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Why Was a Portuguese Militia Veteran Denied the Right to Vote in 1844? - The Boundaries of Citizenship in Rhode Island | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:04
Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. In 1844,
0:14
a Portuguese homeowner and militia veteran named
0:17
Manuel Domingo walked into a Providence court
0:20
to ask for the right to vote, only to be turned
0:23
away for not being white. His refusal was not
0:27
an isolated administrative error, but a reflection
0:30
of a much deeper historical reality. For most
0:34
of history, Citizenship was not a universal birthright,
0:38
but a local, layered, and privileged condition,
0:41
enforced through overlapping tests of property,
0:44
race, religion, and gender. This episode examines
0:49
how the boundary of political membership was
0:51
drawn, defended, and redrawn in Rhode Island
0:55
from the 1663 colonial charter to the 1843 state
1:00
constitution. The story of Rhode Island reveals
1:04
that the expansion of voting rights was never
1:07
a simple march toward inclusion. The 1843 Constitution
1:12
eliminated the property qualification for native
1:15
-born white men, but it simultaneously installed
1:18
a strict racial barrier that disenfranchised
1:21
free black men who had previously voted. Through
1:24
the experiences of excluded groups, including
1:27
free black residents who built alternative mutual
1:30
aid societies, Irish immigrants who were taxed
1:33
without representation, and women whose political
1:36
agency was constrained by coverture, we see how
1:40
the definition of the people was repeatedly renegotiated
1:44
to suit those already in power. I kept returning
1:48
to one question while working on this episode.
1:50
Why do we so often imagine citizenship as a fixed
1:54
legal status when its history is really a record
1:57
of exclusion and contested boundaries? Understanding
2:01
how communities have historically policed the
2:04
line between insider and outsider offers a clearer,
2:08
more honest picture of what political membership
2:10
has actually meant and how its older layers still
2:14
shape our democratic institutions today. In 1844,
2:21
a Portuguese homeowner and militia veteran named
2:24
Manuel Domingo walked into a Providence court
2:27
seeking the right to vote. He was turned away
2:31
for not being white. That decision reveals citizenship,
2:35
not as a birthright, but as a boundary communities
2:39
draw, defend, and redraw to suit those already
2:42
inside. In the winter of 1844, a man named Manuel
2:47
Domingo walked into the Municipal Court of Providence,
2:51
Rhode Island and asked to be examined for the
2:53
right to vote. He had lived in the city for more
2:57
than a decade. He owned a small house on the
3:00
west side. He paid taxes. He had served in the
3:05
local militia during the Dore Rebellion three
3:07
years earlier, when rival governments had briefly
3:10
claimed to rule the state. The court turned him
3:14
away. Bamingo had been born in Portugal. Under
3:19
Rhode Island's governing charter, dating to 1663,
3:23
only freemen could vote. Freemen were understood
3:27
to mean white men who owned property. Domingo
3:31
was not white according to the racial categories
3:34
the court recognized. He was not a freeman. He
3:38
was, in the eyes of the law, a resident but not
3:41
a member. We know this much from court records
3:45
and newspaper accounts of the examination. What
3:49
Domingo said, how he stood, whether he argued,
3:52
or simply accepted the judgment. These details
3:55
do not survive. The archives preserve the decisions
3:59
of courts far more often than the responses of
4:02
those they excluded. This silence is itself part
4:06
of the history of citizenship. The boundary was
4:09
enforced through institutions that recorded their
4:12
own authority and rarely the voices of those
4:15
turned away. But the fact of his appearance and
4:18
the fact of his refusal are documented. And in
4:22
that documented moment, we can see something
4:25
essential about citizenship itself. It has never
4:28
been simply a status one possesses. It is a boundary
4:32
that communities draw, defend, and redraw, with
4:36
consequences that shape who can act, who can
4:39
be protected, and who can be compelled. Most
4:42
of us imagine citizenship as something nearly
4:45
universal and basically equal. We imagine something
4:49
you get by being born in a country, something
4:52
that comes with a passport and a set of rights.
4:55
That imagination is recent and is misleading.
