Thomas Wilson Dorr

• Thomas Wilson Dorr
• Born: November 5, 1805
• Died: December 27, 1854

Reform politician whose life became intertwined with the cause and rebellion that bore his name, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the eldest son of Sullivan Dorr and Lydia (Allen) Dorr. Sullivan Dorr was an investor who had made a fortune in the China trade and who played a prominent role in the Whig party. Thomas Dorr, after attending Latin Grammar School in Providence and Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, entered Harvard College at the age of fourteen. He was graduated in 1823, studied law in New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1827.

Having returned to Providence, Dorr became a successful lawyer, specializing in commercial and maritime cases. He was an abolitionist and a believer in religious and political liberty. In 1834 he began his political career as a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly; there he championed expanded public education and banking reforms and joined the growing crescendo of voices calling for reform in Rhode Island’s constitution to provide for more equal political apportionment and for the enfranchisement of nonlandholders.

The Rhode Island political system still functioned under a charter granted by King Charles II in 1663, which, while granting religious liberty, also set property qualifications for voting and fixed the apportionment of seats in the state legislative body. No provision had been made for amendments to the charter, and as population shifted to manufacturing centers in the northern part of the state, the imbalance in representation in the legislature, as well as the denial of the right to sue in court except with the approval of a landowner, brought increasing calls for reform —calls that were ignored by the landowner-dominated General Assembly.

Thomas Dorr, much to the consternation of his family, joined the reform movement and became the state secretary of the Constitutional party, formed in 1834. Responding to his appeal, the General Assembly set up a constitutional convention in 1834, but as suffrage had not been expanded the composition of the convention was conservative and no changes in the constitution were made. In 1837 Dorr ran for governor on the Constitution party ticket but got few votes. The Constitution party collapsed after the election and Dorr joined the Democratic party, becoming its state chairman in 1838.

In the spring of 1840 Providence mechanics and other workers formed the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, organized local branches, and began publishing a newspaper, The New Age. The association’s February 1841 appeal to the General Assembly to establish a new constitution granting suffrage to all white males was rejected, but a November constitutional convention of landowning males was authorized. In May 1841 the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, meeting in convention, authorized the election of delegates by universal white male suffrage to an alternative People’s Convention to be held in October. Dorr was elected as a delegate to both conventions.

The People’s Convention approved an expansion of suffrage to all white males with one year of residence but voted down a proposal for black suffrage by a wide margin. Dorr had supported the rights of blacks, as he did the next month at the Landholders’ Convention, which adjourned without taking action on reform.

In December 1841 the People’s Constitution was submitted to a statewide vote and was approved by an overwhelming margin. The breakdown of the vote showed deep north-south sectional cleavages in the voting, but a majority of landholders had voted to approve it. Dorr and Samuel Atwell then called upon the General Assembly to recognize the legitimacy of the Constitution and to step down. Dorr argued that, in conformance with the concept of popular constituent sovereignty, the people as a whole were the ultimate sovereign, not any government of representatives.

The charter government, dominated by the Landowners’ Law and Order party, ignored the appeal and continued preparations for a ratification vote for its own proposed constitution. In March the Landowners’ Constitution was narrowly defeated. The charter government did not resign but rather passed antisubversion laws dieted at the People’s party, which had declared the People’s Constitution to be in effect and which had organized a rival state government with Dorr as governor. When the People’s Legislature met on May 3, 1842, it voted to repeal the antisubversion laws but took no action to seize state property and authority. The charter government declared martial law. Dorr, apparently as indecisive as many of his followers, briefly left Rhode Island, purportedly to seek aid in Washington or in neighboring states. He was not successful, and on May 18 Dorr and some of his working-class supporters made a poorly concealed attack on the Providence arsenal. It was defended by a superior force that included many of Dorr’s relatives, and Dorr fled the state together with many of his group.

In the fall of 1842 the charter government drafted a new constitution that expanded the franchise somewhat and that gave blacks the vote; it was submitted to a vote and ratified.

Dorr returned to Rhode Island in October 1843 and was arrested and charged with treason. At his trial in Newport, a conservative stronghold, in the spring of 1844, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor and in solitary confinement. But a weakening of the Law and Order party in 1845 led to the victory of a coalition of Democrats and dissident Whigs, and Dorr was released in June 1845. His civil rights were restored in 1851. He died in Providence at the age of forty-nine.

As a revolutionary Dorr failed to overthrow the established authority. However, as a politician and reformer he set in motion the gradual enfranchisement of the nonpropertied classes and the evolutionary reform of the constitution.

Primary source material on Thomas Dorr and the Dorr Rebellion is located in the John Hay Library, Brown University, and at the Rhode Island Historical Society Library in Providence. Historical assessments of Dorr differ, sometimes radically. The most reliable source is M. E. Gettle-man, The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism, 1833-1849 (1976), which includes an excellent and extensive bibliography. Other interpretations are offered in G. M. Dennison, The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831-1861 (1976), and in M. Newton, “Rebellion in Rhode Island: The Story of the Dorr War” (Master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1947). Earlier interpretations of the events include D. King, The Life and Times of Thomas Wilson Dorr (1859), and A. M. Dowry, The Dorr War (1901). See also the Dictionary of American Biography (1930).