The signs shriek: “Illegals
Raise Our Taxes!” “Unions Destroy Capitalism and Free
Enterprise!” The Tea Partiers who brandish them absurdly claim a
monopoly on concern for the U.S. Constitution and knowledge of the will
of its authors. But do they care, or even know, that their cause runs
so starkly counter to the very effort that won Rhode Island its
constitution, and banished the 1663 Charter afforded us by the Crown?
That uprising was driven by downtrodden immigrants and laborites
disdained by the political establishment and business class. These
patriots fought laws barring those without property from voting and
giving advantage to rural towns over cities via the “rotten
borough” system.
In modern times, a leading Tea Party booster, the Rhode Island
Statewide Coalition — formerly, and tellingly, the Shoreline
Coalition — even fights to re-tie voting rights to property
ownership, so that the wealthy could vote in multiple jurisdictions.
(The notion that immigrants, laborers and their unions should be
celebrated might contradict the Tea Partiers’ stilted conception
of the federal Constitution. But their nullificationist and
secessionist sympathies would surely have them agree that the
sentiments of a state’s constitution should be considered the
higher authority.)
The Tea Partiers would have instinctively aligned with the Law and
Order Party’s governor in 1839-1843, Samuel Ward King, and
against the constitutionalist movement led by the landowning Thomas
Wilson Dorr, largely manned by disenfranchised recent English and Irish
immigrants.
Typically defiant, Rhode Island was the first state to abandon the
Brits, but the last to forsake the charter they’d granted us. In
the 1840s, we were still abiding by the laws granted by Charles II, in
our Charter of 1663. Under that charter, legislators were chosen via a
system resembling the Electoral College — that “rotten
boroughs” system — which skewed the allocation of seats
disproportionately in favor of the outlying communities. The franchise
was confined to landed free white men.
As immigrants flocked to industrializing cities, eventually only
one-third of even free white men were eligible to vote, and urban areas
had even less representation. After several failed attempts at reform
through legislative action — many led by Dorr, a state
representative from Federal Hill — suffrage supporters held a
“People’s Convention” and drafted a more liberal
constitution.
The suffragists hired as an agitator the great and infamous orator and
labor activist Seth Luther, whose life’s work had been to push
for government intervention to prevent business from exploiting
workers. Thousands marched in Providence and Newport. A proposed
constitution was put to an extra-legal vote, in which all white men
who’d lived in the state for one year could participate — a
broader if still narrow electorate — and it passed
overwhelmingly, even winning majority support of those who could vote
under the charter.
A legislature was elected, and a humble Dorr became “The People’s Governor.”
All the while, the anxious and paranoid Samuel King claimed the title
of governor under the charter, and had no intention of relinquishing
it. As Dorr mustered support from Democrats and populists throughout
the region, King even called on President John Tyler for military
support. The Dorrites launched an armed attack on the Dexter Street
arsenal on May 19, 1842. They were rebuffed, and retreated to
Chepachet. Dorr fled the state, and the movement fizzled out, hastened
by a martial-law crack-down by King and his troops.
But the charter government succumbed to the popular will, ratifying a
state constitution that dramatically expanded the right to vote, and
reapportioned the legislature. Dorr and Luther were found guilty of
treason but released a year later because of popular pressure. (Luther
lived for some time but died in a Vermont insane asylum; Dorr died a
broken man at 49 but is officially recognized as a former governor of
Rhode Island.)
As the General Assembly returns, progressives ought not cede the
mantles of patriotism and state pride to the far right. We must stand
by our support for immigrants, labor, and cities, and do so secure in
the knowledge that these values were the driving force behind the
adoption of the state constitution that we swear an oath to uphold.
(David Segal is the Democratic State Representative from District 2, Providence).
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