The Founding Fathers believed that only white males with property should have the right to vote. However, as fewer people began owning property, the voice to abolish this criteria of having the right to vote grew louder and louder. During the month of September 1821, a committee was formed to look over New York's voting requirements. At the front of the debate, two men, James Kent and David Buel, would face each other with their opposing viewpoints on who should be able to vote.
James Kent was born in Fredericksburgh New York on July 3, 1763. His father was a lawyer and a farmer. In 1777, Kent began attending college at the prestigious Yale University. He graduated 4 years later with honors. He studied as an attorney and was admitted to the bar in 1785. In 1798 he became a justice on the NY Supreme Court (James Kent Facts). In 1821 he served on the committee that was examining who had the right to vote. He was part of a small group that avidly pushed against change in the state's current law. Kent says that as New York's population grows that the only way that the democracy can uphold itself is through universal suffrage. "New York is destined to become the future London of America; and in less than a century that city, with the operation of universal suffrage and under skillful direction, will govern the state" (). He is trying to say that unless something is done, universal suffrage will become a reality and will govern and control the state. He says that the notion of each worker having an equal participation even if they contribute a miniscule amount to society is absurd and must be thrown out. He closes his statement by saying the right for universal suffrage is final and once it becomes enacted it cannot be repealed. He proclaims that we must hold our ground to keep the right to vote only in the hands of people who truly deserve it, the land owning individuals. His opponent David Buel takes the right of property and uses it to argue in the opposite way that Kent used it.
