Several propositions relative to suffrage were made in the Convention of 1796. February 1, Mr. Henderson, delegate from Hawkins County, moved that the first section in Article III be made to read, “All citizens of this state, possessing of a freehold in their own right, and all persons who have done duty in the militia, shall be entitled to vote at any election, in the county where the freehold lies, or where he resides.”[48] This motion failed but it is noticed that the suffrage is not based on color. If the motion had prevailed, it would have disfranchised all freemen, both white and black, who had not done military service. Mr. Outlaw, of Jefferson County, moved that “all persons liable by law to militia duty should be allowed to vote.”[49] If this motion had prevailed, it would have given all freemen the suffrage with no limitation, because by Section 26, the freemen were liable to militia duty. The Convention finally gave the suffrage to all freemen. Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution of 1796, declared that “all freemen of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, possessing a freehold in the county where they may vote, and being inhabitants of this state, and all freemen who have been inhabitants of any one county within the state for a period of six months immediately preceding the date of election, shall be entitled to vote for members of the general assembly, for the county in which they respectively reside.”[50] It is worth noticing in this connection that, while the suffrage was given to all freemen, representation in the legislature was based on the number of free whites. The constitution declared that “representation shall be regulated according to numbers, to be apportioned to each county by law, upon such ratio, as that the number of senators and representatives ... shall not exceed thirty-nine until the number of free white persons shall be two hundred thousand.”[51] The convention in its various discussions used the terms, “freemen,” “freeholders,” “all citizens,” “all persons,” and “free white persons.” This clearly shows that the convention was carefully discriminating between these terms when it used them. Why did the convention use “free white persons” as the basis of representation? It knew that the term, “freemen,” would give representation to free negroes. The Constitution of the United States gave representation to three-fifths of the slaves. The Kentucky constitution of 1799 stated that, “In all elections for representatives every free male citizen (negroes, mulattoes and Indians excepted) shall enjoy the right of election.”[52] It is distinctly shown here that it was understood that “free male citizen” included “free negro.” Hence, if he is not to be enfranchised, he must be excepted. Why would this term be so well understood in Kentucky and not in Tennessee?