Three Governors and a Traitor
A Story of Hampton’s Chauncey F. Cleveland, Governor of Connecticut, and a Rhode Island Rebel
Providence, Rhode Island, May 18, 1842. 2:00 AM. Fog blankets the city. In the murky darkness, a rag-tag group of armed rebels marches through the streets to the state’s arsenal. Their leader: Thomas Dorr, recently elected governor in an unsanctioned election. Their mission: forcibly unseat the current government, headed by Governor Samuel King.
In 1841 – 1842, the year leading up to Dorr’s attack, Rhode Island was a hotbed of populist dissent. The government still followed the ancient royal charter granted by Charles II in 1663. Under the charter, only white men who owned property could vote and all towns had the same representation in the state legislature, regardless of population. Rhode Island in the mid-19th century had an increasingly industrialized economy, very different from the agriculture-based settlement of 1663. The charter disenfranchised those who had migrated to the cities to work in new industries concentrated there, including immigrants.
Public sentiment supported replacing the charter with a state constitution. A “Suffrage Association” led by Dorr demanded reform, but King and the legislature rejected their appeals for a constitutional convention. Unfazed, Dorr and his followers boldly held their own constitutional convention and adopted a constitution. Voters, including a majority of those eligible to vote under the charter, overwhelmingly ratified the constitution. Unsurprisingly, the sitting legislature of rural elites refused to recognize the new constitution that eroded their power, maintaining that their authority was granted under the charter and the vote on the constitution was meaningless.
The Dorrites refused to accept “no” as an answer. They held their own elections, established a new legislature and elected Dorr governor. Rhode Island now had two legislatures and two governors. Furious, Governor King declared martial law to put an end to “lawless assemblages”.
That May night, loyalist militia and volunteers, including Dorr’s own father and uncle, were waiting at the arsenal, ready to defend King’s government against the Dorrites’ attack. When Dorr arrived at the arsenal with his troops, he demanded that the Charterites surrender. They refused. His attempt at peaceful negotiation having failed, Dorr ordered his men to fire one of his two cannons at the armory. Dorr’s men lit the fuse of the first cannon. They waited, ears covered against the anticipated blast. Nothing happened. Undeterred, Dorr ordered the second cannon fired. It “flashed and boomed”, but didn’t fire. The wet weather may have dampened the powder, but the failure to fire certainly dampened the Dorrites’ rebellious ardor. Most of Dorr’s followers ran, deserting the man they had followed with hopes of bringing a constitutional government and expanded suffrage to Rhode Island. Dorr signaled retreat to the handful of faithful still with him, his dream in ashes. He fled the state.
Dorr was not a man to give up his cause easily. He returned to Rhode Island the following month and made one more attempt to hold a People’s Convention in Chepachet with armed supporters, gathering on Acote’s Hill. King called out the state militia. Dorr realized he was outnumbered and withdrew without firing a shot. He fled Rhode Island again. King offered a $5000 reward for his capture.
Connecticut’s governor at the time was Chauncey F. Cleveland, an attorney from Hampton and ardent supporter of civil rights. He watched the events in Rhode Island with mounting disgust at King’s actions, especially the declaration of martial law. He could not have known, however, that he would soon be drawn into the fray.
King believed Dorr was in Connecticut and wrote a letter to Cleveland asking for assistance. The exchange of letters between the two bristles with anger and, on Cleveland’s side, contempt. King wrote, “Sir: — Allow me to introduce to your acquaintance the Hon. Lemuel H. Arnold,…to confer with you relative to the requisition for Thomas VV. Dorr, a fugitive from justice, and believed to be concealed in the State of Connecticut…” Cleveland refused to assist him in locating Dorr, but King persisted. “… (I) am not advised therefore of the grounds of your refusal…I would further request that you will afford every aid and facility to accomplish his purpose to Gov. Arnold, who is appointed the Agent of this Government to receive said Dorr, and bring him to this State, and deliver him to the legal authorities thereof, to be dealt with as to law and justice shall appertain.”
