"Universal Suffrage:" Observations of an English Gentleman

A common touch such as Yell's was a valuable asset in frontier politics. The founding of Arkansas Territory corresponded with a growing egalitarian movement to remove the requirement that an individual own property in order to vote, a movement that drew its impetus from the American frontier. As a result, Arkansas was one of the first regions of the country to practice so-called "universal suffrage" for all free, white males.

This expanded electorate posed a challenge for any would-be political elite. As Arkansas political wit Charles Fenton Noland observed in the 1830s, frontier society was comprised of five classes of individuals "quality, bob-quality, commonality, rubbish, and trash." Moreover it was the last three groups that made up the overwhelming political majority. The resulting egalitarianism made for politics that was boisterous, sometimes to the point of vulgarity.

Hiram Whittington describes the results in one of his letters to his brother, this one dated May 8, 1831:
"Our election for Delegate to Congress and members of the Legislature comes on in August, and the candidates are out electioneering, making stump speeches, etc. We have an entirely different manner of managing our elections from what you have. You do it all by caucus. Here the candidate comes out on his own bottom, tells the people he is a candidate for such an office, and then goes on to tell them with fidelity, energy, etc., not forgetting to set forth his claims to their support in the most dazzling light. And if he knows of any little sins of his opponent, he will not be apt to let them pass unnoticed. They attend all public gatherings, and mount and make speeches two or three hours long. It commonly costs them about twice as much to get an office as the office is worth after they get it. It is expected of a candidate that they are to treat all their friends as often as they see them until the election. "
In the first of his "Letters from Arkansas," published in New England Magazine (9:267), Albert Pike gives very much the same impression upon encountering the opening day of the "territorial canvass" at Van Buren in June of 1833:
"Hurra for Sinclair! He's a horse. Who'll drink Crittenden's liquor? Here goes for Sevier! Good morning 'Squire;' how's your family. Come and drink with an old acquaintance who's a candidate. Bates forever! the people's candidate. He's a horse in a canebrake! Go ahead steamboat! Brown's a roarer! Five dollars on Martin! Such were some of the cries that struck my ear."
It was perhaps inevitable that politics on the frontier would prove more egalitarian in spirit than in more refined regions. The primitive conditions of Arkansas tended to impose a level of crudity on all concerned. In a society where cotton planters often still lived in log houses, class distinctions were often blurred. This is something the prissy and aristocratic English geologist George Featherstonhaugh would discover when he visited Arkansas during the last year of the Territory. The following is an account of his meeting with Gov. William Fulton:
"...Soon after my arrival I went to call upon his Excellency the Governor, and being told he lived in a small house in a particular quarter of town, I went in that direction, and seeing a house which I supposed to be the one I was in search of, I knocked at the door, upon which an odd-looking man came to me. I touched my hat and said, 'Will you be so obliging as to tell me whether the Governor is in the house?' I fancy this gentleman had never lived in Belgrave Square, for his answer was, 'No, I'm _____ if he is.' He told me, however, very obliging, where the house was, and at last I found it, and knocking with my knuckles against the door, a dame came, who, as I found afterwards, was the Governor's lady. She was a strange-looking person for one of her rank, and I had been so tickled with the last answer I got, that I could not help cherishing the hope that she, too, would say something very extraordinary. With the most winning politeness, therefore, I inquired 'If his Excellency the Governor was at home?' Upon which, without mincing the matter, she very frankly told me that 'he was gone to the woods to hunt for a sow and pigs belonging to her that were missing. '"
Not only were all white males in Arkansas entitled to vote, almost all did. This was mass political participation on a scale unprecedented except at times of revolution. To the eyes of incredulous Europeans such as Featherstonhaugh, this seemed nothing short of mob rule:
"Now the only newspapers that deserves to be read in England pay a great tax to the government, and are only within the reach of the opulent classes, those who are at ease in their circumstances, and men of business; but these being conducted by men of approved talents and fair character, reflect to the public all the intelligence that the inquiring spirit of a great nation requires, and assist to keep down corruption rather than cherish it. How could a town of 8000 inhabitants in England support a newspaper printed in the place? Where would the useful instructive matter come from? But in Little Rock, with a population of 600 people, there are no less than three cheap newspapers, which are not read but devoured by everyone; for what pleasure can be equal to that which through the blessing of universal suffrage those free and enlightened citizens called the 'sovereign people' are made partakers of once a day, or at least three times a week, on finding that the political party which has omitted to purchase their support is composed of scoundrels and liars, and men who want to get into power to ruin their country? It seems impossible that there should be any time or inclination for Bible reading where this kind of cheap poison gets into the minds of human beings; you might as well expect to find a confirmed Chinese opium smoker engaged in the solution of the problems of Euclid.

"What I have said I would apply exclusively to what are called the 'sovereign people,' that mass which it is in the interest of political demagogues to mislead and debase, for the purpose of directing it as they have too successfully done in many parts of the United States against praiseworthy efforts of good men and their families in every part of this extensive government; men who struggle to bring their country back to the honorable principles that illustrated the period of George Washington, but whose long struggle will be in vain until the evil consequences of universal suffrage present themselves in such an appalling form, that the people, rendered wise by great suffering and experience, will consent to surrender to the guidance of men of character and property that governing power which is but cause and effect of their blind passions."
Featherstonhaugh's elitism is so alien to present thinking that it serves as a reminder how new and radical the American experiment in democracy still was in the 1830s. Nor had that experiment stood still. Succeeding generations had seen fit to reinterpret the American Revolution along more democratic and egalitarian lines. Inspired by the French Revolution, a new spirit of egalitarianism had swept the country around the time of Jefferson's presidency. The same occurred again with the rise of Jackson and the transformation of politics from a privilege of the few to a true mass phenomenon.