How do you react to that feeling of disenfranchisement, that feeling of powerlessness that derives from living under a government that does not represent you, that treats you with contempt? When is the time for revolt, disobedience, clever tricks, pressure on th government to provoke change? Can we look back on history at the resourcefulness of people who fought injustice, can we learn from the past?
This is the story of Thomas Wilson Dorr and the Dorr Rebellion. It took place in Rhode Island in 1841 and 1842.
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1841.
The Opium War was devastating China because Britain did not believe that Asians should be able to tell them that they couldn't peddle opium in their lands. Upper and Lower Canada united to form a single province of Canada.
"The Old Curiousity Shop" was a bestseller in the English-speaking world.
In America, the Age of Jackson was winding down and everyone waited breathlessly to see what would happen next! Would the U.S. annex Texas? Buy Cuba? Go to war with Britian for obscure reasons that would forever baffle future generations? Would those pesky abolitionists, drunk with success after the anti-slavery verdict of the Amistad case, ever make a difference in public opinion, or would angry Northern mobs kill enough of them to effectively shut them up?
In the previous twenty years, America had become more democratic as most states expanded suffrage to include more citizens. Which means more white male citizens, of course. (In many places, allowing poor white men to vote was considered quite radical.) Rhode Island, still governed by the charter of 1663, must have seemed quaint to the other states, much like Florida looks to us today. The old charter restricted suffrage to white males who owned property or paid tenancy rents. Men without property could not serve on juries, nor could they initiate civil lawsuits.
Immigration populated Rhode Island with a growing number of white men who owned no property and could not participate in government. An estimated 60 percent of Rhode Island's white males were denied the franchise. In Providence, 94 percent of the population could not vote.
The Rhode Island elite ignored the wave of change washing over the nation. By 1840, all the other states had adopted universal white male suffrage. A growing number of disenfranchised Rhode Islanders grumbled at this sorry state of affairs. Rhode Islanders who wished reform, notably the attorney Thomas Dorr, suggested to the state's assembly that a new convention should be called for the purpose of establishing a new constitution. The Rhode Island elite contemptuously dismissed these entreaties.
Fed up with this dismissive attitude, Dorr and the other reformers held their own People's Convention in October 1841 and wrote a new constitution, basically taking for themselves the rights that had long been denied them. The People's Constitution expanded the electorate to all white males who had lived in the state for a year. It was submitted to the citizens of Rhode Island and quickly approved. They soon elected a government under the new constitution with Dorr as governor of the state.
The old state legislature under the old charter, perhaps feeling pressured by the bold move on the part of the Dorrites, held its own convention a few weeks later and drew up yet another constitution offering more modest reforms. This constitution was rejected by the old electorate - the property owners who could vote under the old charter - because they felt it was too liberal.
Early in 1842, Dorr and his followers set up their new government under the People's Constitution. Rhode Island, for a time, took on the nature of Europe during the Great Schism, when two popes ruled the Catholic Church, one at Avignon and one at Rome.
The governor of the elites, Samuel King, asked for federal military help, but President John Tyler refused, advising conciliation and a recognition of the rights of ALL (white male) citizens.
In May 1842, Dorr urged his followers to seize government buildings, and the Rhode Island militia, made up of Dorr's supporters, attacked the armory in Providence. These attacks were unsuccessful, and Dorr and some of his followers retreated to the town of Chepachet.
At President Tyler's suggestion, the Dorrites were given twenty-four hours to disperse, after which militia from Massachusetts and Connecticut would be called to put down the rebellion. The Dorrites decided it would be best to avoid more violence, accepted the ultimatum and surrendered. Dorr was eventually arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The "legitimate" government finally realized the seriousness of the suffrage reform movement and the old electorate ratified a new constitution that expanded the suffrage to any white man able to afford the $1 poll tax. It went into effect May 1843.
Dorr was released in 1845, but his health had deteriorated from three years of hard labor. He died in 1854.
At the height of the crisis, former president Andrew Jackson wrote in a letter to Francis Blair:
The people are the sovereign power and agreable to our system they have a right to alter and amend their system of Government when a majority wills it, as a majority have a right to rule.
(Note: The spelling of "agreable" is Jackson's original. Give him a break! American spelling wasn't standardized until very late in his life.)
The famous diarist George Templeton Strong wrote of Thomas Dorr:
I trust he'll be hanged by the neck, though that isn't equal to his deserts. He ought to be put in a bag and carried around the country for exhibition first. I'd give a shilling myself to see the man.
I am not suggesting that anyone should establish a new government like Thomas Dorr. I presented this tale to show how a small group of brave and frustrated men sought - and eventually won - a solution to a problem of government. Dorr's Rebellion failed in the short run, but their actions pressured the old Rhode Island state government to eventually expand the suffrage.