been poured into it. The attack failed, Dorr's force dispersed, and by morning Dorr drove out of the city and left the state, barely escaping arrest, and went to New York."

Being informed that his followers were gathering at Chepachet, Dorr joined them on June 25. To his surprise and disappointment he found only a slight breast work thrown up on Acote's Hill and about 140 men in arms, with no commissariat. Now at last Governor King declared martial law and called out the militia of the state, and to the number of more than four thousand they assembled at Providence and marched and countermarched. Then a portion was sent to Foster and an advance guard was cautiously despatched to Greenville, about half way to Chepatchet. The insignificant, undrilled handful of volunteers at Acote's Hill gradually melted away, and, calling a council, Dorr and his officers decided to disband. The decision was made known to the men between six and seven o'clock on the afternoon of June 27, and was at once carried into effect, Dorr sending letters to Providence at once for publication, announcing the fact of disbandment, and immediately leaving the state to escape arrest. This ended the Dorr war. Only one man lost his life, a Massachusetts man on Massachusetts soil, who was accidentally killed by a musket ball fired across a bridge.

But the aftermath! In June, 1824, Governor King offered a reward of $4,000 for Dorr's apprehension, but the latter remained in New Hampshire under the protection of a friendly Governor, who refused to honor a requisition for his extradition. In August Dorr issued an address to the people of Rhode Island, reviewing the whole controversy and the reasons for his course and announcing his intention of returning to the state, which he did a few days later, and was at once arrested for treason and kept in jail in Providence until February, 1844, when he was taken to Newport for trial there.

3 Eaton, p. 24.

* Eaton, p. 26.

Dorr's offenses had all been committed in Providence County and there he had many supporters. It would therefore be difficult to secure a jury in that county from which all persons of his way of thinking could be excluded, whereas in Newport County Dorr had but few adherents. The socalled Algerine law permitted such a trial in other than the county in which the offense was committed and for this reason the trial came off in Newport. The Court that tried Dorr consisted of the same three Judges who had given their opinion against the legality of the Dorrite movement, and Judge Brayton, who had since then been added to the Court. One hundred and eighteen jurors were summoned and examined before twelve were obtained for the jury, and but three of the hundred and eighteen belonged to the Democratic party, now considered the Dorr party. There was not a single Dorrite on the jury. There were four counts in the indictment, two for acts of treason at Providence and two for acts of treason at Gloucester.

In opening the defense, Dorr's counsel made five points: 1-That treason cannot be committed against a state, but only against the United States. 2-That the act of March, 1842 (the Algerine law), was unconstitutional and void, as destructive of the common law of trial by jury, which was a fundamental part of the English constitution and the Declaration of Independence and had ever since been fundamental law in Rhode Island. 3-That that act, if constitutional, gave the Court no jurisdiction to try the indictment in the County of Newport, all the overt acts being therein charged as committed in the County of Providence. 4-That the defendant acted justifiably as Governor of the State, under a valid constitution, rightfully adopted, which he was sworn to support. 5-That the evidence did not support the charge of treasonable and criminal intent in the defendant. The Court easily decided that treason can be committed against a state, as well as against the United States, after full argument with elaborate citation of authorities by defendant and his counsel, and so it did as to the second, for Dorr had

always maintained that the General Assembly had superior power and this was the reason why he wanted a constitution. In support of the fourth point, Dorr offered evidence to prove that a large majority of the whole male adult population of the state, citizens of the United States, had voted for the People's Constitution, in December, 1841, and that under the constitution he had been elected Governor. He offered to produce the ballots themselves and the men who cast them, but the evidence was refused by the Court, Chief Justice Durfee saying to the jury: "Courts and juries, gentlemen, do not count votes to determine whether a constitution has been adopted, or a Governor elected or not. Courts take notice without proof offered from the Bar, what the constitution is, or was, and who is or was the Governor of their own state. It belongs to the Legislature to exercise this high duty."

The result was a foregone conclusion. Upon the evidence, the admissions made by the defendant, the exclusion of the testimony of the defendant above described, and with the jury made up as it was, exclusively of anti-Dorrites, notwithstanding the able and eloquent address made by Dorr, there could be but one result. The jury agreed at once upon a verdict of guilty; the exceptions made by his counsel were overruled and the unseemly severe sentence of imprisonment for life was pronounced by the Chief Justice.

