While Samuel Ward King, as Rhode Island’s other governor, was Dorr’s most obvious rival, his opponents were many. One of these opponents, John Brown Francis, had himself served as governor of Rhode Island a decade before King and Dorr. Francis, like Dorr, had been born to an illustrious family. His grandfather, John Brown, had been a merchant of immense wealth, and Francis’ father, John Francis, had gone into the profitable family business when he married Francis’ mother, Abigail. Unlike Dorr, however, Francis supported the status quo as codified by Rhode Island’s state charter.

Francis was part of the three-man delegation sent by Samuel Ward King to D.C. in April 1842 to meet with President Tyler. King had charged this select group--Francis and Elisha Potter, Jr., conservative rural Democrats, and Whig attorney John Whipple--to seek the President’s support for the Charterite cause. Tyler assured the group that he would not hesitate to send military assistance should the need arise from a Dorr-led insurrection. 

The two opposing parties indeed appeared headed for conflict when they both attempted to take what each believed to be their rightful seat as the governing body of Rhode Island. On May 3, 1842, Dorr and the officials in his new administration paraded through the streets of Providence, from Hoyle’s Tavern eastward to the State House on North Main Street. Unfortunately, the Charterites had thoughtfully locked the building, barring Dorr and his followers from assuming power there. Instead, they had to convene in an unfinished building on Eddy Street.

In a move to quell growing frustrations on both sides, moderates from both parties began to push for a new constitution that would serve as a compromise. Conservative John Brown Francis had come around, too, in the face of potentially more violent conflicts. Francis declared: ‘We must have free suffrage or civil war.”

This site at 150 Benefit Street is the location of the Old State House.

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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 1842, this Federal-style house was the headquarters of a political revolution. The owner Burrington Anthony was a supporter of Thomas Wilson Dorr and his effort to expand voting rights. At that time, only white men of property could vote, disenfranchising much of the state, particularly the growing numbers of mill workers in this part of the city. In May 1842, Dorr came to this house a pretender-governor. Brandishing a sword and threatening bloodshed, he gave a fiery speech to the armed men that had gathered there. A pair of raided cannon was positioned in the middle of the avenue, facing down the hill into the city. In the early hours of May 18th, surrounded by dense fog, two hundred men marched from this house through winding streets to a small arsenal on the Dexter Training Grounds. Bells across the city tolled the alarm, but Dorr's cannon fizzled, and so did his revolution. Dorr was tried for treason and imprisoned, but ultimately pardoned. Anthony survived unscathed, living in this house until his death in 1853. A new state constitution expanded the franchise but retained restrictions, particularly targeting foreign-born citizens. Notably, most racial qualifications were removed, making voting rights in Rhode Island more color-blind in 1843 than gender- and class-blind.

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