Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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suffer the harshest terms of the sentence for at least one year. He was denied visita-

tion by family, exercise beyond work, and any reading materials. In 1845, the state

offered him amnesty in return for an oath of allegiance to the 1843 constitution.

Dorr, in poor health due to conditions at the state prison and his treatment, refused.

Dorr’s situation and the large number of supporters for the original rebellion

returned the issue to the political arena in the gubernatorial race in 1845. Sympa-

thy for the harsh penalty Dorr received and his ﬁrmness on reje cting amnesty for

principle won him widespread sympathy from a faction known as “liberationists.”

When a sympathetic government was elected in 1845, they passed a bill on June 27

of that year, releasing him from prison. His civil rights were restored only in 1851.

Dorr had appeals in the system while in prison, abandoning the effort only in 1849.

In 1854, the state legislature passed a bill that annulled the original conviction, but

the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Thomas Dorr died on Decem-

ber 27, 1854, still convinced that he was right in 1842 and refusing to back down.

The U.S. Supreme Court, deciding on the one case that reach ed it rising out of

Dorr’s War, Luther v. Borden (1849), determined that the people had no such rights

to rebel without the consent of their government. With that decision written by

Justice Roger B. Taney, Abraham Lincoln would, in 1861, challenge the secession

of the southern states and justify martial law. But the decision reached in relation

to the Dorr Rebellion of 1842 had more profo und implications as it called into

doubt the legitimacy of the Revolution that created the nation itself as Thomas

Dorr would have recognized.

—Gretchen A. Adams

See also all entries under Whiskey Rebellion (1794); Molly Maguires (1870s); Brooks-

Baxter War (1874); Black Patch War (1909); Bonus Army (1932); Battle of Athens

(1946); Sagebrush Rebellion (1979–1981); World Trade Organization Protests (1999).

Further Reading

Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861 . Lexing ton:

University Press of Kentucky, 1976.

Gettleman, Marvin E. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism, 1833–1849.

New York: Random House, 1973.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–

1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln. New York:

W. W. Norton, 2005.

314 Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842)

Charterites

By the early 1840s, most states had regularlized their suffrage qualiﬁcations to

reﬂect contemporary ideas a bout democratic participation. Rhode Island, un like

most of the rest of the United States, had nothing approaching universal white

male suffrage even 50 years after the American Revolution. The royal charter

issued by Charles II in 1663 that created the original colony still marked the

paramet ers of suffrage and even some access to the courts. Although the original

charter was a model of enlightened political liberalism in the 17th century, it was

woefully inadequate not only for a republic, but for a state whose econ omy was

shifting quickly from agrarian freehold farms to a commercial and industrial base.

The constitutional crisis t hat a rose in 1842 called “Dorr Rebellion” (or “Dorr’s

War”) pitted traditionalists called “Charterites” against the “Dorrites” or “Suffrag-

ists” of the Rhode Island Suffrage Party lead by Thomas Wilson Dorr. The conﬂict

featured a short period during which the state had two elected governments claim-

ing legitimacy, which nearly erupted into an armed civil war.

The original charter privileged the landowning farmers and their eldest sons by

restricting not only voting rig hts, but jury service and the right to ﬁle lawsuits to

this class of me n. As t he northern half of Rhode Island led the industrializing

and urbanizing efforts of the post–War of 1812 United States, political power in

the state was concentrated i nto ever-decreasing circles. The southern portion of

the sta te, with its ﬂatter terrain, retained much more of its agricultural ba se and

became the stronghold for the “Charterites” when the Rhode Island Suffrage Asso-

ciation rose in 1840 as a party-based challenger to the state’s electoral status quo.

The Suffragists’ party attracted not only the large number of foreign-born men in

the s tate who had immigrated to work in the textile mills in the northern cities

and towns, but those native-born men whose future was tied not to farming but

to wage labor.

