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.Moderate reformer Terry Cahal of Maury County, a champion of white man-hood suff rage, supported Ridley’s motion.Cahal expressed a willingness to letalready enfranchised free blacks continue to vote as a matter of courtesy, buthe feared that allowing any additional free blacks to vote off ered an “invitation”to free blacks in other states to migrate to Tennessee.Since other states, Northand South, employed policies designed to encourage free blacks to leave theirstates, the possibility of obtaining voting rights in Tennessee would make thestate attractive, in Cahal’s view, to the worst kind of immigrants.The continuationof free black voting in Tennessee, Cahal contended, would quickly make the state“the asylum for free Negroes and the harbour for runaway slaves.” Despite Cahal’sendorsement, the convention rejected Ridley’s amendment.East Tennessee’s JohnMcKinney then off ered an amendment proposing that suff rage be opened to allfree male citizens of the United States who were over the age of twenty-oneand met certain residency requirements.McKinney’s proposal amounted to animplicit ban on free black voters because most delegates thought free blacks werenot considered citizens of the United States.But McKinney’s amendment failedas well, and the convention adjourned for the day without reaching any resolutionof the issue.85The next day, June , William Carter, an eastern delegate and president ofthe convention, off ered a resolution limiting suff rage to white males only.MiddleTennessee delegate Robert Allen, representing a county that was  percent slave,spoke against Carter’s proposal.Allen admitted that propertied free blacks inTennessee enjoyed suff rage as a “boon not a right” but pointed out that limitingsuff rage to white males would “exclude a description of persons” who had “exer-cised [suff rage] for thirty-eight years.without ever any evil growing out of it.”Allen recommended “letting the matter remain as it is,” lest the convention leavethe impression that “northern fanaticism have made an impression among us.”Allen favored letting free blacks who “have been in the habit of voting” continueto do so, as long as “their numbers and infl uence remain too inconsiderable tobe felt.” 86 But, after some procedural wrangling, Carter’s proposal passed.JamesGray of middle Tennessee quickly moved to strike the word white from Carter’sproposal, opening suff rage again to black male freeholders, but Gray’s motionfailed.Carter then proposed his own amendment, one restoring the right to voteto those free blacks who had lived in the state of Tennessee when its fi rst stateconstitution was drafted in , but the convention rejected Carter’s amend-ment as well.John Purdy of Henderson, a middle Tennessee delegate, proposedallowing free blacks who owned a minimum of $ in property to vote, but theconvention quickly rejected Purdy’s proposal.At the end of the day, the conven-tion approved a vaguely worded resolution, also off ered by William Carter, allow-ing free blacks to vote in county elections only, and then adjourned for the day.87414T H E U P P E R S O U T H R E S P O N D SOn Saturday, June , the convention returned to the issue of free black suff ragefor the third straight day.Western delegate G.W.L.Marr asked permission tointroduce a set of resolutions drafted, according to Marr, by former governor WillieBlount.In his introductory remarks, Marr contended that these resolutions “presentthe true view of the relation or want of relation between the colored population ofthe country and its political institutions.” The resolutions maintained that free blackswere not “recognized by our political fabric” or as “subjects of our naturalizationlaws” and thus their “supposed claim to exercise the great right of free suff rage, is,and shall be.prohibited.” The Marr-Blount resolutions also called for the enfran-chisement of all free white males.88 Once Marr’s resolutions were introduced, theconvention suspended its custom of forcing all such resolutions to lie on the tablefor a day, and debate resumed.89Arguing that white Tennesseans “reprobate and abhor” black voting, Marrinsisted that the “political fabrics of Tennessee denied citizenship to all people ofcolor, slave or free,” and hence all free blacks should be disfranchised.90 SupportingMarr, another western delegate, W.H.Loving, bitterly reproved the convention forrefusing to lower the voting age for whites from twenty-one to eighteen while pre-serving the right of free blacks to vote.Free blacks could not “possibly have a deeperinterest in the welfare of the government than white male citizens over the age of,” Loving, a nonslaveholder, claimed.Loving’s arguments rested ultimately onrace.He branded free blacks as the “corrupt link between the debased of our owncolor and the slave,” and argued that free black voting served as “an evil example”to Tennessee slaves.“The slave can see no diff erence between himself and the freeNegro,” Loving maintained, and thus free black suff rage might “excite feelings inthe breast of slaves,” leading to “the overthrow or total extinction of the white race”as in the “ill-fated Island of St.Domingo [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]