Rhode Island History Summer/Fall 2010 Volume 68, Number 2 Published by Contents The Rhode Island Historical Society 110 Benevolent Street Providence, Rhode Island 02906-3152 “The Rhode Island Question”: The Career of a Debate 47 Robert J. Manning, president William S. Simmons, first vice president Erik J. Chaput Barbara J. Thornton, second vice president Peter J. Miniati, treasurer Robert G. Flanders Jr., secretary Bernard P. Fishman, director No Landless Irish Need Apply: Rhode Island’s Role in the Framing and Fate Fellow of the Society of the Fifteenth Amendment 79 Glenn W. LaFantasie Patrick T. Conley Publications Committee Luther Spoehr, chair James Findlay Robert W. Hayman Index to Volume 68 91 Jane Lancaster J. Stanley Lemons Timothy More William McKenzie Woodward Staff Elizabeth C. Stevens, editor Hilliard Beller, copy editor Silvia Rees, publications assistant The Rhode Island Historical Society assumes no responsibility for the opinions of contributors. RHODE ISLAND HISTORY is published two times a year by the Rhode Island Historical Society at 110 Benevolent Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02906-3152. Postage is paid at Providence, Rhode Island. Society members receive each issue as a membership benefit. Institutional subscriptions to RHODE ISLAND HISTORY are $25.00 annually. Individual copies of current and back issues are available from the Society for $12.50 (price includes postage and handling). Manuscripts and other ©2010 by The Rhode Island Historical Society correspondence should be sent to Dr. Elizabeth C. Stevens, editor, at the RHODE ISLAND HISTORY (ISSN 0035-4619) Society or to [email protected]. Erik J. Chaput is a doctoral candidate in early American history at Syracuse Andrew Bourqe, Ashley Cataldo, and Elizabeth Pope, at the American University. He wishes to thank the staff at the John Hay Library—especially Antiquarian Society; Peter Wallner, at the New Hampshire Historical Ann Dodge, Alison Bundy, Tim Engels, Holly Snyder, and Andrew Moul— Society; and Lia Kerwin, at the Library of Congress. The author also thanks for their encouragement and genuine good cheer. As always, Ken Carlson, at William Wiecek, James Roger Sharp, Scott Molloy, Robert Hayman, Patrick the Rhode Island State Archives, was generous with his time and expertise, T. Conley, and Russell DeSimone for their helpful comments on this essay. as were Karen Eberhart, at the Rhode Island Historical Society Library; Thomas Wilson Dorr. Daguerreotype from the collection of Frank Mauran III; RIHS Collection (RHi X3 5449). “The Rhode Island Question”: The Career of a Debate Erik J. Chaput History cannot with safety be appealed to in proof signing of the Declaration of Independence and the of the misery of mankind. Its record is partial. success of the Revolution itself meant that the right to Public events and eminent scholars find a place in revolution was “an inherent right in the people, which its pages, but the majority of men are necessarily they could at all times peacefully exercise.”6 Drawing passed over in silence. directly from the bedrock principles of the American –Thomas Wilson Dorr, “Human Happiness”1 Revolution, he upheld “the right of the people to make a Constitution in their original and sovereign daguerreotype taken between 1845 and 1854 capacity, without a request, or authority of the General Ain the studio of Mathew Brady shows a Thomas Assembly.”7 For his opponents, however, the issue Dorr who has been thoroughly worn out. His eyes are was not one involving majority and minority rights; surrounded by dark bags, his hair is uncombed, and a it was, rather, the difference between “constitutional depressed scowl marks his face. This is a far cry from an authorities sustained by the highest judicial tribunals image in 1842 that shows the “People’s governor” with and a mob which organizes itself, elects a governor eyes bright, hair neatly combed, and a slight, almost of Misrule, and declares itself, by virtue of its own optimistic smile.2 By the time of Brady’s daguerreotype, sovereign will, the true and legal government.”8 Dorr was no longer the man who emerged in Providence in May 1842 brandishing a sword used in The most unlikely of revolutionaries, Dorr, a reform- Andrew Jackson’s Florida Indian campaign, waving it minded Whig turned Democrat, was born into wealth high above his head, using his gift of oratory to inspire and privilege in November 1805, a scion of one of Rhode a throng of devoted followers who would forcefully Island’s wealthiest families. Dorr’s father, Sullivan Dorr, attempt to remove Rhode Island’s ruling regime.3 The was a Providence businessman and prominent China Providence Express reported at the time that Dorr trade merchant.9 Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy declared “his readiness to die in the cause in which he in New Hampshire and then at Harvard University, had sacrificed everything but his life,” vowing that the Thomas Dorr studied law for two years in New York sword’s “ensanguined blade should be again imbued City under Chancellor James Kent (the