 So thank you very much for the kind invitation to be here today, I was actually here a few weeks ago, my cousin graduated, it was the first time in a long time I had been on the campus. My cousin is now off to Jacksonville, Florida as his new post, but he spent nine, he said very lovely months here, relaxing, getting a degree, working fairly hard, but not too hard. He was out in his boat most of the time, which he had a great, wonderful dock down here, it was a place to keep the boat for most of the summer, but once again thank you, and how many of you have heard of the Dorybellion before, many of you, wonderful, I was at a good fortune this morning to be on a local radio show over at the station, just in Newport and talking with several of the people there. I have children that are studying this right now for the National History Day competition, so I'm excited, they're using the book and a website that I've made that I'd like to talk to you maybe at the end about and what's on the website and how it can be used for those of you who are teachers or are interested in reading some of Dore's letters, I've digitized quite a few of them so you can take a look at them for yourself. But since we are indeed here in Newport, let me begin, I talk this way. In June of 1844, in the upper chambers of the colony house on Newport's Washington Square, Thomas Wilson Dore stood trial for treason. Two years earlier, Dore forcibly tried to implement the People's Constitution, a document under which he was elected governor and that he believed had replaced the antiquated colonial charter. Prior to Dore's election as the People's Governor in April 1842, Chief Justice Job Durfey from Tiverton had departed from all rules of judicial propriety and toured the state speaking out against Dore in the People's Constitution. Now Durfey, as I said, a Tiverton native had the responsibility of presiding over a trial that could very well end with a trip to the gallows for Dore. Shortly after he graduated from Harvard in 1823, Thomas Dore entered into a philosophical debate with his younger brother, Alan, about whether it was waffle to commit a crime for the greater good of the whole. Alan was in his final year of study at Phillips Exeter Academy, his brother's alma mater, and wanted to debate the question with his fellow students. A person might indeed be arraigned and perhaps condemned before civil tribunal, wrote Alan, but he would not suffer for any crime morally imputable to him. Twenty years later, Alan's older brother received the unique opportunity to put his understanding of popular sovereignty to the ultimate test. Indeed in many ways he failed. Now he was on trial facing the judge that just weeks before had sentenced the Irish immigrant John Gordon to the gallows for the murder of Amasa Sprague, a wealthy Cranston industrialist. Dore was well acquainted with Job Durfey. In the 1830s he appeared before him numerous times as an attorney in high profile cases. He surely knew that his chances of walking out of that courtroom of free man were not good. Although he was assisted at the trial by Newport attorney George Turner, Dore offered his own summation of his actions that nearly tore this state apart in the spring of 1842. His goal was to turn the table on the attorney general of the state, a man named Joseph Blake. A student of American history, Dore certainly knew the significance of the Newport Colony House in the Revolutionary Era. Hopefully some of you have been in there. In 1773 the building served as the meeting site of the Commission of Inquiry into the burning of the British Revenue Schooner, the Gaspie. No one was found guilty as you know of that crime. On July 20th, 1776, the Patriot merchant John Handy read the Declaration of Independence from the steps of the Georgia style building. Most importantly for Dore, the process of drafting 18 amendments to the 1787 Constitution began in the Colony House. The ideas expressed in the 2nd and 3rd Amendments, which were forwarded on to Congress, focused on the power of the people and drew directly from Roger Williams' 1644 tract, the Bloody Tenant, in which Williams forcibly argued that the sovereign original and foundation of civil power lie in the people. While his trial Dore articulated a political vision that drew from the state's celebrated founder, indeed Dore's mother could trace her lineage directly to the men who accompanied Williams to Rhode Island in the early 17th century. The 3rd Amendment that Rhode Island sent to the New Federal Congress in 1790 said that the powers of government may be resumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary. This was precisely the governing ideology that drove Dore to bypass the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1841, call a constitutional convention, write a new constitution for the state that removes stringent property qualifications then in place for nearly 50 years, and send out the finished product to be ratified by the people. If there be any ultimate sovereignty as doubtless there is said Dore, it cannot be in the government, but must be in the people, in their original capacity, standing on the outside of political society, living under government by consent and for the general good and possessing of consequences the right to change it when the greatest good shall require it. Dore argued in court that in actuality he did not commit treason at all. He was the lawful governor in the state under the people's constitutions. His opponents in contrast were concerned with the work of pulling down the new government and therefore committed all the treason of 42 said Dore. The object of the citizenry, at least of 14,000 people that supported the people's constitution, was not to overthrow the government said Dore, but to continue it under the definite forms of a written constitution that the state needed. When this new government went into effect in May 42 said Dore, the old government ceased to exist. Dore compared his plight during his trial to the persecution of Galileo. He insisted that the act of establishing the people's government was not treasonable but was completely legally and constitutionally justifiable. If he had eared at all he said Dore, he was left with the satisfaction of having eared with the greatest statesmen and the highest authorities and with the great majority of the people of the United States. The fact that Dore could find a way to restate his political philosophy is something to marvel at, given the fact that he was tried in the very anti-Dore right stronghold of Newport. There is little room for doubt about the strength of Dore's conviction that citizens had the right to change their formal government. According to Dore, the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the success of the revolution itself meant that the right to the revolution was an inherent right in the people, which they could at all times peacefully exercise. He drew directly from the bedrock principles of 1776 and almost everything he did. It mattered little, however, for the Chief