first edition
by Florida Reconstruction, Florida Black male suffrage
[Black male suffrage] Florida Legislature. The Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the Legislature of Florida, at its First Session (1868) under the Constitution of A.D. 1868. Tallahassee: Printed at the Office of the Tallahassee Sentinel, Hiram Powers, Jr., Proprietor, 1868. First edition. 231 pages. Original quarter leather over marbled boards. A foundational Reconstruction imprint recording Florida’s first legislative session after the Civil War, conducted under the radical new state constitution of 1868, which extended civil and voting rights to African American men and began to dismantle the antebellum racial hierarchy under federal oversight.
The most consequential act in the volume is one of the earliest explicit statutory affirmations of Black male suffrage in Florida history. Section 6, under “Qualifications and Disabilities of Electors,” asserts: “Every male person of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, of whatever race, color, nationality, or previous condition, who shall at the time of offering to vote be a citizen of the United States… shall be deemed a qualified elector at all elections.” Drafted during military occupation and Radical Reconstruction, this language formally overturned Florida’s Confederate-era disenfranchisement laws, allowing newly emancipated Black men access to the ballot for the first time. The section also mandates that voter registration be carried out by the clerk of the circuit court and recorded in public books, inaugurating a new bureaucratic model of electoral oversight. Though the act includes disqualifications—such as for convicted felons or duelists—this statute represented a radical departure from prewar citizenship laws and briefly ushered in a multiracial electorate backed by federal power.
Printed in Tallahassee by Sentinel proprietor and Unionist Republican Hiram Powers Jr., the volume was issued under the direction of the Florida Attorney General and reflects the political apparatus of Reconstruction Republicanism. The copy bears the ownership inscription of “S.W. Hopkins, Tallahassee, June 7th, 1870." Spine perished, front board detached, losses to corners, moderate foxing to text throughout; boards rubbed and binding shaken but complete. Overall fair condition.
A vital piece of Reconstruction history and one of the first legal declarations of Black enfranchisement in the post-emancipation South, produced at a moment of profound legal reformation and racial redefinition in Florida’s civic identity. By the 1880s, however, conservative Democrats reversed some of this document’s provisions. A new state constitution, was ratified in 1886. Segregation of public schools was made mandatory, poll taxes were legalized and intermarriage between whites and African Americans was prohibited. (Inventory #: 21814)
The most consequential act in the volume is one of the earliest explicit statutory affirmations of Black male suffrage in Florida history. Section 6, under “Qualifications and Disabilities of Electors,” asserts: “Every male person of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, of whatever race, color, nationality, or previous condition, who shall at the time of offering to vote be a citizen of the United States… shall be deemed a qualified elector at all elections.” Drafted during military occupation and Radical Reconstruction, this language formally overturned Florida’s Confederate-era disenfranchisement laws, allowing newly emancipated Black men access to the ballot for the first time. The section also mandates that voter registration be carried out by the clerk of the circuit court and recorded in public books, inaugurating a new bureaucratic model of electoral oversight. Though the act includes disqualifications—such as for convicted felons or duelists—this statute represented a radical departure from prewar citizenship laws and briefly ushered in a multiracial electorate backed by federal power.
Printed in Tallahassee by Sentinel proprietor and Unionist Republican Hiram Powers Jr., the volume was issued under the direction of the Florida Attorney General and reflects the political apparatus of Reconstruction Republicanism. The copy bears the ownership inscription of “S.W. Hopkins, Tallahassee, June 7th, 1870." Spine perished, front board detached, losses to corners, moderate foxing to text throughout; boards rubbed and binding shaken but complete. Overall fair condition.
A vital piece of Reconstruction history and one of the first legal declarations of Black enfranchisement in the post-emancipation South, produced at a moment of profound legal reformation and racial redefinition in Florida’s civic identity. By the 1880s, however, conservative Democrats reversed some of this document’s provisions. A new state constitution, was ratified in 1886. Segregation of public schools was made mandatory, poll taxes were legalized and intermarriage between whites and African Americans was prohibited. (Inventory #: 21814)
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