The United States’ transformation into a republic where nearly all adult white men could vote was incredibly progressive for its time. The extent of American democracy and the enthusiasm with which Americans participated in elections amazed European observers. Nowhere else in the world could such a large proportion of the population exercise the franchise. And exercise it they did: in 1840, 79% of eligible voters turned out for the presidential election.
But as voting became less connected to wealth, it became more connected to race and sex. As states rewrote their constitutions to expand suffrage to all white men, some added in new restrictions preventing African Americans and women from voting. In the early 1800s, northern states that had permitted free black citizens to vote stripped them of that privilege, or added property requirements so high that they effectively barred African Americans from voting. The state legislature of New Jersey, which had permitted wealthy, unmarried women to vote since the Revolution, limited suffrage to men in 1807.
Politics rose to the level of a spectator sport in nineteenth-century America, with crowds in the tens of thousands attending debates, parades, and barbeques. During the 1820s, elements characteristic of the two-party system today began to emerge: national political parties with nominating conventions, partisan newspapers, political campaigns filled with “mudslinging” insults attacking opposing candidates.
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