Thomas Mundy Peterson: The Story of the 1st Black Voter in the United States

On this episode of Our American Stories, this is the story of what happened shortly after the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibiting a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Here to tell another great American story is the Jack Miller Center's Editorial Officer and historian, Elliott Drago.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. And here to
tell another great American story is the Jack Miller Center's
editorial officer and historian, Eliot Drago. This is the story
of what happened shortly after the ratification of the fifteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting a citizen's right

(00:31):
to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Americans today understand the saying every vote matters, whether affected
by hanging chads, butterfly ballots, or razor thin vote counts.
Every vote matters because it allows one to exercise citizenship.
But what did every vote matters? Voting and citizenship mean
in the early history of the United States. Unlike today's

(01:02):
federal laws, which are designed to protect voters and voting rights,
in past times, individual states determined who could vote, and
in essense, determined who was a citizen. During the early Republic,
many states legislated voting rights and citizenship as the purview
of white property owning men. By the eighteen thirties, however,
as the United States expanded its territory and witnessed the

(01:25):
arrival of millions of immigrants in the creation of a
new two party system. Most states enfranchised all white men. Women,
and Black Americans were generally written out of state voting
rights legislation, leading to a suffrage movement that galvanized many
of the nation's most aggressive activists, including Elizabeth Katy Stanton
and Lucretia Mott, organizers of the eighteen forty eight Seneca

(01:47):
Falls Convention to clamour for women's right to vote. These
women struggles bore fruit with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment,
albeit decades after the founders of the movement had passed away.
Black Americans, too, fought for the right to vote throughout
the nineteenth century. Like their female counterparts, men like Robert

(02:08):
Purvis and Frederick Douglas delivered fiery speeches to agitate and
then attract national attention. To Douglas, black men deserved their
right to vote as a matter of quote, simple justice.
In eighteen fifty seven, the dread Scott Decision reinforced the
notion of Black Americans as non citizens, further hampering their

(02:28):
right to vote. As the nation itself faced the consequences
of slavery during the Civil War, black men who fought
and bled for the Union argued that their wartime service
entitled them to vote. After the war, the rise of
the Republican Party in the South, an election of black
political leaders to local, state, and national office initiated the

(02:49):
process of debating and drafting a new voting rights amendment.
Five years after the war ended, Congress ratified the Fifteenth Amendment,
which read, the right of Citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State, on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude. Returning to every vote matters

(03:14):
and the relationship between voting and citizenship, the Fifteenth Amendment
not only initially prevented states from dictating who voted, it
also naturally fulfilled the Thirteenth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. The
thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery by bringing more Black Americans into
the political community as citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship
to black Americans and provided equal protection under the laws

(03:36):
through due process, which acted as a shield for citizens
whose lives after slavery were still quite precarious. The fulfillment
of these two preceding amendments, the Fifteenth Amendment strengthened the
political power of former slaves and black men, making them
active citizens via the right to vote, and helped more
Americans advance the founding principle of equality. Making the fifteenth

(03:59):
the mind in a tangible reality required one thing, a
black man exercising his right to vote. This man was
Thomas Mundy Peterson, the son of a freedwoman. Peterson resided
in perth Amboy, New Jersey, once a major hub of
the colonial slave trade. Thousands of enslaved Africans had come
through perth Amboy, and by eighteen hundred, the population of

(04:22):
enslaved people in the state exceeded twelve thousand. While New
Jersey did pass gradual emancipation laws in eighteen oh four,
the state contained two thirds of all enslaved people living
in the north in the eighteen thirties and would not
formally abolish slavery until eighteen forty six. At the same time,
given the number of black Americans in perth Amboy, many

(04:45):
of whom lived in fear of slave catchers and kidnappers,
it was fitting that the city was also home to
a community of radical abolitionists and featured a number of
underground railroad stations. By the post Civil War years, perth
Amboy's population encapsulated the tre and brutal legacy of slavery
with the resilience of black and white Americans willing to
risk everything to ensure freedom. Within twenty four hours of

(05:10):
Secretary of State Hamilton Fish certifying the Fifteenth Amendment, Peterson
exercised his freedom and citizenship by becoming the first black
American to vote in the United States election under the
protection of the federal government. The election itself was a
referendum to either revise or jettison perth Amboy's town charter.

(05:31):
Peterson explained, as I advanced to the polls, one man
offered me a ticket bearing the words revised charter, and
another one marked no Charter. I thought I would not
vote to give up our charter after holding it so long,
so I chose a revised charter ballot. Ballot in hand,
he went to perth Amboys City Hall and cast his

(05:52):
vote to amend rather than eliminate, the town's charter. Two
crucial points can be made about Peterson's historic vote. First,
as the historian Gordon Bond pointed out, this was the
first time that anyone had cast a ballot that was
both guaranteed and protected by the US Constitution. Thomas Peterson

(06:13):
consummated our modern understanding of the relationship between citizenship and
suffrage in the fullest possible sense. At the time, while
it would take decades for American women to receive the
right to vote, Peterson's vote and the votes of other
black men showed how the Constitution could protect citizens from
being denied their voting rights. This active and protective function
of the fifteenth Amendment gave weight to the words of

(06:35):
President Ulysses S. Grant, who, after the amendment's ratification, delivered
a special message to Congress in which he called the
amendment measure of grander importance than any other one act
of the kind from the foundation of our free government
to the present day. Second. Though Peterson's vote to a
man did not eliminate the town Charter seems mundane, it

(06:57):
in fact emphasized how the strength of the Constitution lies
in its flexibility. As Americans worked towards their cherished founding ideals,
they exhausted much blood and treasure to bring about constitutional
change in the form of amendments. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution arguably represented the most radical

(07:17):
changes in American history. While not as seemingly radical as
those amendments, Peterson's choice to amend the town Charter reflects
something many Americans take for granted, the people themselves can
change the Constitution to better realize or founding principles. Though important,
Thomas Mundy Peterson's vote does not overshadow the terrible rollback

(07:38):
of voting rights that permeated the nation after Reconstruction ended
in eighteen seventy seven. The rise of white supremacists in
the South, the terror of the KKK, and arbitrary voting
requirements prevented many Black Americans from participating in the nation's
body politic. Constitutional protections that failed on the short term
ended up seeding in the long term, however, as more

(08:00):
Americans began working together to reinstitute the true meaning of
citizenship and voting. At times, this noble endeavor to secure
the vote for Black Americans and women was marked by
notable setbacks. That said, the Fifteenth Amendment's ratification and immediate
realization by Peterson solidified the right to vote as an
attainable ideal of citizenship, making every vote matters a notion

(08:23):
worth preserving and celebrating each election cycle.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Craig Hangler, and a special thanks to Elliot Drago.
He's the Jack Miller Center's editorial officer and historian. Jack
Miller Center is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers
dedicated to educating the next generation about America's founding principles
and history. To learn more, go to Jackmillercenter dot org.

(08:52):
That's Jackmillercenter dot org. The story of America's most important franchise,
and that is the right to vote and what it
means and why voting matters. That story and how the
franchise was expanded to African Americans, Thomas Mundy Peterson being
the first Black to vote after the fifteenth Amendment. That

(09:14):
story here on our American Stories