Essay 8-A: The Spread Of Universal Male Suffrage In The Early 1800s

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

Rhode Island, in 1842, was the venue of a skirmish grandiosely called the Dorr War, after Thomas Dorr [Door], the leader of the ultimately losing side. That skirmish, in turn, was rooted in the broader political struggle playing out in the United States between adherents to the founding generation’s republicanism and the increasingly emboldened “common people” embracing the ideas and shibboleths [Shi-buh-leth] of Jacksonian Democracy.

Although the Constitution itself is silent on the point, most states in the founding decades required voters to possess a freehold estate in land, or in a few more democratic-minded states, to meet a surrogate standard based on otherwise taxable personal property. The requirement rested on classic republican doctrine generally endorsed by Americans at the time. The broad propertied middle and upper classes were the main sources of public revenue. Thus, they could safely be trusted to act wisely due to their keener interest in the overall effects of public policies and to act more independently because their property insulated them from vote-buying schemes and similar base enticements. Those with “skin in the game” would decide based on reflection and reason, not enthusiasm and passion.

The succeeding generations pushed for broader popular participation in formal political processes. This democratization in the first half of the 19th century led to the elimination in state constitutions of property ownership requirements to vote in state and federal elections. As a result, by mid-century, adult white male citizens generally could vote, as could some free adult Black males. The expansion of the electoral franchise continued over the next two generations, gradually granting a formal right to vote to non-white voters and to women. This historical current swept through Rhode Island as well, albeit in fits and starts. As in other states, the drive for constitutional reform of the electoral franchise was accompanied by demands to reform the framework of representation in the legislature.

At independence, Rhode Island kept its last royal charter as its state constitution, with changes made to reflect its new status. That charter, a generally progressive document for its time when granted by King Charles II in 1663, allowed only specified landowners to vote. Moreover, the charter apportioned representation in the state legislature on a geographical basis, with a specific number, at least two, allotted to each town, more for some larger towns.

Over the nearly two centuries of the charter’s existence, the population of Rhode Island had grown. Even more pressing, the legislature had become malapportioned [mal-uh-por-tioned] because some towns grew more than others as the economy changed due to industrialization. That industrialization also increased the number of landless male adults compared to the relatively stagnant number of qualified landowners, thereby exacerbating popular frustration and sense of disenfranchisement. Those landless adults were not an urban proletariat. Many were financially successful members of the commercial middle and upper classes.

The legislature stubbornly refused to drop the property requirement or to reapportion itself. In reaction, a popular movement, headed by Dorr, developed sufficient mass and political coherence to generate its own constitutional convention in 1841. The convention proposed a new constitution that extended the right to vote to adult white males without a property ownership requirement. It also reapportioned the legislature. This “People’s Constitution” was approved in December 1841 by an overwhelming majority of voters qualified under the new standard, as well as by a majority of voters who met the existing charter’s freehold qualifications.

Both factions held elections in April 1842 for a new legislature and executive offices. Dorr was elected governor in Providence under the People’s Constitution; Samuel King was re-elected in Newport under the Charter. At that point, the Charter government declared the new political structure illegal. After a failed attack on the state’s armory in Providence, the Dorrite movement collapsed. Dorr left the state. The Charter government proceeded to round up leading Dorrites, especially those who had participated in the Providence fracas. The controversy had run its course, at least as to armed conflict.

Dorr and his followers fervently justified their actions as “peaceable revolution” grounded in popular sovereignty. For them, the people, as the ultimate source of legitimacy for a government resting on consent of the governed, could not be controlled in foundational matters of self-government, not even by existing formal procedures for constitutional change.

That idea had gained currency during the latter part of the 18th century. Thomas Jefferson relied on it in the Declaration of Independence. In 1787, when Anti-Federalists challenged the proposed method of ratification in Article VII of the Constitution as violating the procedure prescribed in the Articles of Confederation, James Madison responded that any such deficiency would be overridden if the people, as the supreme authority, approved the Constitution. James Wilson, another delegate to the 1787 convention, likewise declared to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention that the “people may change the constitutions whenever and however they please. This is a right, of which no positive institution can ever deprive them.”

Those same arguments were made in favor of state constitutional conventions during the Age of Jackson. Their opponents claimed that such unbridled majoritarianism would promote instability, anarchy, and disrespect for the law. If one faction could go outside established forms and legitimize constitutional change simply by rousing a majority of the people to its side, so could any other faction. As Daniel Webster urged, such change must occur through formal procedures and within established channels, lest such unrestrained exercises of popular sovereignty threaten personal liberty and political stability. The debate over what, if any, limits exist to how the consent of the governed can be expressed peacefully when the existing order appears unresponsive to fundamental matters of public concern was not formally settled in Rhode Island in 1842. It remains unresolved today.

An expert on constitutional law, and member of the Southwestern Law School faculty, Professor Joerg W. Knipprath has been interviewed by print and broadcast media on a number of related topics ranging from recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to presidential succession. He has written opinion pieces and articles on business and securities law as well as constitutional issues, and has focused his more recent research on the effect of judicial review on the evolution of constitutional law. He has also spoken on business law and contemporary constitutional issues before professional and community forums, and serves as a Constituting America Fellow.

Click here to receive our Daily 90-Day Study Essay emailed directly to your inbox.

Click here for the essay schedule with today’s essay and previously published essays hyperlinked.

PRINT ARTICLE