4. United States Congress, House, Select Committee, Provisions of the National and State Constitutions and Laws Relating to the Right of Suffrage, 41st Cong. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869). (36 p.)


Survey of electoral provisions in the federal and state constitutions with a summary of suffrage requirements on pages 34-36. Conditions resulting in disfranchisement include race or skin color, non-residency, no property ownership or non-payment of taxes, illiteracy, immoral character of behavior, service in the regular army or navy, poverty, idiocy, or insanity, treason, and other disqualification (e.g., “disqualified as electors in the States from whence they came”). This survey predates the exclusionary constitutions ratified in many Southern states some years later.