The Suffragists organized a referendum on their “People’s Constitution” that

allegedly received 14,000 approving votes and fewer than 100 in favor of the

existing charter. The supporters of the charter in state government understood the

mood of the people and organized their own counter-reforms in the form of the

“Freehold er’s Constitution.” Tha t, too, p asse d by a wide margin and contained

most of the critical reforms the Dorrites wanted. The Dorrites, however, rejected

the constitution because it excluded foreign-born residents of the state from vot-

ing. In response, in April 1842, they elected a new legislature and Thomas Dorr

as governor, declaring it the will of the people. Governor Samuel Ward King

responded by appealing to the fe deral government, without much s ucces s. With

315

two factions claiming to be the legally elected government, the Dorrites attempted

to seize the state arsenal at Providence on May 19, 1842.

Charterites came out in full force to defend the arsenal, and the group included

Thomas Dorr’s own father, Sullivan, and his uncle Crawford Allen. The show of

force dissipated the crowd, and the Charterites, fearing an attack in Woonsocket,

fortiﬁed a building there as well. Despite the strength of the Suffragist movement

in that mill city, no attack materialized. B ut most practical Charteri tes either

favored some modiﬁcation to the old colonial charter or saw the political expedi-

ency in setting the terms of reform themselves . Toward that end, they held their

own convention in the Charterite stronghold of Newport and offered their “Law

and Order Constitution” to the electorate for a referendum. In November 1842,

despite a Dor rite boycott, it passed by a landslide margin. Most of the elements

of the People’s Constitution were present, with the notable exception that black

men who were otherwise eligible were granted suffrage and the foreign-born

men who ﬁlled the mills of Rhode Island were excluded. The Charterite

constitution took effect in May 1843 and brought Rhode Island into the main-

stream of the movement toward universal male suffrage in the United States.

—Gretchen A. Adams

Further Reading

Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861 . Lexing ton:

University Press of Kentucky, 1976.

Gettleman, Marvin E. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism, 1833–1849.

New York: Random House, 1973.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–

1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Dorr, Thomas Wilson (1805–1854)

Thomas Wilson Dorr, the leader of a rebellious faction who precipitated a consti-

tutional crisis in Rhode Island in 1842, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on

November 5, 1805, to a Sullivan Dorr, a wealthy textile manufacturer, and his

wife. E ducated at the exclusive Philips Exeter Academy in Massachusetts and a

graduate of Ha rvard College in 1823, Dorr went on to stu dy law in New York

and returned to Providence to practice law and begin a career in state politics in

1827. Elected to the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1834 as a Whig, Thomas

Dorr beneﬁtted from the state’s restrictive constitution and, by any measure, seems

an unlikely organizer of an armed rebellion that brieﬂy ma de him governor, but

316 Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842)

that ended with him convicted of treason an d imprisoned. But the actions of the

“Dorrites” established universal male suffrage in line with the rest of the United

States in Rhode Island by 1845.

More than 50 years after the American Revolution, Rhode Island still operated

under the terms of the 1663 royal charter granted by King Charles II of England.

By 1841, the state was unique in its antiquated methods of determining legislative

representation, its failure to adopt some form of universal suffrage for adult white

men, and its failure to have a written bill of rights. The original charter that privi-

leged freehold farmers and their eldest sons increasingly not only restricted the

expansion of the electorate in the rapidly urbanizing and industrializing state and

effectively disenfranchised those whose economic fortunes began to rely on com-

mercial activities and wage labor, but concentrated the state’s political power in

the shrinking rural population. In 1840, Thomas Dorr joined the Rhode Island Suf-

frage Association to address the grievances against the state government. Dorr

quickly rose to the leadership of the Suffragists, who called a popular convention

in 1842. There, they created a “People’s Constitution” whose primary feature

was general suffrage for white adult men in the state. The government and its sup-

porters, known a s “Charterites,” responded to the overwhelming support for the

Dorrite movement by offering their own “Freeholder’s Constitution” that included

virtually all the reforms advocated by Dorr and his followers. The Suffragists, hav-

ing attracted a signiﬁcant following from the foreign-born mill workers, opposed

the Freeholder’s Constitution because of it s failure to extend the franchise to that

group. The Freeholder’s Constitution also passed a public referendum, and each

group claimed, after statewide elections in April 1842, to be the legally elected

government of Rhode Island.

