Democracy in Decline: Rhode Island’s Constitutional Development, 1776–1841

Patrick T. Conley

The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has a history of constitutional troubles. The colony survived the great days of 1776 and the Revolutionary War without composing a constitution. And when the government of the United States emerged in 1789 from what Catherine Drinker Bowen has called the “Miracle at Philadelphia,” the smallest state still adhered to its individualistic and separatist principles and only ratified the new Federal Constitution in 1790 as the last of the thirteen joiners.

Until the “Dorr Rebellion” of 1842, Rhode Island pursued its sovereign way under the charter granted to it, as an English colony, in 1663 by King Charles II. But by 1842 many of the charter’s provisions were either obsolete or fraught with risk.

The whole story is compounded of countless strands, and there are pamphlets and polemics galore on one or another legal and constitutional aspect of the 206 years (1636 to 1842) that elapsed between the landing of Roger Williams on the Seekonk River shore and the emergence of the frustrated leader of Dorr’s Rebellion, Thomas Wilson Dorr.

Professor Patrick T. Conley of Providence College (himself a participant in the process of constitutional evolution) has taken these multiple strands and woven them into a comprehensive and scholarly whole. To those interested either in Rhode Island or in constitutional development, Dr. Conley’s history is no less than fascinating.

The story illustrates many a poignant moral. Thus the occasional bigotry and constant political blindness of many, if not most, of our colonial and state figures during the years in question, are depressing. There were only a few political and community leaders who rose above the egocentric and mercenary demands of their particular social class or political group. Moreover, those to whom the last fifty years are a vivid memory can testify that the earlier record has not been discernibly improved.

Professor Conley’s book informatively describes Rhode Island’s first halting steps along the cobblestoned road of constitution-making while brilliantly elucidating the problems involved in what is, almost always, an intricate and laborious process. It is a tract for the times from which the citizens and rulers of Rhode Island may greatly profit.