Cleveland wrote King that Dorr was not in Connecticut. “Executive Department. Hampton, Aug. 13, 1842. Sir: — . . . When…I received your requisition…, it was known that Mr. Dorr was not within the jurisdiction of this State, but was known to be in the State of New York.” Cleveland was outraged at King’s offer of a reward, equating it to an invasion of Connecticut. “I noticed your offer of a heavy pecuniary reward, for the delivery of Mr. Dorr within the State of Rhode Island: an offer which, in the connection with the allegation of my refusal to surrender him, could be regarded in no other light than designed to induce an invasion of the territory of Connecticut.” Cleveland further maintained that even if Dorr were in Connecticut, there was no legal authority under which he would return him to King because Dorr had been fighting for fairness and the rights of the people of Rhode Island. Not even Victorian letter-writing etiquette could mask his contempt. “… the unlawful seizure and forcible abduction of an American citizen … the mere suggestion of a suspicion, or an alleged belief of the concealment of a fugitive, without the slightest evidence to justify it, can impose no obligation for the interposition of the Executive authority of a State…A public warrant should never be made the mere plaything of suspicion, nor the instrument of private interests…I say to you, therefore, in all frankness, that if Thomas W. Dorr were now openly in this State, I should feel myself bound to decline a compliance with your demand …Under the circumstances which Mr. Dorr and those with him in the late unhappy controversy in Rhode Island have been placed, I cannot regard them as the proper subjects for the executive power of surrender, under the constitution of the United States; nor can I concur in the policy of the oppressive measures sought through your requisition”.
Cleveland blasted King’s resistance to a more representative government in Rhode Island, explicitly supported Dorr and his suffrage movement, and vehemently denied that Dorr committed treason. He called it a “great moral question”.
“…after various unsuccessful attempts, on the part of large masses of the people, to secure a constitution of government, a Convention of delegates from the various towns in the State assembled…and agree upon a Constitution or form of government, to be submitted to the people for approval …and it is claimed that it was adopted by a large majority of all the citizens of the State, over twenty- one years of age, and by a number of votes far exceeding any number ever given under the existing government. It is therefore claimed by a large portion of the People of Rhode Island, that this Constitution, thus adopted, became, and is the supreme law of the State; and that the authority of the former officers of, government, was thereby superceded. Under this Constitution; and according to its provisions, Thomas W. Dorr was elected Governor of the State by the people — took the oath of office — and attempted to discharge its duties…all the acts done by him which are claimed to constitute treason were done in the exercise of the duties of his office as Governor…he had not only a right, but, it was his indispensable duty to do the very acts in which his alleged treason consists.” Cleveland excoriated King for instituting martial law prior to any armed action by the Dorrites. “In a time of profound peace, and when no rebellion or insurrection exists to justify it, a military authority is set up which from its very nature, must supercede all civil government, and suspend that invaluable safeguard of civil liberty…”
Although Dorr lost the battle, he won the war. In September 1842, the Rhode Island General Assembly framed a new constitution that expanded suffrage even beyond that proposed by Dorr. It was ratified by the Charterites.
When Dorr again returned to Rhode Island in 1843, he was arrested, tried, found guilty of treason and sentenced to life and solitary confinement. However, the public was outraged by this harsh sentence, leading to his release in 1845 and the restoration of his civil rights in 1851. In 1854, the judgment of treason was officially set aside, but Dorr continued to suffer ill health resulting from his imprisonment and died that same year.
Cleveland advocated for many causes throughout his political career in Connecticut and the United States Congress. While governor, he ended imprisonment for debt, passed a child labor law and obtained funding for an insane asylum. He helped organize Connecticut’s new anti-slavery Republican Party and was an elector for Lincoln. He died on the steps of the Congregational Church in Hampton in 1887 at the age of 88.
Today, Rhode Island lists Dorr as governor from May 1, 1842 to January 23, 1843, along with King.
Jean Wierzbinski