author of one with blood, should the people’s cause require it.”4 of the leading American legal texts of the first half of John L. O’Sullivan, a close friend of Dorr and the nineteenth century) before being admitted to the editor of the New York Democratic Review, noted that Rhode Island bar in 1827. Not yet ready to settle in the “chief object to which [Dorr] devoted himself from his native state, the restless young man toured the the outset of his political life was that of overthrowing country for almost six years and occasionally practiced the antiquated and absurd anomaly of a government maritime and commercial law in New York City before under which the people of [Rhode Island] were living.”5 he finally settled in Providence in 1833. In 1834, as There is little room for doubt about the strength of a newly elected member of the General Assembly, he Dorr’s conviction that citizens had the right to alter joined a burgeoning reform movement that had begun or abolish their frame of government. For Dorr, the at the behest of associations of native workingmen, a 48 “THE RHODE ISLAND QUESTION” movement calling for a new state constitution based on universal manhood suffrage. In the hope of revising the state’s antiquated ruling structure, Dorr—along with Joseph Angell, William Smith, and Christopher Robinson— formed the Constitutional Party, primarily composed of reform-minded Whigs, and he quickly emerged as the reform movement’s leader.10 After running unsuccess- fully for Congress in 1837 under the Constitutional Party’s banner, Dorr again failed to gain election to Congress as a Democratic- Republican candidate in 1839.11 Eventually his dab- bling in third-party politics cost him the support of die- hard Whigs, and (contrary to Daniel Walker Howe’s assertion) he left the Whig Party of his own accord, developing a Jacksonian hard- money policy that was at odds with Whig orthodoxy.12 Dorr’s views on this issue reveal the contradictions between the egalitarian legacy of the American Revolution and the social consequences of the In April 1842 Governor Samuel Ward King issued this proclamation ad- monishing Dorr’s supporters to withdraw from their “unlawful enterprize” market revolution, along with the fundamental divisions and calling for the apprehension and punishment of those who failed to between Whigs and Democrats in the 1830s and 1840s.13 do so. RIHS Collection (RHi X1 7423). By the 1840s Dorr’s rhetoric centered on equality of citizens and a widespread assault on all forms of legal favoritism. He In the spring of 1842 Rhode Island was torn between quickly became connected with the Rhode Island Suffrage rival governors, two separate legislative assemblies, Association, which formed in the spring of 1841 and was and two competing visions of the nature of American headed by Glocester attorney Samuel Atwell. constitutionalism. One vision held that a majority of the “THE RHODE ISLAND QUESTION” 49 revolutionary People’s government was led by Dorr, whose followers founded their government on the ideal of popular sovereignty, with a constitution that was ratified by an unauthorized popular ref- erendum in December 1841. In April 1842 Dorr was elected governor, and Amasa Eddy of Glocester lieutenant governor, under this constitution. Opposing the People’s government was the aptly named Law and Order Party, a coalition of urban Whigs and rural Democrats, led by Governor Samuel Ward King. King’s govern- ment received its authority from Rhode Island’s original royal charter of 1663, which the state had failed to replace with a modern constitution after severing its ties with England. With constitutional revisions in almost every state bringing the principle of universal white manhood suffrage close to reality in the Age of Jackson, Dorr’s attempt at extralegal reform was widely known at the time as the “Rhode Island Question”— the constitutional right to such In response to the harsh demands and threats of the Charterite govern- reform when traditional avenues of change had been ment, Scituate resident Jonah Titus, nominated for attorney general 14 under the People’s Constitution, informed Governor King that he “would exhausted. not be a candidate for any office under said Constitution.” His with- Conservative members of the Rhode Island bar drawal was publicized by Charterites in this broadside. RIHS Collection (RHi X1 7422). warned the General Assembly that the Dorrites wanted to “impose” upon Rhode Island a constitution that was people possessed the right to alter or replace their system drawn up and presented to the people by a “convention of government, regardless of procedures (or lack thereof) not called or authorized by a majority of the people in provided by the existing government; the other vision was any” capacity.15 In response, Dorr and a group of eight predicated on the belief that American constitutionalism other lawyers loyal to the cause of popular sovereignty was based on the rule of law and that a government could argued that a prior call from the General Assembly to only be amended through prescribed legal means.