contributed in either taxes or civic supports identified in the document
***that northern city of Cleveland was so geographically important and the resources so profound in this more progressive city that it was referred to in the Underground Railroad secret code-speak as the destination “Hope”
Reference materials (all active links):
Regarding Ohio and national abolitionists:
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE HOUSE - Home
Regarding the Ohio state constitution and elections:
The Strange Career of Race Discrimination in Antebellum Ohio
Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1802
CHAPTER 3 – THE GOSSETT FAMILY
(side note this reference began my search several years ago, as this is my Grandfather’s great great grandfather who served in the Ohio General Assembly in 1805 and 1809)
Regarding Gray vs Ohio precedent:
Gray v. State, 4 Ohio 322 (1829)
Black voting power in pre-Civil War Ohio helped elect a governor - and president: Van Gosse