The Oversight in New Jersey

Although women were held out of the public sphere in the rest of the young United States, in New Jersey they gained a true political voice. From 1776 to 1807, women in New Jersey could vote, just as men could and they exercised the right with zeal. Women, for a short time, truly had political power and they embraced it.

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The Loophole

Giving women the right to vote was not intentional. It arose entirely out of a vague statement within New Jersey’s constitution “defining voters vaguely as ‘all free inhabitants’ meeting property and residence requirement” (Norton 1980, 191). Women were “neither specifically disenfranchised . . . or enfranchised” (Norton 1980, 191). In the rest of the states, the right to vote was limited “explicitly to men” without any leeway for women to argue for their inclusion (Lewis 2002, 88).

Women in New Jersey did not sit idly by with the prospect of the right to vote up for grabs. Instead they staked their claim, beginning with upper middle to upper class white women (Lewis 2002, 87). Despite the ability to vote, it was still restricted to “those independent women who met the same property qualifications as men” (Lewis 2002, 87). There were not loser regulations for women since it was difficult for them to own property or be considered independent, so there were still obstacles to voting. In practice, the right to vote only applied “to propertied single women . . . for, under the doctrine of coverture, married women, by and large, were precluded from holding property in their own name” (Lewis 2002, 88). The women who were able, though, “successfully claimed the right to vote in local elections during the 1780s” (Norton 1980, 191).

Becoming Official

Women went from just taking the right to vote through an oversight in wording, to their right to vote being codified officially in law. Women went from an accidental inclusion in 1776 to 1790, when “New Jersey adopted an election law that explicitly referred to voters as ‘her or she,’ thereby instituting a formal experiment with woman suffrage” (Norton 1980, 191). The right to vote had been practiced by women for almost fifteen years at this point, so “the 1790 statute, and similarly worded election laws passed later that same decade, thus simply acknowledged and legitimized the extant practice” (Norton 1980, 191).

As more time passed, women voting became more and more the norm. In fact, “by 1800, woman suffrage was so well established in the state that the legislature rejected an amendment providing for female voting in congressional race on the grounds that it was unnecessary. As one legislator said, ‘Our Constitution gives this right to maids or widows black or white‘” (Norton 1980, 191). In this, New Jersey represented some of the most liberal views in the early republic that many women were expressing.

The right to vote was not taken lightly. Women organized themselves and acted, much as it had been proven they could do during the war. They were largely Federalist and the party embraced them. The Federalist party was glad to have the support of women and “celebrated the women’s activism declaring their party’s intention to ‘not only preach the “Rights of Women” but boldly push it into practice'” (Norton 1980, 192). However, their support of the Federalist party would also lead to the loss of voting rights.

Losing Their Right

Women organized publicly and successfully in favor of the Federalist party. In particular, they organized and voted against John Condict, a Democratic Republican, in 1796. Condict still managed to win by a narrow number of votes, but he did not forget the bitterness of almost losing due to the women. Ten years later in 1807, Condict “introduced the bill that successfully disfranchised both women and blacks” (Norton 1980, 192-193).