4:59
For most of history, citizenship was a local,
5:02
layered and privileged condition. It was not
5:05
a single national status but a bundle of tests
5:08
and exceptions, enforced through roles and oaths,
5:12
property thresholds and religious requirements,
5:14
racial categories and gendered assumptions. The
5:18
modern nation -state would eventually consolidate
5:21
many of these into a simpler form. but the older
5:24
layers persisted beneath the surface, shaping
5:27
who could actually exercise the rights that citizenship
5:30
supposedly guaranteed. To understand how this
5:34
worked in practice, we need to look at one place
5:37
in detail. Providence and the state of Rhode
5:40
Island offer an unusually clear case, not because
5:44
they were unique, but because they were representative
5:47
in their complexity. A small state with a revolutionary
5:51
heritage of self -government Rhode Island clung
5:55
to its colonial charter longer than any other
5:58
American state. In doing so, it preserved a pre
6:02
-modern conception of citizenship well into the
6:05
19th century. The charter made no mention of
6:09
race in its voting provisions, but practice and
6:12
subsequent legislation added racial tests. It
6:16
required property for voting, but the amount
6:19
and kind of property shifted over time. It assumed
6:23
voters were male, but the line between household
6:25
membership and individual political agency was
6:28
contested. It recognized birth and naturalization
6:32
as paths to membership. But naturalization itself
6:36
was a federal process that states could interpret
6:39
narrowly or broadly. And beneath all of this
6:42
formal machinery lived thousands of people. Free
6:46
black residents, Irish immigrants, indentured
6:50
servants, enslaved people. Narragansett and other
6:54
indigenous communities, women of various statuses.
6:57
Their relationship to the political community
7:00
was partial, ambiguous, or actively denied. The
7:05
foundational tests of membership in Rhode Island
7:08
were, at first glance, simple. The 1663 Charter
7:13
granted the colony the right to govern itself.
7:16
It specified that the freemen of each town could
7:19
choose deputies to the General Assembly. Freemen
7:23
were adults, male inhabitants who had been admitted
7:26
to that status by the town. Admission required
7:29
a property qualification, initially ownership
7:32
of land or other real estate of modest value,
7:35
and an oath of allegiance sworn before the town
7:38
council. The property test was not merely about
7:42
ensuring that voters had a stake in the community,
7:45
though that was part of the reasoning. It was
7:48
also a practical mechanism for identifying who
7:51
counted as a settled, responsible member. A man
7:55
who owned land had put down roots. He could be
7:59
found. He had something to lose if the community
8:02
suffered. He was, in a literal sense, invested.
8:07
The oath itself was a physical act of boundary
8:10
crossing. A man seeking admission as a freeman
8:14
appeared before the town council. placed his
8:17
hand on a Bible or raised it in the air and swore
8:21
allegiance to King Charles II and obedience to
8:24
the colony's laws. The words were recorded in
8:27
the town clerk's book. His name was entered in
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a formal hand beneath the formula of the oath.
8:34
That entry was the documentary proof of his membership.
8:38
Without it, he could not vote, could not hold
8:41
town office, could not serve as a deputy to the
8:44
General Assembly. The clerk's book, kept in the
8:48
townhouse or later in the municipal building
8:50
was the physical archive of the political community's
8:54
boundary its pages show the gradual expansion
8:57
of the freeman population in some periods and
9:01
its deliberate restriction in others but the
9:04
property test also excluded it excluded young
9:09
men who had not yet inherited or purchased land
9:12
it excluded laborers who worked for wages It
9:16
excluded tenants who farmed land they did not
9:19
own. And because property ownership was distributed
9:22
unequally, it concentrated political power in
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the hands of those who already held economic
9:28
power. In colonial Rhode Island, as in most of
9:33
British America, roughly half of white adult
9:35
men met the property threshold at any given moment.
9:39
The other half were residents, but not political
9:42
members. They could be taxed. They could be drafted
9:46
into militia service in emergencies. They could
9:50
be punished by local courts. But they could not
9:53
choose who made the laws. Earth and ancestry
9:57
operated alongside property as tests of belonging.
