Background
Thomas was born on November 5, 1805 at Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He the son of Sullivan and Lydia (Allen) Dorr. His father was a prosperous manufacturer and the family occupied a good social position.
Thomas was born on November 5, 1805 at Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He the son of Sullivan and Lydia (Allen) Dorr. His father was a prosperous manufacturer and the family occupied a good social position.
As a boy, Dorr attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He graduated from Harvard in 1823, and then went to New York where he studied law under Chancellor Kent and ViceChancellor McCoun.
Dorr was therefore no plebeian when he led the cause of the unenfranchised classes.
He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and returned to Providence to practise.
He began his political career as a representative in the Rhode Island Assembly in 1834.
In the half-century following the American Revolution efforts were made nearly everywhere to reap the fruits of that struggle in a wider extension of the limited franchise.
In Rhode Island these attempts, made at intervals from 1797 to 1834, had invariably been met by the government with contemptuous obstruction.
In 1834 a convention met at Providence to consider the matter again, and Dorr was a member of the committee which drew up an address to the people.
All efforts at reform, however, were once more blocked by the legislature.
By 1841 Rhode Island was almost the only state which had not adopted practical manhood suffrage.
It was also the only state which had not adopted a written constitution, and the old colonial charter, under which the state was ruled, had been outgrown.
By 1840 this obsolete requirement had disfranchised over half the adult male population, and about nineteen towns, having a total population of only 3, 500 voters, returned over half the legislature, so that less than 1, 800 voters could control the destinies of a state of 108, 000 population.
Moreover, no person who did not own real estate could bring suit for recovery of debt or obtain redress for personal injury unless a freeholder indorsed his writ.
The situation had become intolerable, and in 1840 the Rhode Island Suffrage Association was formed, and processions and popular meetings held.
Dorr took a leading part in the agitation.
The legislature refused to remedy such grievances as were in its power, and the old charter did not provide any means of summoning a constitutional convention.
There were approximately 14, 000 ballots cast in favor of it, and less than 100 cast against it.
Of those in favor, over 4>9°o were qualified voters so that the proposed constitution was formally approved not only by the majority of the males over twenty-one but, it was alleged, even by a majority of the legal voters.
The constitutional question was a delicate one, but the existing government refused to consider any of these acts as legal.
It had become sufficiently frightened, however, to call a constitutional convention itself and in turn submit a constitution to the people, though it is difficult to see how these actions were any more legal than those of the People’s Party.
The government’s constitution was defeated by the narrow margin of 676 votes in 16, 702.
This was the point at which Dorr and his followers may be considered to have made their mistake.
The new constitution, though not giving all they had asked, did give them most of the substance.
Had they not defeated it they might have had a practical victory.
In May 1842 there were two governments both claiming the allegiance of the people.
There he received no encouragement, and he returned to Rhode Island.
Meanwhile Ring had proclaimed martial law, offered $S, ooo reward for the capture of Dorr, and made wholesale imprisonments of the latter’s followers under the “Algerine Law. ”
Some minor clashes occurred between the Dorrites and the state troops.
Many of Dorr’s followers deserted him and he voluntarily gave himself up at Providence.
King and the old government had lost their heads completely and were ruthless in their revenge.
Dorr was tried for treason before the state supreme court and sentenced to solitary confinement at hard labor for life.
He was committed June 27, 1844.
Public opinion finally made itself felt and in 1845 an Act of General Amnesty was passed and Dorr was released after twelve months of his term.
In 1851 he was restored to civil rights, and in January 1854 the legislature passed an act annulling the verdict of the supreme court; but this, of course, the court decided was unconstitutional.
Dorr’s health had been broken, and after his release he lived in retirement until his death.
His work, however, bore fruit, for the old oligarchy had yielded at last, and a third constitution had been drawn up and accepted by the people giving manhood suffrage with trifling qualifications.
Thomas never married, but two of his sisters married prominent men and the son of one of them married the daughter of John Lothrop Motley.