The Charterites, led by Governor Samuel Ward King, appealed to President

John Tyler for federal assistance in putting down t he Dorr Rebellion. Tyler was

reluctant to enter into the fray and urged King to ﬁnd a compromise. The attack

on the state arsenal by Dorrites in May was quickly routed by the state militia,

and martial law was imposed. Dorr and many of his followers ﬂed Rhode Island

when the Charterite legislature and Governor K ing proved determined to pros-

ecute them under the quickly passed “Algerine Law” that labeled their actions

treason against the state of Rhode Island, placing a $5,000 bounty on Dorr’s head.

Dorr remained in exile until October 1843, when he hoped that the recent con-

stitutional reforms that were ﬁnally approved by the legislature would protect him.

King, however, had him arrested and tried in the Charterite stronghold of Newport.

Dorr was found guilty and sentenced to solitary conﬁnement for life at hard labor.

He was offered a n amnesty after one year’s imprisonment, largely as a political

move by Governor King because of the widespread public sympathy for his situa-

tion. Dorr refused the terms and was released only when the legislature passed an

Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842) 317

unconditional amnesty bill on his behalf in 1845. The election of his uncle Phillip

Allen to the governorship in 1851 resulted in the restoration of his civil rights, but

an attempt by the General Assembly to nullify the original verdict in 1854 was a

short-lived victory as the state Supreme Court deemed the move unconstitutional.

Dorr died shortly thereafter at the age of 49, having given his health and much of

his life to the cause of ﬁghting for universal male suffrage.

—Gretchen A. Adams

Further Reading

Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861 . Lexing ton:

University Press of Kentucky, 1976.

Gettleman, Marvin E. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism, 1833–1849.

New York: Random House, 1973.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–

1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Universal White Male Suffrage

The Revolutionary generation placed a premiu m on the “independ ence” of an

individual when considering voting capabilities. Only when a man (or, in some

states, white women and free bl ack men and women) had sufﬁcient economic

independence could he be relied upon to act in the interests of the commonweal

rather than himself. Individual states determined the terms by which citizens quali-

ﬁed to vote, but virtually all states through the ﬁrst decades of independence used

some formula of property ownership or personal worth. The decades after the War

of 1812 saw rapid expansion in all areas of national life, and each combined to

increase the pressure on states to widen the electorate. As sta tes moved toward a

universal white male su ffrage, though, they regularized the status of a voter by

both race and gender by disenfranchising all women and black men.

The improvements in transportation and communication increased the dissemi-

nation of ideas. Campaign biographies, religious tracts that stressed individualism

and were in tune with natural-rights ideology in politics, the partisan nature of

newspaper publishing, and the overtly political nature of commemorations and

oratory created a political culture that was pervasive. The rise of industry concen-

trated wage laborers, craftsmen, and commercial men away from the countryside

and effectively disenfranchised many. In addition, the patchwork quality of suf-

frage qualiﬁcations and the increasingly democratic nature of not only American

society in general, but in the newly settled areas in particular where suffrage was

318 Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842)

often automatically granted on arrival, put pressure on all of the states to liberalize

their requirements. The Democratic Party capitalized on the movement to recruit

white working-class men, and most states had reduced any economic thresholds

to voting to virtually none for white men by the early 1820s.