10:01
The charter assumed that freemen would be drawn
10:04
from the existing inhabitants. Inhabitants meant
10:08
primarily those of English descent who had come
10:11
as part of the original settlement or been formally
10:14
received into the community. This was not yet
10:17
a racial test in the modern sense. The colony
10:21
included some free black residents from its earliest
10:23
decades, and a small number of indigenous people
10:26
lived within its boundaries. But the presumption
10:30
of Englishness shaped who were seen as naturally
10:33
belonging, and who needed to prove their fitness
10:35
for membership. Over time, as immigration increased
10:39
and the population diversified, this presumption
10:42
hardened into more explicit categories. Religion,
10:47
too, functioned as a boundary mechanism, though
10:50
in Rhode Island's case the story is complicated
10:52
by the colony's origins as a haven for religious
10:55
dissenters. Roger Williams, the colony's founder,
10:59
had been banished from Massachusetts Bay for
11:02
his rejection of the established church. Rhode
11:05
Island's early documents proclaimed liberty of
11:07
conscience. But liberty of conscience did not
11:11
mean that religion ceased to matter for political
11:13
membership. Catholics were formally excluded
11:17
from office holding under a 1719 Act, reflecting
11:20
colony -wide anxieties about papal allegiance.
11:24
The Act required office holders to declare against
11:27
the damnable doctrine, that princes excommunicated
11:31
by the Pope could be deposed or murdered. This
11:34
formulation echoed English anti -Catholic tests.
11:38
Jews could not vote or hold office until the
11:41
1840s, though a small Jewish community had existed
11:44
in Newport. since the mid -17th century with
11:47
its own cemetery and synagogue, the oldest surviving
11:51
synagogue building in North America. Quakers,
11:54
Baptists and other dissenters could participate
11:57
if they met the property tests, but they faced
12:00
social exclusion and occasional legal discrimination.
12:04
The religious boundary was porous compared to
12:07
some other colonies, but it was still a boundary.
12:10
and the oath that freemen swore was itself a
12:13
religious test, requiring affirmation before
12:16
God. Military service presented a more ambiguous
12:20
test. In theory, service in the militia was an
12:24
obligation of freemen and a mark of full membership.
12:28
In practice, Rhode Island's militia included
12:31
men who did not meet the property qualification
12:33
for voting, particularly in times of crisis.
12:37
The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 both
12:41
expanded militia service beyond the Freeman population.
12:45
Veterans sometimes claimed that their service
12:47
entitled them to political rights, but the claim
12:51
was contested. Service could demonstrate commitment
12:54
to the community, but it did not automatically
12:57
override the property test. The link between
13:01
obligation and membership was real, but not determinative.
13:05
You could be required to fight for a polity that
13:08
refused to let you help govern it. Residence,
13:12
too, was a necessary but insufficient condition.
13:15
To be examined as a free man, one had to have
13:19
lived in a town for a specified period, typically
13:22
a year or more. But residents alone did not confer
13:25
membership. The thousands of Irish immigrants
13:29
who arrived in Providence in the 1820s and 1830s
13:33
lived in the city. worked in its factories, built
13:36
its streets, and worshipped in its churches.
13:39
Most could not vote. The naturalization process,
13:44
governed by federal law after 1790, required
13:48
five years of residence, the renunciation of
13:51
foreign allegiance, and proof of good character.
13:54
But naturalization made one a citizen of the
13:58
United States, not necessarily of Rhode Island.
14:02
The state retained the power to set its own voting
14:05
qualifications. Until 1843, it used that power
14:10
to restrict suffrage to those who met the Charter's
14:12
property test. A naturalized citizen who owned
14:16
no real estate remained, in Rhode Island's terms,
14:19
a resident, but not a freeman. The dual rebellion
14:23
of 1841 to 1842 brought these contradictions
14:27
to a head. By the 1830s, Rhode Island's government
14:32
was widely recognized as malapportioned and unrepresentative
14:35
the colonial charter -based representation in
14:39
the general assembly on town boundaries rather
14:41
than population this gave rural towns disproportionate
14:46
power while fast -growing industrial cities like
14:48
providence and newport were underrepresented
14:51
more fundamentally the property qualification
14:54
for voting excluded a growing population of native
14:58
-born white men who worked in factories, rented
15:01
their homes, and possessed no real estate. These
15:05
men were subject to taxation, militia service,
15:08
and criminal law. Yet they had no voice in choosing
15:12
the government that imposed these obligations.