Justice. His charge to the jury left no room for doubt. It may be gentlemen that he really believed himself to be governor of this state and that he acted under this delusion, said the longtime Chief Justice. However, this may go to extenuate the offense. It is no defense to an indictment for the violation of any law, for the defendant decided to come to court and say, I thought that I was, but exercising a constitutional right and I claim an acquittal on the ground of a mistake. Durfee said there was no doubt that Dore's action constituted treason. He was found guilty of the crime, put on a ferry immediately to Providence on June 27th, 1844, where he entered the new state prison on the Cove. Have you ever been shopping in Providence Place Mall? You've been there. That's when they were building it. They excavated the old prison. Ironically, when Dore was in the state legislature a decade before, he led the build that led to the construction of that very building. So why Rhode Island? Why 1841 and 42? And why this very curious man, Thomas Dore, and that's a Degora type of Dore owned by Frank Moran, who is a descendant of Dore, and lives in the house on Benefit Street to this day. The origins of what has become known as Dore's Rebellion lay deep in the state's history. The political culture, some of you may well know, of Rhode Island was unique. Certainly remains unique to this day. I had the good fortune of being on the radio, as I mentioned to you this morning, and I was supposed to be on for about 15 minutes, and that lasted about four before a caller came in from the DOT about the Soconac River bridge. So my time on here was unfortunately cut short. Democracy flourished in Rhode Island under the charter, and last year, you probably have read in the journal, we celebrated the 350th anniversary of that document granted by King Charles II. However, restrictive franchise clauses based on stringent property qualifications prevented new ways of immigrants. Most of them were indeed Irish Catholics. Some of you probably well know the labor they provided for a dear fort close to us here. In the 1820s and 30s, they couldn't enter the body politic. The charter restricted suffrage to those men possessing real estate, a figure that was set at $134. Thereby it was disenfranchising most of the population of the commercial and manufacturing districts who were certainly renting their ownings and they didn't have the ability to buy. So connected with this, for those of you who know the history of Jacksonian America, the election of 1840, huge rallies were connected with this monumental election, a movement from below in many ways and getting more people energized into the American political system. The rise of a stable two-party system in Jacksonian period led to increased efforts by political parties, in this case the Democrats and the Whigs to seek out groups of people that had previously been locked out of the process, workers, laborers, abolitionists and indeed women's rights advocates began using the Declaration of Independence to justify their quest for equality in their opposition as they often put it to tyranny. Thomas Dorr believed that citizenship was not a privilege to be enjoyed only by those with landed wealth, but a right of every adult male vested in his person rather than in his property. As the winter turned to spring, the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, and this is in 1841, began to demonstrate loudly for their cause. This is a wonderful sketch of an artist's improvidence, improvidence coved there, not too far from what was known as Jefferson Plain, which is now the lawn of the State House. In April, May and July, there were mass meetings held in Providence and right here indeed in Newport, with turnouts estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 people at each event clamoring for their rights. These were some of the ribbons that were worn, and a few that have survived, and I'll just read for those you can't see in the back, one of them says, the people of the sovereign power, we will have our rights as the ribbon on the far left. The May 5th one, which is actually from right here in Newport, I am for a constitution and equal rights, and I am an American citizen. And I should point out women were also there clamoring for rights as well, very active with this Rhode Island Suffrage Association. Former Governor William Gibbs from right here in Newport though linked the activities of this group and their penchant for majority rule with the rule of a mob. These gatherings though provided clear evidence to a lot of moderates that the suffrage movement was well supported by the people, and concessions needed to be made before things got out of hand. Former Democratic Governor John Brown Francis, who lives in Warwick, his homestead is still there, a friend of mine named Henry Brown, lives in his home. He was one of the moderates. He said, I ardently believe that the General Assembly said Francis should have moved to meet the demands of the Suffrage Association in order simply to avoid political unrest. When he attended one of these gatherings and wrote about it, Francis said it was at this time that I urged certain leaders, quote, to agree to let the people in, as they were in the humor to adopt any constitution, having in it the panacea of free suffrage, any pill, I love that line, any pill gilded in this way would have been swallowed by the Suffrage Association. Let the people in now before things get out of hand. Francis, as I talk about in the book, and that's an image of him there, as unfortunately his letters until now had never been really touched, was a moderate, but as a state, and this is probably true today of our American political system, was so polarized between supporters of door and those who wanted to see door tried for treason, there was very little room in the middle for men, sound men like John Brown Francis and his good friend Elijah Potter, who lived down near the University of Rhode Island to operate. They were not able to broker a compromise. So let's go back quickly to door. Why does he emerge? As I talk a lot about doors early life in the book, and what I often find interesting at these talks when people come up to me at the end is they didn't realize the door grew up in one of the wealthiest families in the state of Rhode Island. His father was second only to the DeWolf family in Bristol. His home, once again, is still there. 