Interview
In this video, Dr. Erik Chaput interviews legal scholar Marcus Gadson. In his book, Sedition: How America’s Constitutional Order Emerged From Violent Crisis, Professor Gadson chronicles the Dorr Rebellion in an engaging and in-depth chapter that makes use of the material of the Dorr Rebellion Project website. Gadson is currently an Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Read an excerpt from Professor Gadson’s book below:
For most Americans, pursuing constitutional reform looks like advocating on behalf of amendments or arguing why a court should interpret a constitutional provision in a new way. For Thomas Dorr, it looked like leading an unsanctioned constitutional convention and raising a militia to implement the constitution it produced by force. The resulting struggle pitted him against Rhode Island authorities, the federal government, and his parents…
The failures over the years to modernize Rhode Island’s suffrage requirements did not quiet complaints. To illustrate the injustice of property requirements to vote, one newspaper claimed that “[w]e have known a tory, who fled his country in the revolutionary war, and joined her enemies, subsequently return, enjoy the right of franchise, and be elected to responsible offices, because he was rich. We have seen the man who faced the cannon’s mouth in his country’s defence, return from the field of battle, bearing honorable scars, driven by law from the ballot box, because he was poor!” In 1840, a politically diverse group of citizens interested in extending the franchise formed the Rhode Island Suffrage Association. As the group made inroads in public opinion, the legislature decided to call a new constitutional convention in February 1841. However, they guaranteed widespread skepticism of what became known as the Landholders’ Convention when they permitted only property owners to select delegates.
The Suffrage Association also called a convention and permitted all adult males to elect delegates. Rhode Island authorities condemned what became known as the “People’s Convention” as illegitimate and illegal. Nonetheless, the convention went forward. It met at almost the exact same time as the Landholders’ Convention. The dueling constitutional conventions presented Rhode Islanders with two dramatically different constitutional visions.
With Dorr playing a prominent role, the People’s Convention made significant changes to the status quo. First, delegates redefined “the people” who were sovereign. They included a variation of language from the Declaration of Independence and insisted that “[a]ll men are created free and equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain natural, inherent and inalienable Rights…” Such language was and is common in state constitutions, but was an innovation in Rhode Island. King Charles II’s charter never recognized such a principle. Consistent with this language, delegates abolished property restrictions on the right to vote. Instead, every white man over 21 who had resided in the state for a year could generally vote. Ordinary Rhode Islanders—including thousands of Irish immigrants—would have a much greater voice in government.
While the People’s Convention expanded the definition of “the people,” it took several steps to accurately determine their will and enhance their power. First, it gave more seats in the legislature to growing areas like Providence and fewer to rural areas, which had previously held a stranglehold on power. When combined with liberalized voting requirements, this change meant the legislature more accurately represented Rhode Island as a whole. It also shifted political power from the property-holding elites who had dominated state politics to laborers and non-elites.
Second, it combatted electoral fraud by establishing secret ballot elections and imposing strict registration requirements. In past elections, employers and landlords often threatened to fire workers and remove tenants if they didn’t vote as directed. Because there was no secret ballot, those employers and landlords could monitor how their workers and tenants voted. To further game the system, employers would give property to their workers temporarily so those workers could vote, then force those workers to vote how the employers wanted. Though we take secret ballots for granted today, in 1842, they marked a major advance for election integrity.
Third, the People’s Convention conferred on Rhode Islanders “a right to give instructions to their Senators and Representatives.” In the 18th century, communities often gave their representatives to colonial legislatures binding instructions about how to vote on particular matters. Legislators who received such instructions could no longer make an independent judgment about how to vote on those issues. The practice was controversial but endorsed in several early state constitutions. Rhode Islanders could now expect to exert more direct control over their legislators.
While the People’s Constitution commenced a revolution in the fortunes of formerly disenfranchised white men, it confirmed the subordinate place of formerly enslaved Blacks. Earlier in the 19th century, Black men could vote if they possessed the required amount of property, but they were disenfranchised in 1822. Black men working to restore their voting rights hoped Dorr would aid their cause. Dorr obliged and introduced a petition to enfranchise Black men. One delegate who spoke in favor of the petition called the rejection of Black voting “a libel upon the Great Eternal…” He argued that the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—required the convention to accept Black voting. Many other delegates saw the justice of allowing Blacks to vote, but believed political reality prevented them from doing so. After hearing testimony that many white voters wouldn’t support the People’s Constitution if it permitted Black suffrage, one delegate contended that “it was the duty of the Convention not to sacrifice some 16,000 men because they could not include some two or three hundred…they were bound to act ‘for the greatest good of the greatest number.’” Their decision was lamentable, but unfortunately, understandable. As we saw in chapter one, racism in the North ran as deep as it did in the South. Although most northerners were antislavery, that didn’t mean they saw Blacks as equals. By 1842, many northern states joined the South in refusing to let Blacks vote. Northern cities had seen frequent race riots where white mobs victimized innocent Blacks. Just a few years later, the principle of “separate but equal” originated in a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision finding that segregated schools didn’t violate the Massachusetts Constitution. In this context, the fear that enfranchising Blacks would hurt the People’s Constitution’s chances of ratification was a logical one. Acting on that fear would have fateful consequences.