Rhode Island was the most noticeable holdout from this trend toward universal

white male suffrage, even as it was in the forefront of the industrialization that

reduced the opportunities for individual access to voting rights. The state had

failed to create a c onstitution in the post-Revolutionary years, but relied instead

on the 1663 charter granted by King Charles II to create the colony. Unusually

progressive for its day in its grantin g of religious freedom, by 1842, it was stun-

ningly anachronistic. All voting rights, the ability to bring suit in court, or to serve

on a jury were tied to freehold rights. A landed farmer and his eldest son had

rights, while the large number of wage laborers and small business owners without

real estate holdings did not. The state had a constitutional crisis in 1842 with

Dorr’s Rebellion, which threatened civil war and brieﬂy saw two governments

with popular support each claiming authority in the state before order was

restored. Ultimately, the conservative Charterists prevailed, but practical consider-

ations forced them to make the necessary reforms to extend suffrage not only to

nearly all w hite adult men in the state, but, against the trend nationwide, Rhode

Island included black men as well. With the inclusion of Rhode Island in the

democratizing trend of the antebellum decades, n early universal white male suf-

frage was achieved by 1845.

—Gretchen A. Adams

Further Reading

Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861. Lexington:

University Press of Kentucky, 1976.

Gettleman, Marvin E. The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism, 1833–1849.

New York: Random House, 1973.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–

1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Wilentz, Se an. The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincol n.NewYork:

W. W. Norton, 2005.

Luther v. Borden: The Judicial Aftermath of Rhode

Island’s Dorr Rebellion (1849)

In 1841, the Rhode Island People’s Party, a group organized by Thomas Dorr, drafted a new state

constitution, which was then ratified by a statewide vote. The new constitution was meant to replace

the state’s original constitution, which was based on a charter issued by Charles II in 1663, and

which enfranchised only a tiny proportion of the state’s population. Dorr was elected governor by

Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842) 319

the newly enfranchised voters, but the charter government refused to accept the new constitution as

valid and declared a state of in surrection. In the ensuing military struggle, Dorr’s forces were

defeated and he fled the state. When he returned, he was tried and convicted for treason and sen-

tenced to life imprisonment, though the legislature soon after ordered his release.

Reproduced here are excerpts of the 1849 Supreme Court decision in Luther v. Borden,

which arose out of a suit filed by Martin Luther, a supporter of Dorr, who was seized in his house

by officers of the charter government during t he insurrection. Luther argued that the charter

government was not the legal government and its officers thus had no right to act as they did.

In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a longtime supporter of Andrew Jack-

son, refused to rule on the question of the cha rter government’s legitimacy, saying that such a

question was political and beyond the power of the Court to decide. This decision, in effect,

upheld the charter government as the legal government of Rhode Island at the time of the Dorr

incident.

Mr. Justice Taney delivered the opinion of the court:

...The charter government ...passed resolutions declaring that all acts done for

the purpose of imposing [Dorr’s] constitution upon the State to be assumption of the

powe rs of gov ernment, in violation of the right s of the existing government a nd of the

people at large; and that it would maintain its authority and defend the legal and constitu-

tional rights of the people.

But notwithstanding the determination of the charter government, and those who

adhered to it, to maintain its authority, Thomas W. Dorr, who had been elected gover-

nor under the new constitution, prepared to assert the authority of that government

by force, and many citizens assembled in arms to support him. The charter government

thereupon passed an act declaring the State under martial law, and at the same time pro-

ceeded to call out the militia, to repel the threatened attack and to subdue those who

were engaged in it. In this state of the contest, the house of the plaintiff, who was engaged

in supporting the authority of the new government, was broken and entered in order to

arrest him. The defendants were , at the time, in the military service of the old

government, and in arms to support its authority.

The Circuit Court ...instructed the jury that the charter government and laws under

which the defendants acted were, at the time, the trespass is alleged to have been com-

mitted, in full force and effect as the form of government and paramount law of the State,

and constituted a justiﬁcation of the acts of the defendants as set forth in their pleas.

It is the opnion of the Circuit Court that we are now called upon to review.

Certainly, the question which the plaintiff proposed to raise by testimony he offered

has not hereto fore been recognized as a judicial one in any of the State courts. ...