109 benefit was actually numbered 62 at the time door was alive. Beautiful house, door attended Phillips Exeter Academy on to Harvard down to Columbia for his legal degree, had a very profitable law practice on College Street, and Providence was engaged to some of the major trials in the state. And some of you may have heard of the trial of Reverend Ephraim Avery for the murder of Sarah Cornell. He watched that with a close eye. Because the state was so busy with that trial, they hired him to lead the prosecution of another murder trial that I bet you have never heard of that took place down in Carventry, almost at the same time. An innkeeper in Carventry named David Gibbs had impregnated a young washed girl, hired an abortionist from Providence to doctor office. He colorfully put it, the child. So the evidence would not get out. The woman botched the abortion the first time he goes back to Providence under cover of darkness to get her again to come down to Coventry. This time she succeeded, but she also killed the girl. He buried her in the backyard. Townspeople realized that she was missing after eight days and she was dug up the same way Sarah Cornell was dug up after eight days, if you know about that. Dore was hired to lead the prosecution against David Gibbs and the abortionist Francis Leach. Sensational trial. I've written a separate article. I'd be happy to share with you if you give me your email about that. It'll appear next year. So he's a very prominent attorney. His father and mother loved him dearly. They believed he was destined for great things in the General Assembly. He served for three years, a leading reformer in the areas of banking, prison reform, suffrage he was bringing up in the 1830s as well. Especially with banking, he created the first major statute in the country to oversee the banking process and estate to make sure that there was an oversight committee. Of course, this was happening at the time of the Panic of 1837. In terms of anti-slavery, you sat on the executive committee of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, friends with people like Wendell Phillips and Garrison, names you probably have heard of before, attends the American Anti-Slavery Convention numerous times in New York City. He's a prominent anti-slavery Democrat. In 1839, he loses a bid for Congress by only 50 votes. Of course, the Rhode Island history would have been extremely different if he had won, most likely. He was unusual in the sense that he was a member of the Democratic Party, but a devout anti-slavery man. Why? He connected the issue of the money power that he hated deeply and he wanted to stop with what he called, and others called at the time, the slave power. The two went hand in hand for Thomas Doar. By 1841, the Suffrage Association approaches him and said, hey, would you like to get behind us? Your heck of a speaker, we could use some help and a man of your statute could greatly help our cause. He agreed. He attends several of these meetings, those ribbons that I mentioned to you. By the middle of 41 in the summer, he's now leading the way. He is in charge of the association. And he decides that after the General Assembly refuses to adhere to a call for the convention, the heck with it. We'll do it ourselves. We'll call our own. And they did. They wrote a document. Over a three-day period in late December 1841, they sent it out to be ratified by the people. An overwhelming majority of Rhode Islanders, almost 14,000 in favor, cast ballots for this people's constitution. It is almost forgotten at times. There was a precedent. And this is where Doar drew from, for this full-scale referendum. Rhode Island in violation of instructions from Congress after the Constitution, the United States Constitution was drafted in September of 1787 and sent out, we ignored certain instructions about how to handle voting on that document. We still ignore a lot of instructions, I think, today in our political system. But Doar believed that the people, indeed, had spoken. This was it. New constitution. Let's push ahead with some elections in May under this new document. Let me read to this letter from Elijah Potter, Jr., once again a moderate. He's a Democratic moderate from South Kingston. His home still stands. It's right near URI. He says, a large portion of those who voted in favor of this new constitution are disposed to be moderate. But all experience teaches us that parties are always governed by the bold and forward instead of the moderate. Referring to the Suffrage Association and to his one-time friend, Thomas Doar, they were the same age. Partly declared that those who have raised the storm now may not be able to control the outcome. Potter proclaimed his affinity for what he called the old system under the charter, which granted anyone certainly living in the landed areas on Aquedic Island or down south in South County a great amount of power in the state. But he said he recognized the Democratic tie that was sweeping the state. It couldn't be turned back. He said, it's probably settled that we must have free suffrage. But the question became very much for Elijah Potter, how are you going to do it? How are you going to bring it about? Let me read you from this letter that I talk a lot about. Tried to get at very closely in the book, the relationship between Doar and his mother and father. On April 8th, as they receive word, most likely from one of Doar's sisters, we're all married to men who wanted nothing less to see Doar's head probably on a pike, that their oldest son was going to run for governor. And they wrote this very moving letter on April 8th, 1842. And they sent it from their home on Benefit Street. They said, it grieves us to the heart to know that a son of ours that arrived that so mature in age and so well versed in the laws of his country should be a participant in acts calculated to bring the state into utter destruction aroused passions which you cannot allay, in which, God forbid, could produce civil strife attended with bloodshed and murder. We beseech you. We pray you to pause before you pass the Rubicon and become engulfed in political criminal degradation where our feeble prayers will not avail to save you from utter disgrace and ruin. Doar's parents, and I think most people living on the east side of Providence at the time that I talk about in the book, regarded him as a one-man bonfire of the vanities. They had right reason. Let me read you from a letter that Doar himself wrote to his very good friend, Doody Pierce, the Newport attorney. He was a former attorney general of the state. He wrote this on April 4th, just a few days before his parents were desperately saying, back down, don't do what we think you're going to do. Doar said this, a determined defense in return for the first blow is the purpose of the people. One socket armed and equipped 200 men yesterday, 100 men today, 200 farmers were president Lime Rock this afternoon who proclaimed themselves ready to rescue any officer of the people's government. Warwick, Ditto, North Providence where I grew up, organized this tomorrow, said Doar. The Tories are alarmed and stirring. That phrase is often used. He referred to his enemies always as Tories. The governor has issued in order to our companies here to make a return of their force. Their return is lean. They support me and not the other governor. Not more than 150 men of the military order can be found against us in Providence. The bulk of the soldiers are for us. The arsenal is guarded by only 30 men. For Thomas Dorr, the Declaration of Independence was not merely designed to set forth a rhetorical enumeration of lofty goals. Instead, this was a