ABSTRACT
Between 1790 and the 1850, every US state held at least one constitutional convention. A key concern of these conventions was the distribution of political power among the increasingly diverse residents of each state. Property qualifications for suffrage that had begun to erode during the American Revolution were dismantled after 1790. New states sought to attract settlers by lowering voting eligibility requirements, and states seeking to ensure adequate men for militia units realized the right of suffrage could be an incentive for enlistment and service. In 1850 twenty-five of the thirty-one states required voters to be white, and also required that voters be citizens of the state or of the United States. Meanwhile only four of the thirty-one states still had property requirements for voting eligibility. During the second party system from the 1820s to the 1850s, the Democratic Party in particular found success in encouraging reforms to enlarge the electorate among urban white men who did not own property.