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Thomas Wilson Dorr, a lawyer from a prominent
15:19
Providence family, emerged as the leader of a
15:22
movement to replace the colonial charter with
15:25
a new state constitution. In 1841, his supporters
15:30
organized a people's convention, elected delegates
15:33
under rules that excluded the property qualification,
15:37
and drafted a constitution that would extend
15:40
voting to all white men who had resided in the
15:43
state for two years. The People's Constitution
15:46
was put to a popular vote and reportedly ratified
15:50
by a substantial majority, though the Charter
15:53
Government refused to recognize the process as
15:56
legitimate. For a brief period in 1842, Rhode
16:00
Island had two competing claimants to legitimate
16:03
authority. The Charter Government continued to
16:06
meet in the State House. The People's Government
16:09
held its own elections and claimed to represent
16:12
the true will of the people. The federal government,
16:17
when appealed to, declined to intervene decisively.
16:21
President John Tyler and Congress treated the
16:24
dispute as a state matter, though federal authorities
16:27
monitored the situation for signs of violence.
16:30
In May 1842, Dorr led an armed attempt to seize
16:35
the state arsenal in Providence, hoping to force
16:38
the charter government to capitulate. The attempt
16:41
failed when Dorr's supporters facing cannon fire
16:45
and a larger defending force dispersed. Dorr
16:49
fled the state, returned, was arrested, tried
16:52
for treason before the Rhode Island Supreme Court
16:55
and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was later
16:59
released after a partial pardon and the passage
17:02
of a general amnesty. The rebellion is often
17:06
remembered as a struggle for democracy against
17:09
aristocracy and there is truth in that framing.
17:12
but the democracy Daw advocated was explicitly
17:15
limited. The People's Constitution, as it was
17:19
called, extended suffrage to white men regardless
17:22
of property, but it retained the word white.
17:25
Free black men who had previously met the property
17:29
test and voted in some Rhode Island towns, a
17:33
small but real population, would be disenfranchised
17:36
by the new Constitution. Daw himself was ambivalent
17:40
on the question. The final settlement embodied
17:43
in the 1843 state constitution was a compromise
17:48
that reflected the complex politics of the moment.
17:51
The 1843 constitution eliminated the property
17:55
qualification for native -born white men, establishing
17:59
universal white manhood suffrage for those born
18:01
in the state. Naturalized white men could vote
18:05
after a brief residence period of one year. But
18:09
a racial barrier was added where none had explicitly
18:11
existed in the charter. Black men, whether native
18:15
-born or naturalized, could vote only if they
18:18
met a substantial property qualification. $250
18:23
and dollars and teat in real estate, far above
18:26
the threshold that had previously applied to
18:29
white voters. This was not simply a continuation
18:32
of old practice. It was a new exclusion. more
18:37
explicit and more demanding than what had come
18:39
before the boundary of citizenship had been redrawn
18:43
but not simply expanded it had been shifted complicated
18:47
and in some ways narrowed the new constitution
18:51
made membership more accessible to one group
18:54
and less accessible to another it recognized
18:57
the principle of border participation while embedding
19:00
new exclusions this is the pattern that repeats
19:04
across the history of citizenship It is not a
19:08
steady march toward inclusion, but a series of
19:11
contests in which the definition of the people
19:13
is renegotiated, sometimes in contradictory directions.
19:18
To see how this boundary operated in the daily
19:21
lives of those it affected, we need to look at
19:24
the groups the Constitution kept visible but
19:26
outside full membership. Free black residents
19:30
of Rhode Island present one such case. The state
19:33
had gradually abolished slavery after 1784. but
19:37
abolition did not confer political membership.
19:40
Free black men who met the property test and
19:43
voted in some towns, though the practice was
19:46
irregular and contested. The 1843 constitution
19:50
ended this possibility for most by imposing the
19:54
racial property qualification. Black Rhode Islanders
19:58
responded through organized collective action
20:00
that the formal citizenship structure did not
20:03
recognize. In 1821, free black residents of providence
20:08
founded the african union meeting and schoolhouse
20:11
which served as a church school and mutual aid
20:15
society similar institutions emerged in newport
20:20
where the african union society dated to 1780
20:24
making it one of the earliest black mutual aid
20:27
organizations in the united states these societies
20:30
collected jews provided burial insurance supported
20:34
widows and orphans and maintained connections
20:36
with black communities in Boston, New York, and
20:39
Philadelphia. They were, in effect, alternative
20:42
spheres of governance for people excluded from
20:45
the official political community. Black Rhode
20:48
Islanders also petitioned the General Assembly
20:50
directly. In 1833, a group of free black citizens
20:55
submitted a petition protesting their exclusion
20:58
from militia service and demanding equal treatment
21:01
under the law. The petition was referred to committee.