In Rhode Island, the question has been directly decided. Prosecutions were there ini-

tiated against some of the persons who had been active in the forcible opposition to the

old government. And in more than one of the cases evidence was offered on the part of

the defense similar to the testimony offered in the Circuit Court, and for the same pur-

pose; t hat is, for the pu rpose of showing that the p roposed c onstitution had been

adopted by the people of Rhode Island, and had, therefore, become the established

320 Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842)

gove rnment, and consequently that the parties accuse d were doing nothing more than

their duty in endeavoring to support it.

But the courts uniformly held that the inquiry proposed to be made belonged to the

political power and not to the judicial; that it rested with the political power to decide

whether the charter g overnment had been displaced or not; and when that decision

was made, the Judicial Department would be bound to take notice of it as the paramount

law of the State, without the aid of oral evidence or the examination of witnesses; that,

according to the laws and institutions of Rhode Island, no such change had been recog-

nized by the political power; and that the charter government was the lawful and estab-

lished government of the State during the period in contest, and that those who were

in arms against it were insurgents, and liable to punishment. This doctrine is clearly and

forcibly stated in the opinion of the Supreme Court of the State in the trial of Thomas

W. Dorr, who was the governor elected under the opposing constitution, and headed

the armed force which endeavored to maintain its authority.

It is worthy of remark ...when we are referring to the authority of State decisions,

that the trial of Thomas W. Dorr took place a fter the constitution of 1843 went into

operation. The judges who decided that case held their authority under that constitution;

and it is admitted on all hands that it was adopted by the people of the State, and is the

lawful and established government. ...

The point, then raised here has been already decided by the courts of Rhode Island.

The question rel ates, altogether, to the constitution and the laws of that State; and the

well settled rule in this court is, that the courts of t he United States adopt and follow

the decisions of the State courts in questions which concern merely the constitution

and laws of the State.

Upon what ground could the Circuit Court of the United States which tried this case

have departed from this rule, and disregarded and overruled the decisions of the courts

of Rhode Island? ...[T]h e power of determining that a State government has been law-

fully established, which the courts of the State disown and repudiate, is not one of them.

Upon such a question the courts of the United States are bound to follow the decisions

of the State tribunals, and must therefore regard the chart er gove rnment as the la wful

and established government during the time of this contest.

Moreover, the Constitution of the United States, as far as it has provided for an emer-

gency of this kind, and authorized the gen eral government to interfere in the domestic

concerns of a Sta te, has treated the subject as political in its nature, and placed power

in the hands of that department.

Under ...the Constitution it rests with Congress to decide what government is the

established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican

government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State

before it can determine whether it is republican or not. And when the senators and

representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of t he Union, the authority of

the government under which they are appointed, as well as its republican character, is rec-

ognized by the proper constitutional authority. And its decision is binding on every other

department of the government, and could not be questioned in a judicial tribunal. ...

Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842) 321

So, too, as relates to the clause in the above mentioned article of the Constitution. ...

Congress ...provided that, “in case of an insurrection in any State against the

government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on applica-

tion of the Le gislature of such State or of the executive (when the Legislature cannot be

convened), to call forth such num ber of the militia of any other State or States, as may

be applied for, as he may judge sufﬁcient to suppress such insurrection.”

By this act, the power of deciding whether the exigency had arisen upon which the

government of the United States is bound to interfere, is given to the President. ...

[H]e mu st determine what body of men constitute the Legi slature, and who is the

government, before he can act. ...If there is an armed conﬂict , like the one of which

we are speaking, it is a case of domestic violence, and one of the parties must be in insur-

rection against the lawful government . And the President must, of necessity, decide

which is the gover nment, and which party is unlawful ly arr ayed against it, before he can

perform the duty imposed upon him by the act of Congress.

After the President has acted and called out the militia, is a circuit court of the United

States authorized to inquire whether his decision was right? Could the court, whi le the

parties were actually contending in arms for the possession of the government, call wit-

nesses before it and inquire which party represented a majority of the people? ...If the

judicial power extends so far, the guarantee contained in the Constitution of the United

States is a guarantee of anarchy, and not of order. Yet if this right does not reside in the

courts when the conﬂict is raging, if the judicial power is at that time bound to follow the

decision of the political, it must be equa lly bound when the contest is over. It cannot,

when peace is restored, punish as offenses and crimes the acts which it before recog-

nized, and was bound to recognize, as lawful.

