USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 82
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*First, 1824; second, 1834.
¡Vide infra.
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as the largest number of voters recorded in any earlier election. On the facts of numbers, there was no doubt that the Landholders' Constitution had made provision for a generous extension of suffrage, besides abolishing the limitation of selection by the freemen in town meetings. The constitution was rejected, nevertheless, 8013 for and 8689 against. The pro- nounced opposition may be explained as due in very large part to those who favored a more radical program than might be expected from the freemen, including some who believed that Rhode Island, in March, 1842, when the plebiscite was taken, already had a constitution which had been adopted by the people of Rhode Island and was the supreme law of the state. There had been another convention and there was another constitution, as a result of a movement promoted by the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, in which Thomas W. Dorr was a leader.
THE DORR MOVEMENT -- The Rhode Island Suffrage Association was organized late in 1840 in Providence, and within a year had spread its membership throughout the state with branches in most of the towns. The first branch society was formed at Woonsocket, probably among the group which, six years earlier, had persuaded Cumberland and Smithfield to call the town convention of 1834. Early in 1840, a pamphlet entitled an "Address to the Citizens of Rhode Island Who Are Denied the Right of Suffrage" had been circulated in Rhode Island. The pamphlet purported to have been published by the "First Social Reform Society of New York." Color is given to the possibility of a New York origin by the statement made by some contemporaries of Dorr that the suffrage movement in Rhode Island in 1840 had for its purpose eventually the election of a Democratic United States Senator from Rhode Island ; on the other hand, the person or persons who wrote the pamphlet were thoroughly familiar with the situation in Rhode Island, and the views expressed therein were exactly those later used as arguments by the lawyers supporting the Dorr movement. Dorr, who had been a law student in the office of Chancellor Kent, was well known in New York, and may have acquired his interest in "the people" from his first hand acquaintance with the "anti-rent" agitation in New York against the patroon system. Dorr himself was scion of a family of freeholders, with ancestors on both sides identifying him with the Rhode Island "aristocracy," using the term with the exact connotation implied in its derivation from the Greek word for "best." Asserting that the people retained the right to construct their own constitution, and the futility of appeal for relief from those who had obtained control of the government, the pamphlet outlined a plan whereby the people, proceeding in an orderly manner and ignoring the govern- ment for the time being, might draft a constitution in convention, elect officers under its pro- visions, including members of Congress, and should the established government persist, lay before Congress the problem of choosing between contesting delegations, to decide which of the two governments was the government; or, as applied to Rhode Island, whether the gov- ernment of a small group of freemen or the government originating with the majority of all the people was the "republican" government required for the state by the Constitution of the United States.
The Dorr or suffrage movement in 1840-1842 in its initial stages proceeded along the line suggested by the pamphlet. The Rhode Island Suffrage Association and its branches, gener- ally, adopted a declaration of principles, including these: (1) "That the power of the state should be vested in the hands of the people, and that the people have a right, from time to time, to assemble together, either by themselves or their representatives, for the establish- ment of a republican form of government; (2) that whenever a majority of the citizens of this state, who are recognized as citizens of the United States, shall, by their delegates in con- vention assembled, draft a constitution, and the same shall be accepted by their constituents, it will be, to all intents and purposes, the law of the state." The suffrage movement in 1840 was non-partisan and bi-partisan, in the sense that it was promoted by neither the Whig nor the Democratic party, and that both Whigs and Democrats were enrolled as members of the suffrage association. It was not exclusively a movement of non-freemen; many distinguished
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freemen participated. It had no newspaper support from the partisan political organs of the period ; indeed the "Republican Herald" (Democratic) repudiated the agitation in the first instance. A weekly newspaper, the "New Age," was published first in Providence, November 20, 1840, and was adopted by the suffrage association in December, as an agency for enlight- ening and educating the people. The "Express," a daily edition of the "New Age," appeared in 1842.
Two petitions were presented to the General Assembly at the January session, 1841. One, published in the "New Age" as the official petition of the suffrage association urged (1) "abrogation of the Charter granted unto this state by King Charles" and "the establishment of a constitution which should more efficiently define the authority of the executive and legis- lative branches, and more strongly recognize the rights of the citizens," and (2) "that an extension of the suffrage to a greater portion of the white male residents of the state would be more in accordance with the spirit of our institutions than the present system of the state and for such an extension they ask." Another petition, referred to as the Dillingham petition, because the first of 581 signatures was that of Edward Dillingham, requested that the General Assembly "take the subject of the extreme inequality of the present representation from the several towns under consideration, and, in such manner as seems most practicable and just, to correct the evil complained of." The suffrage petition was laid on the table, and the Dilling- ham petition was referred to a committee. Whether because of, or in spite of, these petitions, out of the discussion of both at the January session came the call for the constitutional con- vention of 1841,* and eventually the drafting of the Landholders' Constitution.