21:05
and not acted upon but its existence demonstrates
21:09
that excluded groups understood the mechanisms
21:11
of government and sought to use them in 1840
21:16
another petition this one from providence black
21:19
residents protested the proposed restrictions
21:22
on black voting that would later be embodied
21:24
in the 1843 constitution these petitions were
21:28
signed presented and recorded in the legislative
21:31
archives preserving names and demands that would
21:35
otherwise be lost. Edward M. Bannister, a black
21:39
artist and community leader who would later achieve
21:41
national recognition, came of age in Providence
21:44
during this period of contested boundaries, though
21:47
his own political activities belonged to a slightly
21:50
later era. The broader pattern is clear. Black
21:56
Rhode Islanders built institutions, maintained
21:59
networks, and made claims on the political community
22:02
that excluded them. Their exclusion from formal
22:06
citizenship had concrete consequences. They could
22:09
not choose their representatives. They could
22:12
not serve on juries, which were drawn from the
22:15
voter rolls. They could not hold office. Their
22:19
relationship to the state was protective in theory
22:22
but subordinate in practice. Yet this exclusion
22:25
did not render them passive or politically inert.
22:29
Their political agency was real but channeled
22:32
through forms that the formal citizenship structure
22:35
did not recognize. The boundary of citizenship
22:38
constrained their options but did not eliminate
22:41
their capacity for collective action. Resident
22:45
foreigners, too, occupied a complex position.
22:48
The Irish immigrants who poured into Providence's
22:51
textile mills in the antebellum decades were
22:54
legally present, economically essential, and
22:57
politically excluded. They could not vote. They
23:02
could not serve on juries. They were subject
23:05
to taxation and to militia service in emergencies.
23:09
Their children, born on American soil, would
23:12
be citizens by birth under the 14th Amendment
23:15
after 1868. But the parents remained aliens,
23:19
dependent on federal naturalization processes
23:22
that were themselves subject to racial and religious
23:25
discrimination. The Federal Naturalization Law,
23:30
of 1790 had restricted citizenship to free white
23:33
persons. This casketry would be contested and
23:37
gradually expanded over the 19th century, but
23:40
it initially excluded non -white immigrants entirely.
23:44
Irish immigrants were white by this standard,
23:47
but they were also Catholic in a Protestant majority
23:50
state. They faced social and political hostility
23:54
that complicated their path to membership even
23:57
after formal naturalization. Women occupied a
24:01
different position again, one that reveals how
24:04
citizenship boundaries could operate through
24:06
gendered assumptions that seemed simply natural
24:09
to those who enforced them. The Rhode Island
24:12
Charter spoke of freemen, and freemen were understood
24:16
to be male. This was not a specific exclusion
24:19
so much as a categorical assumption. Political
24:23
membership was a masculine status, tied to the
24:26
capacity for independent judgment and the obligation
24:29
of military defense. Women were members of households
24:33
headed by men. Through their husbands or fathers,
24:37
they might exercise indirect influence. But they
24:41
did not vote, hold office, serve on juries, or
24:44
sign citizenship rolls. Their legal status was
24:48
derivative, their property rights limited, their
24:52
capacity to contract and sue constrained by coverture.
24:56
the common law doctrine that merged a married
24:58
woman's legal identity with her husband's. Yet
25:03
here, too, the boundary was more complicated
25:05
than simple exclusion suggests. Single women
25:09
who owned property could sometimes exercise limited
25:12
economic rights. Widows could administer estates.
25:16
Women participated in petition campaigns, religious
25:20
organizations, and reform movements that shaped
25:23
public opinion. and occasionally influence legislation.
25:27
The domestic sphere was not simply a private
25:30
realm separated from politics. It was a space
25:34
in which women exercised forms of authority and
25:36
influence that did not depend on formal citizenship.
25:40
The boundary kept them outside the voting booth
25:43
but did not remove them from political life entirely.
25:47
The position of enslaved people, though numerically
25:50
smaller in Rhode Island than in southern states,
25:53
reveals the most extreme form of boundary drawing.
25:57
Slavery was not merely the absence of citizenship.
