It may be difficult to imagine that a consequential Black electoral politics evolved in the US before the Civil War, for as of 1860, the overwhelming majority of African Americans remained in bondage. Yet free Black men, many of them escaped slaves, steadily increased their influence in electoral politics over the course of the early American republic. Despite efforts to disfranchise them, Black men voted across much of the North, sometimes in numbers sufficient to swing elections. In this work, Van Gosse offers a sweeping reappraisal of the formative era of American democracy from the Constitution's ratification through Abraham Lincoln's election, chronicling the rise of an organized, visible Black politics focused on the quest for citizenship, the vote, & power within the free states.