The suffrage movement proceeded steadily, with recourse to various activities to stimulate and maintain enthusiasm, including frequent meetings and demonstrations, and the discussion of measures that might be made effective in convincing the freemen, among them refusal to perform military or fire duty, and the organization of military companies. A parade of per- haps 3000 men in Providence on April 17, 1741, followed by a barbecue, attracted other thou- sands to view it. A mass meeting in Newport on election day, May 5, was preceded by a parade in which many carried firearms and other weapons. The Newport meeting adopted resolutions, including among others :
That no lapse of time can bar the sovereignty inherent in the people of this state; and that their omis- sion to form a constitution, and their toleration of the abuses under which they have so long labored, are to be regarded as proof of their long suffering and forbearance, rather than as arguments against their power and their capacity to right themselves, whenever, in their opinion, redress from the government at present subsisting is hopeless; that the time has now fully arrived for a vigorous and concentrated effort to accom- plish a thorough and permanent reform in the political institutions of this state, that a system of government under which the legislative body exercise power undefined and uncontrolled by fundamental law . . . . and makes and unmakes the people at its pleasure,f is anti-republican, and odious in its character and operations, at war with the spirit of the age, and repugnant to the feelings of every right-minded Rhode Island man, and ought to be abated; . . . that by the great increase of population in the towns the existing apportionment has become exceedingly unequal and unjust in its operations ; . that at the foundation of this state . . a landed qualification for voters . . excluded only a small portion of the people from political power, but that the circumstances of the voting has the effect, contrary to the designs of those who first established it, of excluding the great majority of 16,000 to 25,000 over the age of twenty-one years from all political privileges and participation in the affairs of government ; and that, though we entertain a high and becoming respect for farmers, and their just influence in the state, we are not insensible to the merits of their younger sons-of the mechanics, the merchants, the working men and others-who own no land; and that we are of opinion that the longer continuance of a landed qualification for voters is a great injustice, and is contrary to the spirit and principles of a republican government ; . . . . that a continuance of the provisions of the
*Vide supra.
tThe reference is to the Assembly's right to change the electorate by defining qualifications.
R. I .- 31
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Charter relating to representation, and of the act of the legislatures requiring a freehold estate to entitle a citizen to vote for public officers, has the effect not only to vest the control of the General Assembly . . in less than one-third of the population, but, as the voters in this third are only a third part of the whole number of male adult citizens, the further effect also-the most odious of all-of placing the control of the Assembly and the State in one-ninth of its adult population or in other words, in the hands of less than 3000 men out of 25,000 who are over twenty-one years of age; that such a state of things is a bold and hardy defiance of all popular rights, and is a total departure from the principles advocated at the first session of the General Assembly in the year 1647, who then solemnly declared and voted that the government of this state should be a democracy ; . . . . that the undoubted rights and privileges of the people . , can only be completely obtained and permanently insured by a written constitution . . . . and that in the exercise of this high act of sovereignty every American citizen whose actual permanent residence or home is in this state has a right to participate; . . . . that we disclaim all action with or for any political party in this great question . . . . and that we heartily invite the earnest cooperation of men of all political parties in the cause which we have at heart and which we believe to be the cause of liberty, equality and justice to all men . . that a committee of eleven persons be appointed by this convention to correspond with the asso- ciations of the several towns and to carry forward the cause of reform and equal rights, and to call a con- vention of delegates to draft a constitution at as early a date as possible.
The Newport mass convention adjourned to meet at Providence on July 5, 1841. Ten were named on the committee, nine of whom served.