Despite Dorr and some other men with similar ideological commitments participating in the Landholders’ Convention, the final constitution reflected little of their worldview. It refused to declare that “all men were free and equal.” Like the People’s Constitution, it restricted the franchise to white men. But instead of abolishing property requirements outright, the Landholders’ Convention applied them to some Rhode Islanders but not others. Native-born American citizens who had resided in Rhode Island for two years could vote without owning property. However, native-born American citizens who had only resided in the state for one year had to own $134 of property. Rhode Islanders who had immigrated to the United States and become naturalized American citizens could only vote if they owned at least $134 in property. The move deliberately excluded thousands of Dorr’s Irish supporters and guaranteed that they would continue to support the People’s Constitution. The Landholders’ Constitution didn’t require secret ballots in elections. It left in place a senate that gave rural areas and small towns disproportionate representation and rejected giving the people the right to instruct representatives.
No compromise was possible between these two constitutional visions because they reflected irreconcilable answers to the fundamental questions of how to define “the people,” how the people should pursue constitutional change, what the greatest threat of tyranny was, and what “liberty” meant. They also reflected conflicting interests. If these stakes weren’t high enough, both sides appealed to the founding fathers for support, making the contest about the meaning and legacy of the American Revolution as well.
The Landholders’ Convention narrowly defined “the people.” Before the American Revolution, all colonies except one required voters to own property. Several of the founding fathers believed that men without property could not make good voters. Propertyless men were dependents like women and children who rightfully—in their view—held no political power. The Landholders’ Convention grudgingly permitted native-born Americans who had resided in the state for two years to vote without owning property, but insisted on property qualifications for everyone else. Expanding the franchise even more threatened the political dominance of the economic elites accustomed to governing Rhode Island.
The People’s Convention and the Landholders’ Convention disagreed on whether state residents could lawfully draft a constitution without permission from the government in power. There had been unsanctioned constitutional conventions before 1841. Americans disagreed about whether those conventions were legitimate. In a document written to demonstrate that the People’s Constitution was lawful, Dorr argued that the people had an inherent right to change their constitution even outside of formal lawmaking channels. In his view, the people were the boss and the legislature the employee. Just as a company boss would not have to get an employee’s approval to change company rules, Dorr believed that the people did not have to get the legislature’s approval to change the constitution. As support for his argument, Dorr appealed to the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and George Washington’s farewell address. James Wilson—whom George Washington appointed to the Supreme Court—confirms that Dorr offered a plausible reading of founding-era history. In Pennsylvania’s debates over whether to ratify the U.S. Constitution, Wilson argued that “in our governments, the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power remains in the people. As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures, so the people are superior to our constitutions. Indeed, the superiority, in this last instance, is much greater; for the people possess over our constitutions control in act, as well as right.” Wilson agreed with Dorr that this meant “the people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please.”
In important ways, the People’s Convention was a logical successor to the American Revolution. Before the Revolution, colonists organized into groups such as the Sons of Liberty to resist English policy and then used those groups to govern society outside the formal English political structure. They ultimately rejected the King and Parliament’s authority. It was in this context that Americans wrote the first state constitutions. Consistent with this history, the People’s Constitution—like most other state constitutions and the Declaration of Independence— recognized that “[t]he PEOPLE have therefore an inalienable and indefeasible right, in their original, sovereign and unlimited capacity, to ordain and institute government, and, in the same capacity, to alter, reform, or totally change the same, whenever their safety or happiness requires.”For Dorr and many delegates, this commitment was ideological. But for many others who didn’t own property, it was practical. The legislature was dominated by property owners actively hostile to their interests. The legislature controlled the political process. The only way they could enter the political process was to move the legislature out of the way.
The Landholders’ Constitution never embraced popular sovereignty. Nowhere did it assert something like “all political power is vested in and derived from the people only.” Nor did it say in its Declaration of Rights that the people had a right to “alter or amend” government. To be sure, most delegates to the Landholders’ Convention would have said they believed in popular sovereignty if asked. Still, it is telling that their constitution refused to explicitly endorse the concept. To the extent they did accept popular sovereignty, they believed that existing institutions had a right to channel it. In this, they could cite none other than Samuel Adams, famously associated with the Boston Tea Party in 1773, where angry colonists dumped British tea into the ocean to protest Parliament imposing taxes on them without their consent. In a letter to Noah Webster, Samuel Adams began by acknowledging “County Conventions & popular Committees servd [sic] an excellent Purpose when they were first in Practice.” But then he cautioned that “it is my Opinion, with Deferrence [sic] to the Opinions of other Men, that as we now have constitutional & regular Governments and all our Men in Authority depend upon the annual & free Elections of the People, we are safe without them.”
Sedition: How America’s Constitutional Order Emerged From Violent Crisis
Copyright and Use
Excerpt from Sedition: How America’s Constitutional Order Emerged From Violent Crisis by Marcus Alexander Gadson. © 2025 New York University Press. This chapter excerpt is reproduced with permission and made available for noncommercial educational use.
Any further use, including reproduction or redistribution, requires permission from the publisher.