Snake Featherston
Banned
Classic. I haven't laughed so hard in these forums for a long, long time. Not because I agree with MAlexMatt, but I recently watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles. This reminds of the scene where Steve Martin goes ballistic at the rental car counter. Just a balls out classic rant. Good show, chap.
As for the argument at hand. The disenfranchisement will be more subtle than Snake contends. But it was already occurring to some degree (of course make no mistake about it occurred in spades in the North as well). The art of vote buying has a long a glorious history in this country that continues to this day.
In the antebellum South it worked a by having the wealthy plantation owners loan money, land (in the form of unneeded acreage) or labor (in the form of slaves) to the poorer farmers that neighbored the plantation. Given that banks were scarce in the South these wealthy aristocrats were the only available source of borrowable capital. Also given that immigrants moved far less into the South they were also some of the only sources of extra labor that might be needed during a particularly good harvest. In exchange the small farm holders were expected to defer to the leadership of those who held the land and the wealth. This meant voting to maintain the current system and support the plantation system.
It's one of the reasons why slave owners were so over represented in the governments of the slave states and in the secession conventions.
If you'd like I could site some sources, probably by tomorrow some time. I know John Majewski's A House Dividing: Economic Development in Virginia and Pennsylvania Before the Civil War touches upon this. Other authors may do so as well.
Benjamin
I apologize for any misperception that it would be blatant in either statement or action. Rather, the idea is a virtual given in at least some of the Confederate States and it would be carried out through superficially neutral laws that in practice amount to anything but ala Jim Crow laws.