26:00
It was a legal status that defined certain human
26:04
beings as property, capable of being bought,
26:07
sold, and inherited. Enslaved people could not
26:12
marry legally, own property, testify against
26:15
white people in court, or seek legal redress
26:18
for violence done to them. They were, in the
26:22
most thorough sense, outside the political community,
26:25
excluded not by a single test but by a comprehensive
26:28
legal structure. That structure denied their
26:32
personhood for purposes of membership while recognizing
26:34
it for purposes of punishment and control. Rhode
26:38
Island's gradual abolition law of 1784 freed
26:42
children born to enslaved mothers after a term
26:45
of service until age 18 for those born after
26:48
March 1, 1784. but it did not immediately emancipate
26:53
those already enslaved. The boundary between
26:56
slavery and freedom was drawn through time, with
26:59
some individuals crossing it only after decades
27:02
of deferred emancipation. The last person held
27:06
in slavery in Rhode Island was not freed until
27:08
the 1840s, nearly 60 years after the gradual
27:12
abolition law. Indigenous communities present
27:16
a still different case. one that challenges the
27:18
assumption that citizenship boundaries operate
27:21
only within settled political communities. The
27:24
Narragansett and other indigenous peoples of
27:27
the region had governed themselves long before
27:30
European settlement. They did not seek admission
27:34
to Rhode Island's political community on the
27:37
terms the colony offered. Rather, they maintained
27:41
their own forms of governance, territory and
27:43
collective identity. even as colonial expansion
27:47
encroached upon them. The boundary here was not
27:51
primarily one of inclusion or exclusion, but
27:54
of coexistence and conflict between distinct
27:57
political communities. In 1709, the colony of
28:02
Rhode Island negotiated a treaty with the Narragansett
28:05
Sations that transferred a large tract of Narragansett
28:09
land to colonial control in exchange for a promise
28:12
of protection and a defined reservation. The
28:16
treaty was recorded in colonial documents, but
28:19
its terms were not honored. Carnial settlers
28:22
encroached on the reservation, and colonial courts
28:25
gradually asserted jurisdiction over Narragansett
28:28
affairs. In 1880, the state of Rhode Island passed
28:33
a Detribalization Act that formally terminated
28:36
the Narragansett's tribal status and distributed
28:39
communal lands to individual Narragansett households.
28:43
This process dissolved collective governance
28:46
and subjected the former tribal members to state
28:49
law. The Narragansett maintained their own governance
28:53
structures throughout this period. Sashems, hereditary
28:57
leaders, continued to be recognized within the
29:00
community even when colonial authorities refused
29:03
to acknowledge their authority. The tribe held
29:06
councils, maintained kinship networks, and preserve
29:10
cultural practices that constituted a separate
29:13
political life. The question of who counted a
29:17
citizen was inseparable from the question of
29:19
whose sovereignty the state recognized. The answer
29:22
was almost always its own exclusively. Colonial
29:27
and later state authorities sometimes attempted
29:30
to absorb indigenous people through conversion,
29:33
intermarriage, or legal assimilation. More often,
29:37
they simply displaced them. negotiating treaties
29:40
that transferred land and then ignoring the obligations
29:43
those treaties imposed. The practical consequences
29:47
of these boundaries extended into nearly every
29:49
domain of life. Voting and office holding were
29:53
the most visible exclusions, but they were not
29:56
the only ones. Taxation without representation
29:59
was not merely a revolutionary slogan. It described
30:03
the condition of most Rhode Island residents
30:05
for most of the state's history. Those who could
30:09
not vote still paid taxes, and those taxes supported
30:13
governments. They had no role in choosing. Legal
30:17
protection was partial and uneven. Non -citizens
30:21
and partial citizens could seek redress in courts,
30:24
but their access was limited by literacy requirements,
30:28
court fees, racial restrictions on testimony,
30:32
and the social power of those who did hold full
30:35
membership. Land ownership was theoretically
30:38
open to free people of any race, but in practice,
30:42
black and indigenous landowners faced encroachment,
30:45
discriminatory valuation, and difficulty securing
30:48
mortgages. Jury service was restricted to voters,
30:52
which meant that those excluded from voting were
30:55
also excluded from judging, compounding their
30:58
legal vulnerability. Welfare and poor relief
31:01
were administered locally. and local authorities
31:04
often used their discretion to exclude or marginalize
31:08
those they considered outsiders. Military obligation,
31:12
finally, fell heavily on those without political
31:14
rights. The militia, and later the draft, drew
31:18
from broad pools of male residents, not merely
31:21
from the freeman population. The mechanisms that
31:25
enforced these boundaries were concrete and administrative.
