Overview of the Dorr Rebellion
In 1842 Rhode Island was torn between rival governors, separate legislative assemblies, warring militias, and two competing visions of the nature of American constitutionalism. One vision held that a majority of the people possessed the right to alter or abolish their system of government, regardless of procedures provided by the existing government; the other was predicated on the rule of law and the belief that a government could only be amended through prescribed legal means.
Although relatively obscure to most Americans and many historians, Thomas Wilson Dorr's attempt at extralegal reform involved nothing less than "the fate of written constitutions," to borrow a phrase from Alabama Congressman Dixon Lewis. The rebellion was the most important domestic crisis of John Tyler's presidency. In addition, both houses of Congress and the federal judiciary weighed in on the controversy.
On one side of the Rhode Island constitutional divide stood the People's Governor, Thomas Wilson Dorr, whose reform effort was predicated on the belief that the people possessed an inherent right, as Thomas Jefferson noted in the Declaration of Independence, to revise their constitutions whenever they chose. Dorr urged his followers not to rely on the court system for a redress of their grievances. He asked what if the "judges should decide that the People in a state have no right to alter or amend their institutions, without the authority of the legislature." An adverse decision would "abrogate the Declaration of Independence and the American system. On the other side stood the aptly named Law and Order Party, or the "legal party," as it was known in conservative circles. (Authored by Dr. Erik J. Chaput, 2012)
Cover image: Portrait of Thomas Wilson Dorr
This image was engraved from a daguerreotype of Thomas W. Dorr and was executed by Archibald L. Dick of New York City. This engraving first appeared in John O'Sullivan's United States Magazine and Democratic Review for August 1842 and was accompanied with a five page sketch of the life of Thomas Dorr. The image proved popular as it was also used to illustrate Edmund Burke's House of Representatives Report No. 546 investigating the interference of the executive in the affairs of Rhode Island and Might and Right by Frances Harriet Whipple Green both published in 1844 as well as Dan King's Life and Times of Thomas Wilson Dorr published in 1859.