document that enshrined the absolute supremacy of the people and was now a blueprint for action. As you get into the spring, you've known the students of Rhode Island history in this room that there were two governments, one claiming legitimacy under the charter that prescribed, I should have pointed out before, no mode for amendment. The other claiming legitimacy under this people's constitution. Dorr was elected governor of the people's constitution on April 18th. Samuel L. Ward King was elected to his fourth term, I should say Dr. Samuel L. Ward King, who elected to his fourth term in office on April 20th. That's an image of King. And if you happen to be Rolling Stone fans, you can have a lot of fun with Photoshop. I always thought I wanted to put that in the book, but I didn't. In writing the book, I was really struck by how each side was true to their core values. It was claimed to be fighting for. It was the course of power of Recalcitrant State Legislature against the potency of the revolutionary doctrine of populist sovereignty. History seldom provides as pure embodiments, I think, of such contrasting political alternatives. But in the spring of 1842, they were both fully on display here. And the military projections of both perspectives were committed to a collision course. As I mentioned, the Dorites often labeled their opponents Tories to brand them somehow as un-American, hostile to the principles of the American Revolution. This is a wonderful flag that's at the Rhode Island Historical Society underneath. It says, I will not compromise the people's rights. These were all across the state. It's a wonderful, very small historical society in North Smithfield, which has an extraordinary collection of these flags. They have six. For their part, Dor's opponents call themselves the Law and Order Party. They just sincerely believe that Dor and all his followers were hell-bent on destroying Republican government. Rhode Island conservatives believe that enthusiasm for democratic change that was a hallmark of this time period had simply gone to the heads of the common folk. Lots of editorials thought Dor was simply crazy. Editorials that were written in Henry Bowen and Anthony's Providence Journal. Any talk of revolution or revolutionary principles led to believe that you were not mentally sound. And their analysis, that is, the conservatives Rhode Island laborers and mechanics that have been on the outside looking in for decades in terms of civic and political life had let the talk of freedom consume them. Many Rhode Island elites were uneasy with the notion that the people needed to play an ongoing oversight role. They believed they were only sovereign on the days of election. This was a course of view if you know anything about the politics of the 1790s that was very much on debate between Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists. It plays out quite clearly if you know anything about the whiskey rebellion. When reading Dor's letters in this period, along with those of his opponents that I talk about at great length in the book, you really get the sense that they felt that they were standing in the center of a windstorm as the currents of history in many ways were sweeping by them and replaying what they knew about the American Revolution. While Sullivan and Lydia Dore were writing that letter to their oldest son, Samuel War King sent emissaries to Washington, DC to try to lobby the president of the United States, John Tyler. Send troops, do something. Moses Brown Ives, I love reading his letters. He, ironically, was towards brother-in-law. Moses Brown Ives referred to Dor and his followers always as desperados. His other brother, Robert Hale Ives, who probably had a passion of hatred equal to that of Moses. Second, this notion, when he would write and Robert Hale wrote many letters that I talk about in the book to the president and to John Brown Francis who was sent to Washington to meet with the president of the United States to say, please, help us calm these tensions in Rhode Island. But Tyler was cautious, to say the least. He did not want to be caught supporting one side or the other. Why? Well, he was a man without a political home at this point in the spring of 1842. Thinking ahead as good politicians always do what's going to happen in 1944, I don't want to piss off northern Democrats who strongly support Thomas Dor. So let's just wait and see how things play out. Well, that was essentially Tyler's strategy. Dor pushes ahead with his inaugural parade on May 3, which took place in front of Hoyle Tavern in Providence. Dor's uncle Philip Avon, a future governor and employer of a sizable number of Irish workers attempted to broker a compromise on the day of Dor's inaugural parade. They have paid no attention to his uncle's advice, wrote Moses Browneyes to John Brown Francis. Even family members could not get Dor to step down. Dor let it be known that he had lost all patients with the moderates who were still hoping for reconciliation. Now a quasi army of marginal misfits, led by, as I should often talk about in the book, an overconfident military amateur, by the middle of the month were marching to take over an arsenal on the west side of Providence. As dust turned to dark on May 17, the residents of Providence, Rhode Island, were returning to their homes, but few were preparing for a restful night's sleep. Citizens were on edge. Rumors had spread all day that cannon fire may erupted at any moment. Shops and banks had been closed. The city's cobblestone streets were filled with men in uniform from young recruits engaged in their first military drills to more senior militiamen who might have performed a similar duty a decade earlier when the city was beset by a multi-day race riot that left four people dead. The General Assembly had fled to Newport at the colony house. It was rumor and speculation at first, but then it was clear that Dorr was going to try to take the arsenal. If it was going to be his final battle, he tended to go out like a cannonade. The moment reached to Consendo, as you probably have heard of before, on the early morning hours of May 18. But as I talk about in the book, the arsenal attack that sometimes gets portrayed as a fiasco and there was many things to laugh about, especially in the days following. And the press, indeed, had a field day with mistakes that Dorr made. But what's important to keep in mind when you're reading the letters of what happened on May 17th, 18th, and the days following is that people ardently believed that they were going to die, that Dorr was going to succeed. It didn't matter if his brother was in the arsenal or his father, which they were. Many Providence residents and militiamen, let me read you from just one letter that I talk about in the book quite a bit. Providence militiamen, William Bailey, was convinced that Dorr was motivated only by malice and revenge. His goal, according to Bailey, was to destroy lives and property, not taking any chances, Dorr, Bailey, along with many other people that I talk about in