Dorr was at once removed to the state prison at Providence, but the result of the severity of the sentence was that soon a reaction set in and expressions of sympathy for the "Martyr Governor" flowed in from all sides, and in a very short time. the General Assembly passed an act releasing him on his taking an oath of allegiance to the state. Dorr declined to take the oath required, declaring that to do so would be a recognition on his part that he had heretofore failed in allegiance, and this he could not admit. The agitation for his unconditional release increased and the subject became the leading political issue in the state and the following spring the "Liberation" candidate for Governor, Charles Jackson,

was elected and the "Liberationists" had a majority in the General Assembly. Dorr was released unconditionally under an act of the General Assembly in June, 1845, having remained in prison one year. He came out a disappointed, brokenhearted man, but with resolution undaunted, although a physical wreck, his rheumatic affection having increased by the dampness of his stone cell in prison, and with some obscure affection of the stomach that kept him an invalid at home during the nine remaining years of his life. The sympathy excited by his condition, with a sense of the recognition of the value of Dorr's work as a political reformer, led to the passage, shortly before Dorr's death, of an extraordinary Act of the General Assembly wiping out all of the judicial proceedings against him.5

This act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but to the dying man, says Mr. Eaton in his admirable essay on Thomas Wilson Dorr and the Dorr War, "this attempted annulment of the decree against him brought small comfort. Upon his conviction he had appealed to the people of our State and our country. The appeal was not in vain. As the animosities of the conflict fade away from sight, we appreciate in spite of the mistakes in judgment that he sometimes made, that high upon the roll of Rhode Island's great men will stand forever the name of the political reformer and public benefactor, Thomas Wilson Dorr."

THE TRIAL'

In the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, Newport, April, 1844. HON. JOB DURFEE, Chief Justice.

HON. LEVI HAILE,"

8

5 R. I. Acts and Resolves, 1854, p. 249. Re Dorr, 3 R. I. 1854.

'Bibliography. Report of the trial of Thomas Wilson Dorr for treason; including the testimony at length, arguments of counsel-the charge of the Chief Justice-the motions and arguments

On October 31, 1843, Mr. Dorr, 11 who was a fugitive from justice, returned to Rhode Island and was immediately arrested and conducted to prison on a charge of treason against the state, on an indictment against him then pending in the County of Newport. On February 29, 1844, Mr. Dorr was

on the questions of a new trial and in arrest of judgment: together with the sentence of the Court, and the speech of Mr. Dorr before sentence. From notes taken at the trial. Providence: B. F. Moore, printer, 1844." This report is the work of George Turner and W. S. Burges, the prisoner's counsel and friends. another report, also very full, by Pitman.

There is

*"Thomas Wilson Dorr and the Dorr war; a paper read by Hon. Amasa M. Eaton, of Providence, R. I., Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, June 29, 1909." This paper is also published in "Great American Lawyers" (Lewis), Philadelphia, 1908.

DURFEE, Job (1790-1847). Born Tiverton, R. I. Graduated Brown University 1813. Speaker House of Representatives 1826. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 1833. Chief Justice 1835 until his death.

9 HAILE, Levi (1797-1854). Born Warren, R. I. Graduated Brown University 1821. Began practice of law in Warren. Member of Rhode Island House of Representatives from Warren 1824-1835. Associate Judge of Supreme Court of R. I. (1835-1854). Trustee of Brown University (1830-1854).

10

STAPLES, William Read (1798-1868). Born Providence, R. I. Graduated Brown University 1817. Admitted to bar 1819. Member of Providence City Council 1832. Justice police court for two years. Associate Justice of Rhode Island Supreme Court 18351854. Chief Justice of Rhode Island Supreme Court 1854-1856. Auditor of Rhode Island 1856-1868. Secretary and Treasurer Rhode Island Society for Encouragement of Domestic Industries. Founder, Secretary and Cabinet Keeper of Rhode Island Historical Society. Author of many historical books.

11 DORR, Thomas Wilson (1805-1854). Born Providence, R. I. Graduated Harvard 1823. Studied law in New York under judges Kent and McConn, and was admitted to the bar. Elected to Lower House of Rhode Island General Assembly from Providence 1833. Dorr's career in the General Assembly terminated in 1837 in consequence of the course he took in bringing to an end the peculiar "bank process" then in force in Rhode Island, under which if a debtor failed to pay his note at bank by three p. m. on the day when it became due, an attachment, judgment, execution, levy and sale might follow the same day, so that before sunset of that day such debtor's real estate might become the property of the bank holding his protested note, to the exclusion of the claims of all other creditors. Dorr wrote the report of the committee that reported a bill that became a law "limiting the banks hereafter to the same remedies for the collection of debts as are possessed by