In the meantime the General Assembly had modified the representation of towns in the constitutional convention ordered to meet in November, but it voted in June emphatically, fifty-two to ten, against a bill presented in May which proposed to permit all adult male inhabi- tants, citizens of the United States and resident in the state two years to vote, and to appor- tion representation in a convention of 102 delegates essentially in proportion to population. The Providence mass meeting of July 5 was preceded by a procession, not so large as that of April 17; but the gathering of people was reported as the most numerous in the history of Rhode Island up to that time. The meeting adopted resolutions, among which were :
That the political institutions of this state have long since lost the character of liberty and equality which belong to a republic, and that, inasmuch as in the words of Washington "the basis of our political institutions is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions,"* it has now become the duty of the people of Rhode Island to apply with a firm hand, without unnecessary delay, and in their orig- inal and sovereign capacity, the necessary corrective to existing political evils, by the formation and adoption of a written republican state constitution; that, inasmuch as the General Assembly of this state, at their last session in June, have finally decided that the freeholders are exclusively the people of Rhode Island and have denied to the great majority of the people, so far as it is in their power thus to deny, any participation in the convention to be held in November next, the time has now fully arrived for the people, in their original and sovereign capacity, to exercise their reserved rights; and that we hereby approve the call by the state committee of the people's convention . . . . at an early date, for the formation of a con- stitution ; that when the constitution, so framed, shall be adopted by a majority of the whole people of the state, by their signatures or otherwise, as the constitution may provide, we will sustain and carry into effect said constitution, by all necessary measures; and that, so far as in us lies, we will remove all obstacles to its successful establishment and operation, and we hereunto solemnly pledge ourselves to each other and the public; that we hail with pleasure the presence among us of the venerable remnants of our revolutionary worthies, and entertain the hope that they may be spared to witness another anniversary, when they will be deemed not only worthy of shedding their blood for the defence of their country, but of voting for their rulers and of taking an equal share of the concerns of government ;t that we enter our solemn protest against the principles upon which the landholders' convention is called, as by that call a large majority of the people of this state are excluded from a participation in the choice of delegates to frame a constitution by the pro- visions of which they are to be governed ; that we deny the authority of the legislature to proscribe or prevent
*The complete words of Washington include also these: "That the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all." tThe reference is to veterans of the Revolutionary War, who not being freeholders, were not freemen.
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any portion of our fellow citizens who are permanent residents of this state from a participation in the organ- ization of the government which is to affect the rights and privileges of all; that it is contrary to the spirit of a republican government for a minority to make laws that shall bind the majority, and that we will resist to the utmost of our ability, a government that shall not acknowledge the just rights of the whole people ; that we will use all honorable means within our power to have every American citizen who is a permanent resident in this state represented in the convention for framing a constitution that shall define the powers of the legislature and secure to the people the free exercise of their rights and privileges.
The Providence meeting added nine members to the committee appointed at Newport.
CALL FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION-The State committee, consisting of eighteen members, met July 20 and issued a call for a constitutional convention to meet in the State House at Providence on October 4. The basis for representation was one delegate for each 1000 inhabitants in a town, except Providence, which chose three delegates for each of six wards, or practically the apportionment rejected by the Assembly at the June session for the landholders' convention. Delegates were to be elected by "American male citizens of twenty- one years and upward," resident in the state one year preceding August 28, the day set for the election. This qualification was more liberal than that rejected by the Assembly in June. The call for the convention was accompanied by an address to the people of Rhode Island, in which were such expressions as these: "We say, in behalf of the great majority of the people -Give us our rights or we will take them. We ask nothing that is not clearly right, and we are determined to submit to nothing so manifestly wrong as the corrupt and anti-republican system of government which has so long subsisted in Rhode Island by the forbearance of the people. . ... Do not be deceived by the freeholders' convention called for November next. It is a gross fraud upon the people. The design of its originators was to crystalize, in a stronger form, the present statute provisions relative to suffrage, and to place them beyond the reach of amendment, except by the hand of force."
Thomas W. Dorr was not a member of the state committee, but he was an active member of and the leading spirit in the constitutional convention, which met, as called, on Monday, October 4, and by Saturday had completed the first draft of a constitution. The meetings were conducted in the State House in Providence, without interference or interruption by any representative or agent of the Charter government; the episode was simply another exempli- fication in Rhode Island, under circumstances of the utmost aggravation, of a splendid regard for the opinions of the common man. Of the October meetings the "Providence Journal" said : "It must be considered a curious spectacle, and one which no other country, if any other state, can present-a number of men assembled for the avowed purpose of overthrowing the government under which they live, without any authority from the legislative or executive powers, and yet proceeding without opposition and without hindrance. The monstrous tyranny of the state government, which was so loudly denounced, was not displayed on that occasion." The convention adjourned to November 15, to permit discussion by the people; it reassembled and reduced the constitution to final form on November 18.
DORR ON "THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE"-On the last day, Thomas W. Dorr, answering a question "whether it was understood that a majority of the present qualified freeholders was deemed requisite for the adoption of the People's Constitution?" delivered an address of 8000 words in which he discussed thoroughly the rights of the people: "Who are the people? and what have they a right to do? are vital questions in the great controversy which now engages so deeply the attention and interests of the community and state in which we live," said Dorr.