this book, including the prominent lawyer John Whipple, hired a carriage to take his wife and his young son out of the city. I talk a lot about families that went to Worcester and families that went to Boston in this time period for safety. They really believed that their homes were going to go up in flames. One prominent rumor always had it that Dorr was going to set up what was known as an agrarian despotism, socialism. He was going to confiscate property and redistribute it to the poor, let them have their homes. A family name, I'm sure you heard of before, the Harishoff family. A young Anna Harishoff, noted to her father, Charles, that all Dorr's relatives were in the arsenal that dreadful night, she said, when the demon, that's how she referred to Dorr, with his own hand put the match to the cannon. He might have destroyed his father. Anna went on to write that Dorr's men were not simply trying to gain the suffrage anymore. They were looking for a division of property. Of course, this was wrong. This was all rumor and speculation. But that just shows you the level of fear people had. That Dorr was going to indeed kill them. Now, there is the other side to all of this, and that is the Cormac Opera Affair, as Dorr, who was slight in stature and slightly rotund, painted not with the sword, but with the butter knife and did indeed resemble Napoleon in many ways. The New York Herald had this to say, and this is often, I think, colored our perception of what was happening here in Rhode Island, because we often look at it as a comic opera. But it was certainly not comedy to anyone living here. The New York Herald said, this was an article, said, killed zero, wounded zero, missing 481, scared 960, horribly frightened 789, fainted on the battleground 73, women in hysterics 22, temperance pledge broken before the battle, 330. Governors missing one. This, of course, was carried in the Whig Press. Whigs were fundamentally opposed to Dorr. Dorr ironically was briefly a one-time Whig. His father was a devout Whig. And this is how it's also affected historians have written about this later, I think. But as I said, this was a serious issue. And Dorr runs away, as you may know, to New York City. And then he comes back. Fears again, the same fears in the month of June 42 that he was going to march on Providence and take property, give it to the poor, burn everything to the ground. Well, he doesn't go to Providence. As you know, he goes to a very small town that still looks exactly the same like it did in the spring of 1842. And that is Jepatchett. Has anyone ever been up to Jepatchett? Nothing's changed. Still looks the same. Of course, if you go to Jepatchett, and please don't say I said this out loud, they think the Battle of Entetum took place there. But that's another story. Let me see if I can get an image here of Jepatchett, the only known image of a painted of Jepatchett. If you look closely, I was happy if you want to walk up at the end. It still looks just like that. His goal was to reconvene the people's legislature. That was his goal. Started again, get people to come. But by this point, people were scared. People had lost jobs. If you were known supporter of door and you were working in a mill, you lost your job. You couldn't support your family. Mill owners threatened people. People were kicked out of their tenements because they were known to be door sympathizers. So this became dangerous. And not many people showed up at Jepatchett. Door did the sensible thing, and he was now quite good at this, and that was to get the heck out of Dodge. But what happened after is loads of people were arrested and thrown in prison, some down here on Marlboro Street, which is now an inn, right? The old Newport, what is it? The jailhouse inn, is that what it's called now? William Lloyd Garrison. Let me read you this interesting letter Garrison wrote from July after the rebellion is over, doors safely fled the state. And Garrison said this, and what a horrible state of things exists in Rhode Island. What calamity can be more undurable to a free people than to be placed under absolute despotism of martial law that was declared by Governor Sammy Warking. He wrote this to his brother-in-law, George Benson. With the Suffrage Party, I had very little sympathy with the DC Garrison. While they protest against the land-holding aristocracy, they basically excluded colored citizens. I'll come back to that point in a second. But I have less sympathy with the Charter Party who is throwing people indiscriminately in jail. So many people were in jail at the time when Dorr goes to New Hampshire. He goes to Concord. He meets up with a man he probably met before who had just left the Senate, opens his law practice again in Concord named Franklin Pierce. And he says, do you need a lawyer? I have the law degree. I can help you out. Can't really go back to Rhode Island. I have a $5,000 bounty on my head at the moment. So he helps Pierce. He lives with the governor, the Democratic governor I should point out named Henry Hubbard in Concord as well. And he hangs out there for a year. Now, most of his followers are wallowing in prison. Seth Luthor, actually, a labor reformer who was tossed in the Marlboro Street in jail, if you know anything about Luthor, certainly one of the colorful characters of Jacksonian America, burned it down to get out, got out naked, ran away, and then caught somewhere down on the docks trying to get on a boat, throw him back into the jail. And Dore himself would spend six months in the Marlboro Street jail as well. He eventually decides that he's going to come back voluntarily and give himself up. He does that on October 31, 1843. The state quickly realizes, let's move him to Newport. There's more people who hate him there. And these are a panel of jury that's going to convict. And they do that. In the book, I talk a lot about the trial and what happens here, right here in Newport. But more importantly, even after the trial, Dore, and let me just read you this. This is a recent find of mine. Richard Randolph, lived right here, attorney in Newport, very prominent political career in the state. But he grew up in Virginia, married into a very high society. Family here, his daughter actually would marry Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr. Randolph, at the behest of Dore's father, who couldn't talk any sense into his son at all, said, can you please visit my son in prison? I think if he's willing to renounce his principles, the General Assembly will let him out. I would like him to come home. Randolph agreed to go into the prison to meet Dore. And he had this to say when he wrote back to his father. He said, I'm sorry, sir, but your son considers himself a modern to a very important principle. He said it was impossible to help one who is not willing to help himself. And Dore would wallow in prison for over a year. His health would be ruined. But in the book Beyond Even Dore, for those of you with little tidbits about good stuff, that's how Dore was referred to in prison. And he actually took