31:29
Citizenship roles maintained by town clerks recorded
31:33
who had been admitted as freeman and who had
31:35
not the physical form of these records matters
31:39
a typical freeman's admission entry in a providence
31:43
town book from the 18th century shows the date
31:46
the man's name the property he owned and the
31:50
signature or mark he made to indicate his assent
31:53
to the oath some men signed their names in clear
31:57
script others made an x the clerk adding His
32:01
mark to indicate literacy was not required for
32:04
membership. The book itself, bound in leather
32:08
or heavy board, sat in the town clerk's office,
32:11
consulted when elections were called, or when
32:15
a man's right to vote was challenged. Property
32:18
registers determined who met the threshold for
32:21
voting. Assessors walked the streets, inspected
32:25
houses and lots, recorded values in standardized
32:28
forms. The threshold itself changed over time.
32:33
In some periods, ownership of land worth £40
32:36
or a rental value of £2 per year was required.
32:41
In others, different figures applied. A man who
32:44
met the threshold one year might fall below it
32:47
if economic conditions changed, though in practice,
32:50
assessments were often adjusted to maintain the
32:53
political status quo. Tax lists identified who
32:58
owed support to the community. and who could
33:00
claim its benefits religious oaths required for
33:05
office holding in some periods screened out catholics
33:08
jews and non -believers military muster roles
33:13
tracked obligation even where they did not confer
33:15
rights naturalization records kept by federal
33:20
courts after 1790 created a paper trail for those
33:24
who sought to cross from alien to citizen a certificate
33:28
of naturalization printed or handwritten bearing
33:31
the seal of the court and the signature of the
33:33
clerk was proof of federal status that might
33:37
or might not translate into local voting rights
33:39
depending on state law these documents were not
33:43
neutral records they were instruments of boundary
33:47
maintenance and their very existence shaped how
33:50
people understood their place in the political
33:52
community the boundary was never static it shifted
33:57
with economic change as industrialization created
34:01
new forms of property and new classes of propertyless
34:04
workers. It shifted with immigration, as Irish,
34:08
French -Canadian, and later Italian and Portuguese
34:11
arrivals changed the ethnic composition of the
34:14
state. It shifted with war, as military service
34:19
created pressure to expand or recognize membership.
34:22
It shifted with political mobilization, as excluded
34:26
groups organized and demanded recognition. and
34:30
it shifted with federal constitutional change
34:32
as the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship,
34:35
the 15th Amendment's prohibition on racial voting
34:38
discrimination, and the 19th Amendment's extension
34:42
of suffrage to women gradually overrode state
34:45
-level restrictions. But federal change did not
34:50
immediately transform local practice. The 15th
34:54
Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states
34:58
from denying the vote on account of race but
35:01
rhode island's racial property qualification
35:04
persisted in practice for years enforced through
35:07
discriminatory administration intimidation and
35:11
the social power of local elites the 19th amendment
35:15
ratified in 1920 extended formal suffrage to
35:20
women but women's actual political participation
35:23
remained constrained by social expectations party
35:27
structures, and the economic dependencies that
35:31
limited their independence. Former citizenship
35:34
was a necessary but not sufficient condition
35:37
for effective political membership. The boundary
35:41
had moved, but its traces remained visible in
35:44
who actually served on juries, held office, shaked
35:48
legislation, and felt themselves full members
35:51
of the political community. What emerges from
35:55
this history is not a simple story of progress
35:58
from exclusion to inclusion, nor a static picture
36:01
of unchanging hierarchy. It is something more
36:05
interesting and more difficult. It is a record
36:08
of repeated contests over who belongs inside
36:11
the political we, with outcomes that were always
36:15
partial, always contested, and always shaped
36:18
by the power of those who already held membership.