So far as the opinions of this convention are concerned, all its proceedings, from first to last, hold forth a most unequivocal and decisive answer to the question proposed. We are met here, not as delegates from the freeholding portion of our fellow-citizens, or from those who own no freeholds, or from those who hold one set of principles in party politics, state or national, or who entertain principles of an opposite char-
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acter ; but we have been sent by the people at large to do for them, in a representative capacity, what they believe themselves empowered and qualified to do themselves. . . . We ask for no authority from the legisla- ture to empower the people to assemble in convention, or to vote for or against the doings of that convention. We need, and can have, no higher commission for our proceedings than that which is derived from the sovereign power of the state. . . . I have heard much denunciation of the non-freeholders-much of that vitupera- tion which we might expect from men who inherit the spirit and sentiments of the Tories of the Revolution, and who are republicans only in name, and from the accident of being born in the territory of a republic. . . . Who has heard from any member of the legal profession, of whatever age or standing, anything like an argument to show that the people of this state have no right to proceed as they are now doing, and that their constitution, when adopted, will be unconstitutional ?
Dorr then accused the opponents of the suffrage movement of appeal for military aid from without the state, "because they have more confidence in foreign bayonets than in their own courage or cause, because they stand in dread of a just measure or reform, and, above all, of the combined movement of the yeomanry, the mechanics, and workingmen of this state, who will not listen to their empty promises any more than they will be deterred by their puny threats. Our appeal, on the other hand, is not to the cartridge box, but to the ballot box. What, then, is our system of government, and who have a right to change it? Our government is now nominally republican; but it is in reality an oligarchy, or a government of a few, through the gradual operation of an exclusive landed system of qualifications for voters."
Dorr then traced the history of the government of Rhode Island from the earliest times, emphasizing the democracy of earlier institutions, and declaring: "The principle of govern- ment by the major part of a pure democracy at first, and secondarily, for greater convenience, by representatives freely chosen for a short period, runs like a golden thread through all the
institutions of our state. . Down to the Revolution a majority of the people ruled the state. The Revolution was not needed to establish here the foundations of a democracy. They existed already, though the seeds of decay had been long before planted." Dorr then discussed the effect of the Revolution upon the location of sovereignty. "To whom did this residuary power, before vested in the King of England, this right of ultimate sovereignty, pass at the Revolution? .... The right of sovereignty must, therefore, have passed at the Revolution to the people of the colony of Rhode Island, or to a part of the people-to the many, or to the few. There is no third supposition in the case. If the ultimate sovereignty of this state, which involves the power to make and ordain forms of governments, passed over to any particular portion of the people less than the whole, there must have been at some time some disclaimer on the part of the residue of the people --- some express surrender-some act of conveyance and investment, which constituted a grant in full of all the rights of sov- ereignty of the existing generation of men; and we should then have to ask, what right has one generation to bind another in this manner ; and what rights of government can one genera- tion barter or give away, which their successors have not the same right to reassume? But no such disclaimer or surrender, or conveyance or investment, ever took place. . ... The sov- ereignty of the King of England passed, therefore, not to the Governor and Company of Rhode Island, but to the people, who, freeholders and non-freeholders, fought the battles of the Revolution, and to their descendants, who now stand in their places and claim their rights." Dorr discussed the absurdity of sovereignty associated with property, possession of which makes a man a ruler today, and dispossession a subject tomorrow. He cited the Rhode Island ratification of the Constitution of the United States in convention, with its declaration of principles, thus : "That there are certain natural rights, of which men, when they form a social compact, cannot deprive or divest their posterity. . . . . That all power is naturally vested in, and consequently derived from the people; that magistrates, therefore, are their trustees and agents, and at all times amenable to them. That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness. . .
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That election of representatives in the legislatures ought to be free and frequent; and all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the commu- nity, ought to have the right of suffrage." Dorr moved that the "ratification" be printed and circulated throughout the state.
Dorr next took up "waiver of right by disuse," discussing the reasons why the people of Rhode Island did not in the early stages of the Revolution reorganize their government under a constitution; holding that the government then was essentially republican, and that "the great majority voted," indeed, so many that the vote in the presidential election of 1840 was only 2600 larger than the popular vote in 1790, although the state had doubled in population in the fifty years. He next recited the futile movements from time to time in the half-century to obtain a constitution, an extension of suffrage, and a reapportionment of representation. He called attention to the facts that the people's convention did not deny the validity of the Charter government ; and that it had provided against the anarchy of no government by pro- vision for continuance of the existing government until the new government was completely in operation. He characterized the existing government as "a government by tacit consent," declaring that "the right to consent involves also the right to dissent." He ridiculed the con- tention that the landholders' convention was legal because called by the General Assembly, and the people's convention illegal because it was not called, as tantamount to an assertion that the people of Rhode Island had no right to change their form of government at will, asserting that a constitution that contained no literal provision for amendment left the power to amend or to abrogate and substitute with the people .* In concluding his address Dorr disclaimed any purpose to appeal to Congress (as suggested in the "Address to the Citizens of Rhode Island Who are Denied the Right of Suffrage") "for their aid in a question of state rights, which we believe the people are competent to settle in their own way and upon their own ground."
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