this out when he left. Number 56, prisoner 56, that's Dore in the prison log book. That was his keepsake. He was actually hanging in his bedroom when he died. He hung it over his bed for the rest of his life. He would live for another decade after he got out of prison. But Beyond Door, and the questions that really got me to write this book that I talk a lot about here, questions of democracy, race, nativism, fear of Irish Catholics, that is. The people's constitution, much to Dore's dismay, did not allow African-Americans to vote. Some of you probably have heard of Frederick Douglass before. What is not known about Frederick Douglass is that his first really serious, lengthy-speaking engagement was right here in the state. He went to six anti-slavery conventions held across the state, much to the risk of his life. To protest against Dore and the Constitution, say, how can you be for the right to the people? And then say, for white people only. Now, Dore was a former, as I mentioned, anti-slavery advocate. His argument was, I'm sorry, the rest of my delegates said they were afraid of allowing blacks to vote. I will continue to work for you, just give me time. Well, the abolitionists, including Garrison and Douglas, were not willing to wait. They said, now is the time to do it. You cannot have this level of hypocrisy. So six anti-slavery conventions. Every abolitionist who was somebody at this point showed up in the state, including one of my favorite characters in the period, a woman named Abby Kelly. He was almost killed right here in Newport. What Dore couldn't understand is he knew all of this. He knew that abolitionists hated him. But when he went to Washington himself, as they talk about in the book, to try to get Tyler to support him, as I mentioned to you, the other governor of the state, Samuel War King, also went to the president. So Dore had his own meeting. What he didn't realize what was happening in Washington among Southern Democrats is they said, wait a minute. This ideology of the people's sovereignty is extremely dangerous. That could lead the slave revolts, the rights of the people to do whatever they want to do. That's not good. We're not going to support that. As you can imagine, one guy that actually lost a lot of support for 1844 was a gentleman here who asked me about that election before I started to speak. John Calhoun was supposed to be the favorite in 1844, not James K. Polk. It was Calhoun's nomination to win or lose. He lost it because of the door rebellion. He came out in full against door. No Northern Democrat was going to support John Calhoun after that. But Calhoun's fears lined up with other slaveholders in the South saying, this ideology, this is dangerous. This could lead to another Nat Turner's revolt. We don't want that. James K. Polk was smart. Kept his mouth shut. Didn't say anything. And then he made political capital out of it later, though. Let me read you from this. New York abolitionist William Goodell maintained that at the disenfranchised majority of Rhode Islanders under Dore's instruction could form a constitution without leave of their masters, in this sense being the mill owners in the General Assembly. Then the disenfranchised black majority of South Carolina might do the same and slavery would be overthrown. That's William Goodell, an abolitionist writing. This was all over, the newspapers, the abolitionist press, and, as you can imagine, in the South. They spent a lot of time looking at Southern newspapers. This was a hot button issue covered every single day in the Charleston Mercury in South Carolina. They wanted to know how this was going to be handled by the federal government. Another thing I talk a lot about is women. We're connected to the Suffolk Association and very much connected with Thomas Dore, a lifelong bachelor. One thing that is odd about the Dore family is that out of the three boys, none of them ever married. Dore had, I think, a strong love of a woman named Catherine Williams. It was a fairly prominent author at this point, but nothing ever became of it. But Rhode Island women were very active in the support of Dore. When he ran away to New Hampshire, and the rest of his followers were stuck in prison, it was women who came to their aid in the prisons here, especially in Newport. When Dore himself was in prison, women formed something called the Dore Liberation Society to get him out and actually issued script, money, to raise funds for this very purpose. I end the book with a discussion of what happened to Dore in his final years. He comes out of prison, his health is utterly ruined. Spent too much time in a very dark and damp cell. He wasn't a healthy individual even prior to going in. He is incensed by the hatred that abolitionists had displayed against him in 41 and 42. He felt that they betrayed him. And he puts aside his past strong anti-slavery and abolitionist principles. Becomes very much connected with the Democratic Party under his now very good friend, Franklin Pierce. He writes a series of very, I think, moving and also very effective political letters on behalf of Pierce's candidacy in 1852. And as of course you well know, Pierce won that election. He was supportive of the compromise of 1850 that had that stringent and very much, as a lot of scholars have talked about recently, unconstitutional fugitive slave act connected with that. Dore had railed against the 1793 fugitive slave act as a young man, but now said this was necessary to have in the country. And he was also very much in support of Kansas and Nebraska being promoted by a man named Steven Douglas. Douglas would come to use the phrase popular sovereignty as you're talking about the rights of dealing with the issue of Kansas and Nebraska and the territories. Dore's phrase similar had always been the people's sovereignty. So Dore very much saw that the Democratic Party in the 1850s was somehow some way, perhaps tacking around to his political ideology about the rights of the people. But he had a more expansive view of who the people exactly were as a younger man. So I kind of talk about his end of his life. He dies at his home in his bedroom that he grew up in on Benefit Street in December of 1854, but very much the supporter of the Democratic Party. And he was unwilling to support some of the abolitionists like John Greenleaf Whittier that really encouraged him to hey, vote for the free soilers. Think about this political party. The Republicans were not completely moving along yet, but Abraham Lincoln had already issued a very moving address in Poraya, Illinois, signaling a lot of things that Dore had believed in as a younger man. So the book ends kind of with some interesting thoughts about Lincoln a little bit and Dore. As I said, Abraham Lincoln represents I think an entirely different point of view in many ways. For Lincoln, democracy was a means, a means of realizing the truths of natural law that are hardwired into human nature. The ones Jefferson articulated, most notably his views on equality, those things which are inalienable, not