Reminiscences of Rhode Island in 1842 as Connected with the Dorr Rebellion ... PDF Download

Author: Elisha Dyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dorr Rebellion, 1842
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Author: Erik J. Chaput
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700619240
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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In 1840s Rhode Island, the state’s seventeenth-century colonial charter remained in force and restricted suffrage to property owners, effectively disenfranchising 60 percent of potential voters. Thomas Wilson Dorr’s failed attempt to rectify that situation through constitutional reform ultimately led to an armed insurrection that was quickly quashed—and to a stiff sentence for Dorr himself. Nevertheless, as Erik Chaput shows, the Dorr Rebellion stands as a critical moment of American history during the two decades of fractious sectional politics leading up to the Civil War. This uprising was the only revolutionary republican movement in the antebellum period that claimed the people’s sovereignty as the basis for the right to alter or abolish a form of government. Equally important, it influenced the outcomes of important elections throughout northern states in the early 1840s and foreshadowed the breakup of the national Democratic Party in 1860. Through his spellbinding and engaging narrative, Chaput sets the rebellion in the context of national affairs—especially the abolitionist movement. While Dorr supported the rights of African Americans, a majority of delegates to the “People’s Convention” favored a whites-only clause to ensure the proposed constitution’s passage, which brought abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, and Abby Kelley to Rhode Island to protest. Meanwhile, Dorr’s ideology of the people’s sovereignty sparked profound fears among Southern politicians regarding its potential to trigger slave insurrections. Drawing upon years of extensive archival research, Chaput’s book provides the first scholarly biography of Dorr, as well as the most detailed account of the rebellion yet published. In it, Chaput tackles issues of race and gender and carries the story forward into the 1850s to examine the transformation of Dorr’s ideology into the more familiar refrain of popular sovereignty. Chaput demonstrates how the rebellion’s real aims and significance were far broader than have been supposed, encompassing seemingly conflicting issues including popular sovereignty, antislavery, land reform, and states’ rights. The People’s Martyr is a definitive look at a key event in our history that further defined the nature of American democracy and the form of constitutionalism we now hold as inviolable.

Author: Arthur May Mowry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutions
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Author: Jacob FRIEZE
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Author: Margaret Bingham Stillwell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Author: Jacob Frieze
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rhode Island
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Author: Arthur May Mowry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Author: Joyce M. Botelho
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dorr Rebellion, 1842
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Author: Rory Raven
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614231044
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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The remarkable story of the bloody conflict that erupted in 1841 Rhode Island over allowing non-property owners to vote. The portly Rhode Island aristocrat was hardly the image of the people’s champion—but in 1841, Thomas Dorr became just that. At a time when only white male landowners could vote, the idealistic Dorr envisioned a more democratic state. In October of that year, the People’s Convention ratified a new constitution that extended voting rights to those without land, and Dorr was named governor. That act would spark a small civil war, and violence erupted as the people of the state stood sharply divided in a conflict that reached the president and United States Supreme Court. Author Rory Raven charts the tumultuous and ultimately tragic history of a man and a movement that were too far ahead of their time.

Author: Mary Lou Hawkinson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dorr Rebellion, 1842
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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