36:21
to define the terms on which others might join
36:24
them. Citizenship was never merely a right that
36:28
individuals possessed. It was a boundary that
36:31
communities constructed, defended and modified,
36:34
using multiple overlapping tests that reflected
36:37
the fears, interests and ideals of those who
36:41
held power at particular moments. The tests themselves
36:45
revealed the values and anxieties of the societies
36:48
that employed them. The property test, as it
36:51
operated in the 1843 compromise, reflected a
36:55
vision of political participation as the privilege
36:58
of the established and invested. It could be
37:01
abandoned for white men, but was retained as
37:04
a barrier against black men. The racial category
37:07
applied to Manuel Domingo in 1844 expressed a
37:11
determination to maintain white supremacy, even
37:14
as formal slavery disappeared. Portuguese immigrants
37:18
occupied an ambiguous position that courts could
37:21
interpret flexibly. The religious exclusion of
37:25
Catholics under the 1719 Act addressed fears
37:28
of divided loyalty, of allegiance to foreign
37:32
powers. The gendered assumption embedded in the
37:35
word Freeman encoded beliefs about natural capacities
37:39
and proper spheres that seemed too obvious to
37:41
question. Birth and ancestry appealed to a sense
37:45
of natural belonging. of blood and soil that
37:49
seemed to make membership automatic and unchosen
37:52
residents military service and naturalization
37:56
offered alternative paths for those who did not
37:59
meet the other tests but they were always administered
38:02
by those already inside and they could be narrowed
38:06
or widened according to circumstance manuel domingo
38:10
turned away from the providence court in 1844
38:14
stood at the intersection of several of these
38:17
tests. He was a property owner, meeting the economic
38:21
criterion that had once defined Freeman's status.
38:24
He was a resident of long standing, with roots
38:27
deeper than many who voted. He was a veteran
38:31
of the militia, having served the community in
38:34
its moment of crisis. But he was also Portuguese,
38:38
in the racial categories of mid -19th century
38:42
Rhode Island. Portuguese immigrants occupied
38:45
an ambiguous position that could be, and in his
38:48
case was, interpreted to exclude him from the
38:51
white, category that the 1843 constitution had
38:55
made prerequisite for voting without property.
38:58
The boundary was not simply unfair. It was constructed
39:03
from multiple overlapping criteria that could
39:06
be combined in flexible ways to produce particular
39:09
exclusions. We do not know what Domingo did after
39:13
the court's refusal. The records that survive
39:16
are thin, typical of the archival silence that
39:19
surrounds those denied membership. He may have
39:23
continued to pay taxes and avoid trouble. He
39:26
may have sought naturalization and been refused,
39:29
or obtained it and found it insufficient for
39:32
state voting rights. He may have left Rhode Island
39:36
for a place with different boundaries. or he
39:39
may have stayed and worked within the constraints,
39:41
as most people in his position did. What we do
39:45
know is that his presence at the court that day,
39:48
and the court's response, exemplify a process
39:52
that has operated in every political community
39:54
that has ever claimed to govern itself democratically.
39:58
The history of citizenship is not a record of
40:01
temporary gaps later filled by progress. It is
40:05
a record of boundaries drawn and redrawn. sometimes
40:09
expanding, sometimes contracting, always reflecting
40:13
the power relations of the moment. The modern
40:16
nation -state has simplified some of this complexity,
40:19
creating a more uniform legal category of national
40:23
citizenship. But the older layers persist in
40:26
recognizable forms. Property, in the form of
40:30
wealth and economic security, still shapes who
40:33
can effectively participate in politics. just
40:36
as the property test once shaped who could vote
40:39
in Rhode Island. Race and gender, despite formal
40:42
legal equality, still structure access and influence
40:45
in ways that the formal boundary does not capture,
40:48
just as the 1843 Constitution embedded racial
40:53
and gendered assumptions in its very definition
40:55
of membership. Residence and birth, the most
40:59
seemingly neutral of tests, still determine who
41:02
belongs and who does not. With consequences that
41:06
fall unevenly across the population, just as
41:09
birth in Rhode Island once conferred advantages
41:12
that naturalization could not fully match, every
41:16
democracy defines a people entitled to rule.
41:20
That definition is never automatic, never universal,
41:24
and never final. It is the product of human decisions.
41:29
enforced through institutions, contested by those
41:32
it excludes, and modified by struggle and circumstance.
41:36
The boundary of citizenship is not a line between
41:40
inside and outside. It is a zone of negotiation,
41:44
a space where multiple criteria overlap and conflict,
41:48
where some pass through easily and others are
41:51
stopped, where the rules themselves are weapons
41:54
in ongoing contests over power and recognition.
41:58
Manuel Domingo stood in that zone, as others
42:02
had before him and as others have since. Understanding
42:06
his position and the system that produced it
42:09
is the beginning of understanding what citizenship
42:12
has actually meant and what it still means in
42:15
the political communities we inhabit.