negotiable, like you maybe said. That's what makes you a human being. That's what Lincoln believed. The purpose of democracy is to create a system which gives natural rights to the most natural flow. Lincoln was using the Declaration of Independence in terms of issues of equality. More than Dore was using it prior to this in terms of a right to alter or abolish a formal government. So that's indeed how the book kind of ends and that's probably the best way for me to end. So thank you very much for your attendance today. This is a large audience, I'm very excited. So thank you. And I'm sorry if you had to wait a long time to get into the base. I didn't think I was actually gonna get onto the base. It took me 15 minutes and then they didn't have my name on the list. So I'm glad I actually, a very large man with a gun on his side was looking at me like I had four heads when I said I was coming here. But I think I did okay, John, right in time. We have maybe we've got about eight minutes for questions, is that? Be happy to take some questions and talk a little bit too. If you're interested, as I mentioned, I did create a website. Be happy to write down the IP address for you where you can actually read 30 of Dore's letters and in two weeks' time, three weeks at the most, we will add 30 letters from John Brown Francis. Interesting perspective, because Francis, as I mentioned, was a moderate, very sound voice, unfortunately, that no one was listening to. Things would have been probably a lot different if John Brown Francis had been governor of the state in 1842. But we're adding his letters, which Henry Brown, the owner, the descendant of John Brown Francis has graciously agreed to let me scan and transcribe. So I'm very fortunate to have that relationship. Yes, sir. What can you tell me about Frank Moran who was the defense lawyer, you know? Frank Moran, the owner of the doorhouse now, is that what you said? Used to own a lot of the ferry. The tugboat company, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frank Moran, who currently occupies the mansion on Benefit Street, Frank Moran is descended from Samuel Ames, who married Dore's younger sister, Annie. And the houses stayed along those lines. And he let me into the home. As you walk in, it's like, it really is like a time capsule. As soon as you step in, it's like you just walk right back. You think Thomas Dore's gonna come down the staircase. It's an exquisite house, fire buckets from 1820, right in front of the fireplace, portraits of Lydia Dore that no one has seen, portraits of Sullivan the father. I was looking to see if there was portraits of the brothers. I've never seen any image. If you ever find one, please contact me immediately of Allen, his beloved younger brother. He had an accident at one point and was shipped off to live in Cumberland near the monastery on Diamond Hill. I don't know much about him, but he- Frank's younger brother? This is the younger brother of Thomas Dore. Dore had three brothers. One of his older brothers actually, for those of you who haven't even ever seen Ken Burns' series on the Civil War. Ken Burns, about every 30 seconds, quotes from George Templeton Strong's diary, maybe 45 seconds roughly. That was Henry Dore's best friend, George Templeton Strong. If you want a good laugh, and I talk a little bit in the book about this, read George Templeton's Strong's diary about what he had to say about Thomas Wilson Dore. He pulled no punches, it's hilarious. But that was his best friend. He writes about having tea with Henry and then his idiotic brother in Rhode Island. I mean, I just add that I was surprised that Frank with the New York Times Town long enough to talk to you in the morning. He was, it took a while. I wouldn't say I got in there, but my mother has been an editor at the Providence Journal for 40 years and his son worked at the Journal, so now you get there that way. Frank's open fight with an historical society that we've always said, right? Yeah, this image here, I guess, caused a lot of, this belongs to Frank. It's the only daguerreotype of Dore. And Frank owns it, but he let the historical society, maybe in the 70s, they had a copy and they used it a few times without acknowledging him and he told him to take a very long walk off one of his peers, so. But that is a brilliant, that's the only daguerreotype of Dore. The painting that's on, the cover of the book is a lithograph from 1844. This daguerreotype is from 42. So this is a, 44, this is a lithograph. If you notice in the middle of the book where most of the images are, they come from a very good friend of mine, a longtime Middletown resident named Russell DeSimone. I'm not lying to you when I tell you this, he probably has close to a million dollar private collection in his home. Most of it is devoted to the study of Rhode Island history and on the website that I made for students as well, we actually have scanned a lot of images from Russell's collection. We're getting great emails now from kids doing history day projects, national history day stuff, using the site, using the images, the letters to do some good projects, so we're kind of excited. One kid was making a documentary and it's using iMovie and his iPad and making a documentary, so we're happy that stuff is being used up in the site. I worked for him for 30 years. So I don't know. Yeah, he's been very supportive of me and I will say, I hope and pray that that home goes to the Rhode Island historical site, please. That's World War III. Yeah, be ashamed if it ever was sold off or maybe Newport, I don't know, maybe Newport is so excited by someone he's abided and preserved. There's some like, yeah. Yeah, some lives on the mountains. I have, yeah, that's how we're good at it. Yeah, yes, sir. Given the history of Rhode Island, we had the most liberal charter written in 1787 and by 1835, we had the most conservative. It took another century to the revolution of 1935 to implement any of this stuff. What do you, normally after a revolution this, at least some can say it seems out of the door that we're done. Well, there were, I think the Pat Connolly once called it, he's got a good article. I don't think Pat had been in the picture, but it was a revolution of the 1930s. But at the end, when Dora escapes and he goes to New Hampshire, Rhode Island finally does indeed get around to calling another convention that sits right here at the Connolly House in writing a document. It gets implemented in 1843 and that's what we call the 1843 constitution for that reason in the spring of 43, it's implemented. It did not go as nearly as far as Dora did in terms of suffrage in that constitution, but it was indeed something. And many of Dora's prior followers said, this is probably the best that we're gonna do and we certainly don't wanna lose our jobs again or our livelihood and threaten our families 250 people were arrested, spent months in jail and lost a lot. People were kicked out of, and this was big at the time. Today, it's hard for us to understand how important this would be, but a lot