Background
Philip Allen was born on September 1, 1785 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Captain Zachariah Allen, a West India trader and dealer, and Anne (Crawford) Allen.
Philip Allen was born on September 1, 1785 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Captain Zachariah Allen, a West India trader and dealer, and Anne (Crawford) Allen.
Allen was educated at Taunton Academy, at the celebrated school of Robert Rogers in Newport, and at the Latin School under Jeremiah Chaplin, afterward president of Waterville College. In 1799 he entered Rhode Island College (later Brown University), from which he was graduated in 1803, at the age of eighteen.
Allen took over the business after his father died in 1801. His ability was soon recognized by his fellows and within three years of his graduation from college he was elected to the directorate of the Providence Insurance Company. He had a decided bent for things mechanical. Having in 1812 begun to engage in the manufacture of cotton cloth, he obtained the best machinery available. In 1831 he began printing calicoes, and the Allen calicoes soon became widely known.
His career in public life began in 1819 when he was elected to the General Assembly from Providence, which he continued to represent until 1821. In 1827, Seth Wheaton, president of the Rhode Island branch of the United States Bank and disbursing agent of Revolutionary pensions, asked that Allen be appointed as his successor. This position Allen held until the second United States Bank wound up its affairs in 1836.
In 1836 he was vigorously opposed to Jackson on the removal of the deposits from the United States Bank. In 1848 he supported Martin Van Buren for the presidency and gave his money and influence in aid of the Free-Soilers. Finally, Allen was always a Tariff Democrat. He did not again hold public office until 1851. On February 20 of that year he was nominated for governor by the Democratic State Convention and in the election of April 2 he defeated Josiah Chapin, the Whig candidate, by a majority of 887. He was twice renominated by the Democrats and won the elections of April 7, 1852, and April 6, 1853, by substantial majorities.
The most important feature of his administration was his fight with Thomas W. Dorr for the control of the Democratic party in Rhode Island. At the time of the Dorr Rebellion (1842), Allen had been an "Algerine, " or Law and Order man, and far from sympathizing with Dorr he had purchased arms and raised a company known as the Rhode Island Carbineers for the defense of the state. Now the Democrats had returned to power and Dorr sought to have the legislature pass an act restoring him to civil and political privileges. Dorr himself prepared a bill for this purpose that reversed and annulled the decision of the supreme court of Rhode Island of June 25, 1844, which had sentenced Dorr to imprisonment. Allen refused what Dorr asked as a matter of right and the bill as finally passed placed the restoration on the ground of clemency. Thus Allen obtained complete control of his party in Rhode Island.
On May 4, 1853, the two houses of the General Assembly met in Grand Committee and elected Allen to the seat in the Senate that had been vacant for some months, during which the Democratic state Senate had refused to meet the Whig House in Grand Committee. During his first four years in the Senate Allen's activities were confined to local matters. He was chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and served on the committees on Commerce and Naval Affairs. On March 3, 1854, when the Senate voted on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, he was absent, having been called home by the illness of his son, but his colleague, Senator James, announced that, if present, Senator Allen would vote against the bill. In 1857, however, Allen became one of the leaders of his party in the Senate, and, although he was unusually free from party dictation, this perhaps influenced his attitude, so that on May 3, 1858, he voted to admit Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton (slave) Constitution.
In 1859 he retired to private life.
Allen was a member of the Democratic Party.
Quotes from others about the person
". . he [Allen] holds the Democratic party in his pocket: he owns it. . When, on the first of January, he makes up the inventory of his large estate, he puts down in the list: 'Item: one Democratic party' . " - Providence Daily Journal
In January 1814 Allen married Phoebe Aborn, by whom he had eleven children.