“We claim . . . that to deprive the colored people of this State of the immunities of citizenship, on account of the color of the skin, (a matter over which they have no control), is anti-republican; and against such a procedure we enter our solemn protest.” This strongly worded missive reached Thomas Wilson Dorr and made clear the position of Providence’s Black community. When word had spread that the Dorrites were qualifying their call to abolish unfair requirements for suffrage and excluding Black voters, they responded swiftly.

The petition, Dorr was told, was written by Alexander Crummell (1819-1898), the minister of Christ Church during the Dorr Rebellion. A native of New York, Crummell had been born free and received an excellent education. While in New York, he had been involved in an effort to strike down the property requirement for suffrage, though the attempt was unsuccessful. In Providence, Crummell quickly became an influential figure in Providence’s Black community.

Crummell’s petition anticipates the arguments against suffrage for Black men and refutes them, drawing attention to inconsistencies in the People’s Party’s calls for so-called universal suffrage.

Black citizens decried the use of the word “white” to define universal suffrage in the People’s Constitution. The petition argued: “We are mostly native born citizens. We have lent our best strength in the cultivation of the soil, have aided in the development of its resources, and have contributed our part to its wealth and importance."

Crummell aligned the cause of his fellow Black citizens to that of the colonists fighting to gain their freedom from Great Britain. “We appeal to that great written charter of American liberty--the declaration of independence--in support of our protestation. We believe that ‘all men are created free and equal’; and we affirm, that no tinge of the skin can possibly invalidate that cardinal doctrine of our country’s liberty, or make nugatory or partial the political privileges which, as deductions, may proceed from it."

This site at 400 Benefit Street was the former site of St. Stephen’s Church. Crummell’s congregation, Christ Church, was eventually absorbed by St. Stephen’s in the 1850s.

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A strange-smelling package arrived at the residence where Thomas Wilson Dorr was staying during his exile in 1842. He opened the box to find the following: “one prime codfish weighing 15 lbs., 2 mackerell [sic], 1 peck of clams, and a few oysters.” Since Dorr would have been well aware that his female supporters organized massive clambakes to support his cause, perhaps he would not have been surprised to discover the leftover seafood. Through their thoughtfulness, the clambake organizers ensured that Dorr did not miss out on the flavor (or, presumably, the odor) of the day’s festivities. 

The clambake in question had occurred here on Acote’s Hill, Chepachet, on September 28, 1842, and drew crowds upward of 5,000-8,000 people from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, according to different reports. Rhode Island women organized several clambakes during the summer months of 1842, which served both as rallies and fundraisers. Although universal suffrage did not extend voting rights for Rhode Island women, they nonetheless participated fully and ardently in Dorr’s cause, as these clambakes suggest. These massive political events garnered statewide attention and support for the Dorrites and raised funds for “needy Suffrage families.”

Women addressed the crowds at the clambakes, often extemporaneously, like Providence-native Ann Parlin, whose husband, a physician, had been imprisoned in June following the failed capture of the Providence arsenal by Dorr’s forces. Making it clear that she had maintained an appropriately modest role in public, Parlin wrote to Dorr that she had given a “brief speech on impulse” at a clambake in August. Parlin emphasized that she had not spoken for long, and that it had been unplanned. If Parlin was brief in her remarks in Rhode Island, she was not in New York two months later. She addressed a crowd of Dorr supporters at the Shakespeare Hotel in New York City, and her speech was later printed by the New York Daily Plebeian. Parlin told the crowd: 

"After untoward events, too recent to require a recital, had destroyed their hopes of immediate emancipation from aristocratic thralldom, the patriots who had not fled were thrown into prison, and there dealt with as felons.  A band of ruthless aristocrats strode over their State, spreading terror throughout the land.  Informers, spies, denunciators crowded the cities, the hamlets, and the isolated abodes of husbandmen, violating everywhere the sanctities of private life—vengeance, and all the resentments of individual hatred mingling all the while their vile worship to the despotic measures of the victorious party." Parlin speaks at length about the so-called patriotic cause of the Dorrites, making it eminently clear that it is Governor King’s Law and Order Party who are the true villains in the conflict.

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“The public mind was awake” in Rhode Island, wrote Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895), “and one class of its people at least was ready to work with us to the extent of seeking to defeat the proposed constitution,” which would disenfranchise Black men. When news broke that the People’s Party had voted to exclude Black men from the vote, much to the chagrin of Thomas Wilson Dorr, abolitionists like Douglass and Abby Kelley flocked to Rhode Island to protest. 

The road to Rhode Island proved challenging for Douglass, as travel posed a particular set of dangers for African Americans. He remembers being dragged out of his seat several times for “the crime of being colored.” And, he was forced to sleep on the deck of the ship, while his fellow white abolitionists were welcomed in the cabin below. 

