In each of the acts of territorial government drawn up by Congress, suffrage was restricted to free white persons. This fact, together with the fact that the West Virginia Constitution of 1861-63 also restricted the suffrage to white persons, tends to show the attitude of the National Government in the early days toward Negro suffrage.
SUFFRAGE BETWEEN 1865 AND 1870
In 1865, the only States that permitted Negroes to vote on the same footing as white persons were Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. New York and Tennessee permitted a restricted Negro suffrage.
The changes in the suffrage laws between 1865 and 1870 indicate what might have taken place had not the United States interfered with the Fifteenth Amendment. The Reconstruction Constitutions[15] of the Southern States in 1868 and 1869 extended the suffrage to Negroes. These Constitutions, however, did not express the will of the Southern white people at the time in regard to suffrage. The Constitution of Maryland,[16] of 1867, permitted only white persons to vote; and that of Nebraska,[17] of 1866-67, under which it sought admission to the Union, did not give the suffrage to Negroes.
Negro suffrage was voted down in New York[18] in 1868, as it had been in 1846 and 1860, by a vote of 282,403 to 249,802. By the act of territorial government of Colorado, of 1861, suffrage was restricted to white persons. But an act of the legislature[19] of that Territory, enacted in November, 1861, seemed to extend the right