of people were kicked out of their churches. Churches in Rhode Island were thoroughly divided. And I talk a lot about that. And that was a big deal. If you were booted from your church, that was serious stuff and that happened a lot. The great historian J. Stanley Lemons helped me quite a bit talking about the First Baptist Church, that hated Dora and one of the ministers at one point said that he himself will go out and try to kill Dora. So, that's an old phrase. I've always said the great historian, the inspired one. Yes, sir. And then, Clavier. Were there any religious restrictions on suffrage ever in? There were restrictions for a while. There was, there's actually good articles coming up by a father, Robert Heyman, on Catholics for a while in the 1790s. Of course, the issue with the property qualifications is that the preponderance of Irish immigrants that were here happened to be Catholic and not Protestant. That was a big fact. So, they, you know, the property qualification was essentially disenfranchising Catholics. And the editor, a man who really has been one of the Archbilliams of my story, Henry Bowland Anthony, who edited the Providence Journal hated Catholics and went to great lengths to write editorials along with others, a man named William Goddard who he hired to write some stuff. And in the end, Dore's brother-in-law Samuel Eames was a quartermaster general to really say, hey, if you support Dore, you're gonna support Catholics and then the Pope is gonna come. And everything's over at that point. So, and those are the editorials in the journal. So, nativism was a big issue in the state and Dore had a contend with that. And the bishop, there's no bishop in Rhode Island. There was a bishop in Boston. In his order to the flock, if you will, in Rhode Island, for the two priests that were stationed here in Rhode Island was to tell Catholics, stay out of this. We've got enough problems as it is right now in the country. And not just in Rhode Island, but we're facing nativist fears in Massachusetts. Whatever you do, do not get involved with Thomas Dore. Now, Dore probably assumed that Catholics who stood the game the most would come out in droves to support him. But when you look at the arrest records, which is how we attract this, when you look at the arrest records, there was no Catholics on it. So they adhered to the priests. And the way that we know what the priests were saying was that John Brown Francis was actually friends with one of the priests, even though Francis was not a Catholic, he had actually bowled the priests money at one point and the priests confided. So there was intimate knowledge that Francis and a lot of people knew, hey, Catholics are not going to support Dore. And there was thousands that could have. And if they had, maybe things would have been different in terms of bloodshed. But Dore didn't get any support from them. Black Americans were so incensed that they were not allowed into the people's convention or into the Constitution itself that they decided to throw their lot in with the charter authorities. They were some of the first troops to march into fashion. And reward for that, they got the suffrage in that 1843 Constitution. Brown became the only state that legally disenfranchised black Americans in the 1820s. They were not unusual at that point. Most northern states had disenfranchised blacks or placed the property qualification that like New York state at $250, that no one was going to meet. But we became the first state to give it back. And it was out of service and presented that way for supporting the charter authorities. And that wasn't lost on some prominent black ministers in the state, including a man named Alexander Cromel, who would actually go on and have a very prominent career and become one of the most prominent black abolitionists in the 1850s and 60s. And then as a lecturer and intellectual in after the Civil War, maybe second only to Frederick Douglass. Besides all the obvious things that you mentioned, people being ostracized, arrested, isolated, put out of their churches, all of that kind of thing. Were there any real serious casualties, conflict-wise, bloodshed? What, to what degree did that? As you go into Chapachet, and they talk a lot about a great diary that was uncovered about a decade ago at the Brown store of the site. As the troops went into the village there, a lot of shots were indeed fired. But one man was hit in the thigh, it was a couple of cows were killed. A man, the guy named Robert Gould from Middletown was shot by his brother-in-law on the march from Greenville up, what is that, 44, to Chapachet. Had nothing to do with the rebellion. The guy just shot him in the head. And then the next day, in puttucket, an Irishman, a drunken Irishman named Alexander Kilby was probably throwing something at troops. And some people said he didn't, it was just an incident bystander. There was a lot of evidence to say that he was provoking, and shots were fired across the bridge to that point of the tucket. Right on the Massachusetts line just like it is today. And he was shot and killed. The interesting thing about his, he was actually killed, it was some dispute about whether he actually was a Rylan resident or a Massachusetts resident. But the man who ran, this was really a good politics, the man from Governor of Massachusetts the next year, a man named Marcus Morton from Taun, realized that the Dory Valley was a great way to drum up support. And now I've got a potential Massachusetts citizen killed here. So he used the murder of Kilby and some door rights in Jepatchet were so afraid of being arrested, they took off and ran to a town called Bellingham, Mass. And they hid out in Bellingham for a few days. And the charter authorities caught up to them in Bellingham. Well, a lot of Massachusetts Democrats said, wait a minute, you can't cross state lines and come into Bellingham and just snag people out of Bellingham. So there's a huge issue with the capture of these guys. They wrote a separate article about it and it's a long-winded story. A huge trial that went to the Massachusetts Supreme Court about this issue, about these two guys who captured in Bellingham and brought back to Rhode Island. And the Massachusetts actually wanted to then go back and arrest the two charter guys who did it. And, but this became great fodder for a political election and Marcus Morton rode the Dory Valley into victory in Massachusetts. He got all of the votes in and around Rhode Island and it was enough to carry, Boston was controlled by the Whigs, but he got enough kind of in Bristol County, if you will, and then out and around Springfield that he was able, the close election, he was able to win in 1842. He used the rebellion, he could have cared less about what happened at Dore, but the issues of people's sovereignty was easy to paint your opponent. If you're an opponent of the American Revolution or your opponent of the people, that's a great one-liner. It's hard to come back from that. Well, thank you very much. Now, stay here. Thank you.