page_title: North Carolina General Assembly of 1836–1837
section_title: Qualifications for office and voting
hierarchical_section_title: North Carolina General Assembly of 1836–1837 / Qualifications for office and voting
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of the journal of the convention of 1835 in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the 1776 North Carolina Constitution was amended.
context_page_description: The North Carolina General Assembly of 1836–1837 met in Raleigh from November 21, 1836 to January 23, 1837. The assembly consisted of the 120 members of the North Carolina House of Commons and 50 senators of North Carolina Senate elected by the voters in August 1836. During the 1836 session, the legislature created Davie County, but it was not until 1842 that Davie County began sending delegates to the General Assembly. William H. Haywood, Jr was elected speaker of the House of Commons and Charles Manley was elected clerk. Hugh Waddell was elected President of the Senate and Thomas G. Stone was elected Clerk. Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr. was the Governor in 1835 and 1836. He was elected by the previous legislature. In 1837, the Governor of North Carolina, Edward Bishop Dudley from New Hanover County, was elected, for the first time, by the people vice the legislature. The Whigs would control North Carolina politics until 1850. While in power, their notable achievements included funding railroads and roads, public education, and State chartered banks.
context_section_description: Voters and office holders were required by the North Carolina constitution of 1776 to own property.  The amendments to the constitution in 1835 also disqualified free blacks from voting.  Free blacks were qualified to vote in the original 1776 constitution.
  The specific wording in the amended constitution, Article 1, Section 3, is as follows:
  "1. Each member of the Senate shall have usually resided in the district for which he is chosen for one year immediately preceding his election, and for the same time shall have possessed and continue to possess in the district which he represents, not less than three hundred acres of land in fee."
  "2. All free men of the age of twenty-one years, (except as is hereinafter declared) who have been inhabitants of any one district within the State twelve months immediately preceding the day of any election, and possessed of a freehold within the same district of fifty acres of land, for six months next before and at the day of election, shall be entitled to vote for a member of the Senate."
  "3. No free negro, free mulatto, or free person of mixed blood, descended from negro ancestors to the fourth generation inclusive, (though one ancestor of each generation may have been a white person,) shall vote for members of the Senate or House of Commons."
  The religious qualifications for office were expanded to include the following statement:
  "The Thirty-second Section of the Constitution shall be amended to read as follows: No person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Christian Religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testament, or who shall hold Religious principles incompatible  with the freedom or safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the Civil department within this State."
  Members of the House of Commons and Senate were elected every two years, starting with an election in 1835 for the 1836–1837 session of the general assembly.
caption: North Carolina State Constitutional Convention of 1835
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