This is not a very radical claim, but it is often treated as inconsequential: structural shifts, party competition, threat of popular unrest, etc., are presented as the crucial processes through which the suffrage is extended. Ideas about democracy are treated as almost wholly irrelevant, and ideas about belonging are seen as epiphenomenal: once the struggle for inclusion is accomplished, the ideas about who is and is not a citizen will change to reflect the new arrangements. So, the idea that African Americans are full members of the American polity comes subsequent to the achievement of full membership in the polity, or, if it comes prior, it is not so important as the actual political pressure brought to bear by the civil rights movement.
I do not claim that these political processes are irrelevant, nor even that the literature is mistaken in giving them primary emphasis. Rather, I claim that the processes most scholarship highlights are occurring within a given political order, and that this order--in which ideas of belonging are central--alters the incentives and opportunities for political agents in such a way that makes inclusion more or less difficult. It was easier to include the white working classes, because the political order established by the Jeffersonians was one that had an ideational commitment to the idea that the laboring classes were not just fully part of the community, but were possibly its most virtuous and republican part. It was more difficult for anti-slavery, abolitionists, and black activists to secure the right to vote to blacks because of these same ideational commitments, which premised membership in the community not on class, as had been the case prior, but on race. The same political processes were at work for both categories, but there was greater chance of success for one than the other. More interestingly, sometimes the same political processes would lead to opposite outcomes, precisely because of how the ordering of citizenship and belonging structured these processes.
There is often an implicit belief that the working and laboring classes, while alternately seen as dangerous, lacking in awareness, thriftless, dependent, etc., were at the very least seen as part of the community. That is, we assume, looking back, that there was a vertical integration of the imagined communities of the early republic: there were upper and lower classes, but they believed they were of the same people, of the same community. Stressing that this was in fact not always the case, and that it was the case--and that it being the case matters for subsequent politics of rights--primarily because of the particular exigencies of Revolution and the establishment of a new political order, is one of the central points of my dissertation.
So, from another place and time, I bring two quotes, which I think illustrate something of what I mean when I say no, the laboring classes and the farmers were not always seen as part of the community.
Bagehot:
Pubic opinion is the test of [a] polity; the best opinion which, with its existing habits of deference, the nation will accept: if the free government goes by that opinion, it is a good government of its species; if it contravenes that opinion, it is a bad one. Tried by this rule, the House of Commons does its appointing business well. it chooses rulers as we wish rulers to be chosen. If it did not, in a speaking and writing age we should soon know. I have heard a great Liberal statesman say: "The time will come when we must advertise for a grievance."...The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion. They are left out in the representation, and also in the thing represented.Burke:
I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political view, are to be called the people.... In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information more or less and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such) may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this body more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British publick and it is a publick very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of protection; when strong, the means of force. They who affect to consider that part of us in any other light, insult while they cajole us; they do not want us for counseilors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.
Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins, utterly incapable of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it by English cabal, they will have it by the cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated.These are English quotes, but what is striking to me is how closely they match the pre-Revolutionary, and especially the pre-Jeffersonian language of America. Statements such as this do live on in America in the antebellum period, but never so brashly, always couched, and almost always on the losing end. This does not necessarily mean they are no longer believed or maintained, but that the new political order makes their defense intolerable.
p.s. Nationalism is relevant here. The language of a distinction between the people--as a political community--gives way over the 19th century to that of the people--as a nation, encompassing all who share blood, culture, or some other such element constitutive of belonging.
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