The abolitionists quickly discovered their task would be a difficult one. Douglass writes that “the contest was intensely bitter and exciting. We were as usual denounced as intermeddlers . . . and were told to mind our own business, and the like, a mode of defense common to men when called to account for mean and discreditable conduct.” But Douglass and his compatriots were not so easily dismissed. “We cared nothing for the Dorr party on the one hand, or the ‘law and order party’ on the other. What we wanted, and what we labored to obtain, was a constitution free from the narrow, selfish, and senseless limitation of the word white.”

The new constitution adopted in 1843, which included suffrage for Black men, was a victory for abolitionists like Douglass. Reflecting on their impact, Douglass wrote in 1881 that “our labors in Rhode Island during this Dorr excitement did more to abolitionize the State than any previous or subsequent work.”

This site in Woonsocket hosted the Anti-Slavery Convention in the fall of 1841.

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Rhode Islanders were pretty pleased with their royal charter in 1663, which granted them freedom from religious persecution. But even a beloved antique can lose its luster eventually, and so by the 19th century, when Rhode Island still operated under the charter (which included no means to amend it in any way), citizens were justifiably ready for a change.

Not surprisingly, the Rhode Island of the nineteenth century was a far cry from that of the seventeenth. No longer a collection of sleepy farming communities, roaring centers of industry had emerged, attracting new waves of immigrants eager to fill factory jobs. Despite major population booms in Rhode Island’s urban sectors, these areas received the same representation in state government as the sparse rural towns. The other inequality that most stuck in the craw of some Rhode Islanders was the issue of suffrage, or the right to vote. But there were many in the state who wanted to hold onto their voting power, namely mill owners opposed to reform and conservative rural Democrats, who had much to lose if their interests were overshadowed by an onslaught of city voters. Many contemporary critics saw through to the deeper issue at hand: most of the urban voters would be immigrants, and the tide of anti-immigrant hatred was only growing.

The conflict in 1841-42 pitted two parties against one another: the Charterites, or the Law and Order Party, led by then-governor Samuel Ward King, who wanted to stick with the charter and keep close tabs on who deserved the privilege of voting; and the People’s Party, spearheaded by a Harvard-educated lawyer and former state legislator named Thomas Wilson Dorr.

The frustration over inequalities in representation and voting that had been brewing for some time came to a head in 1841 when the Rhode Island Suffrage Association charged Thomas Wilson Dorr with drafting a new constitution to usher in a new political order. In early 1842, two separate elections were held, one naming Dorr governor, and the other, Samuel Ward King. After a trip to New York persuaded Dorr to resort to force to gain the advantage, he and his followers unsuccessfully attempted to overtake an arsenal with cannons that misfired. Dorr fled the authorities through Connecticut and into New York, returning to Rhode Island in June where he attempted to reconvene his People’s legislature and gather forces in Chepachet. When Charterite militia marched on the village, they discovered that Dorr’s troops had already retreated. No battle took place, but many Dorr supporters were arrested. Dorr fled again, this time to New Hampshire. He eventually returned and was tried for treason and sentenced to life in prison (though he served only one year of the sentence).

Although the Dorrites had been unsuccessful in the short term, the cause for suffrage had gained such support that a new constitution was drafted and adopted in 1842, going into effect in 1843. In this iteration, suffrage was extended to any native-born male, including Black men, regardless of property holdings. In truth, though, it was no great victory for the Dorrite cause: the new constitution disenfranchised non native-born citizens as well as Narragansett Indians.

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In 1888, William Kissam Vanderbilt gave his wife Alva Marble House as a 39th birthday gift. The railroad magnate spared no expense on his wife’s summer home, which used 500,000 cubic feet of various marbles, gathered from across the globe, and is estimated to have cost $11 million at the time of construction. Francophile Alva Vanderbilt appreciated the work of architect Richard Morris Hunt, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Hunt built Marble House in the shape of a perfect cube, drawing inspiration from King Louis XV’s Petit Trianon château in on the grounds of Versailles.  Marble House was featured in the 2008 film 27 Dresses, as the location of a decadent wedding. The film centers on Jane, played by Katherine Heigl, who wrestles with her decision to coordinate a wedding between her sister and a man who Jane secretly loves. Although the film presents Marble House in a flattering light, Alva Vanderbilt might have found irony in her home being used as the backdrop for a film that revolves around themes of marriage and women’s dependence on men.  Alva and William Vanderbilt shocked high society in March 1895 when they announced their divorce. In addition to a $10 million dollar settlement, Alva walked away from the divorce with Marble House and several estates. Alva was particularly enamored by Marble House, and chose to construct an elaborate Chinese teahouse behind the residence, inviting workers from China to complete the project.

Alva Vanderbilt became involved in the Suffrage movement, and in 1914 a meeting of woman activists inaugurated the teahouse. Marble House became a haven for women’s rights activists, and when Alva died in 1933, her funeral was conducted entirely by women. Today, the Preservation Society of Newport maintains Marble House. The property’s ornate appearance makes it an ideal location for grand events, and for movies that feature them.

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