It is true that in this case the militia were not called out by the President. But upon the

application of the governor under the charter government, the President recognized him

as the executive power of the State, and took measures to call out the militia to support

his authority if it should be found necessary for the general government to interfere; and

it is admitted in the argument, that it was the knowledge of this decision that put an end

to the armed opposition to the charter government, and prevented any further efforts to

establish by force the propose d constitution. The interference of the President, there-

fore, by announcing his determination, wa s as effectual as if the militia had been

assembled under his orders. And it should be equally authoritative. For certainly no

court of the United States, with a knowledge of this decision, would have been just iﬁed

in recognizing the opposing party a s the lawful government; or in treating as wrong-

doers or insurgents the ofﬁcers of the government which the President had recognized,

and was prepared to support by an armed force. In the case of foreign nations, the

government acknowledged by the President is always recognized in the courts of justice.

And this principle has been a pplied by the act of Congress to the sovereign States of

the Union.

The remaining question is whether the defendants, acting under military orders issued

under the authority of the government, were justiﬁed in breaking and entering the plain-

tiff’s house. ...Unquestionably a military government, established as t he perman ent

322 Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842)

government of the State, would not be a republican government and it would be the duty

of Congress to overthrow it. But the law of Rhode Island evidently contemplated no such

government. It was intended merely for the crisis, and to meet the peril in which the

existing government was placed by the armed resistance to its authority. ...Andifthe

gove rnment of Rhode Island de emed armed opposition s o form idable, and so ramiﬁed

throughout the State, as t o require the use of its military force and the declaration of

martial law, we see no ground upon which this court can questions its authority. It was

a state of war; and the established government resorted to the ri ghts and usages of

war to maintain itself, and to overcome the unlawful opposition. And in that state of

things the ofﬁcers engaged in its military service might lawfully arrest anyone, who, from

the information before them, they had reasonable grounds to believe was engaged in the

insurrection; and might order a house to be forcibly entered and searched, when there

were reasonable grounds for supposing he might be there concealed. ...No more force,

however, can be used than i s necessary to accomplish this object. And if the power is

exercised for the purposes of oppression, or any injury willfully done to person or prop-

erty, the party by whom, or by whose order, it is committed would undoubtedly be

answerable.

Upon the whole, we see no reason for disturbing the judgment of the Circuit

court. The adm ission of evidence to prove that the charter government was the

established governm ent of the State was an irregul arity, but is not material to the

judgment. ...

Much of the argument on the part of the plaintiff turned upon political rights and

political qu estions, upon which th e court has been urged t o express an opinion. We

decline doing so. The high power has been conferred on this court of pa ssing judgment

upon the acts of the State sovereignties, and of the legislative and executive branches

of the federal gov ernment, and of deter mining whether they are beyond the limits of

power marked out for them respectively by the Constitution of the United States. This

tribunal, therefore, should be the last to overstep the boundaries which limit its o wn

jurisdiction . And while it should always be ready to meet any question conﬁded to it by

the Constitution, it is equally its duty not to pass beyond its appropriate sphere of action,

andtotakecarenottoinvolveitselfindiscussions which prop erly bel ong to other

forums.Noone,webelieve,haseverdoubtedtheproposition,that,accordingtothe

institutions of thi s country, the sovereignty in every State resides in the people of the

State, and that they may alte r and chan ge their form of government at their own pleas-

ure. But whether they have changed it or not by abolishing an old government, and

establishing a new one in its place, is a question to be settled by the political power.

And when that power has decided, the courts are bound to take notice of its decision,

and to follow it.

The judgment of the Circuit Court must therefore be afﬁrmed.

Source: 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849).

Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842) 323