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(More customer reviews)Rory Raven's concise history of The Dorr War is a valuable account of a little-known battle to impose democratic ideals on a system ruled by corrupt elites--and the unlikely champion who led the fight. Reading this book, I couldn't help comparing Thomas Dorr's struggle to the John Brown uprising: both men were idealists who attempted to achieve undeniably virtuous goals through force of arms...with similar sad results. The Dorr war is an exciting history lesson and a welcome reminder of what democracy really means: the right of everyone to vote. Not just a wealthy elite, but every American. That was a dangerous, subversive idea back in 1841, and we should all be grateful that Dorr's impossible dream is our reality. Let us make the most of it.
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The short and portly Rhode Island aristocrat was hardly the image of the people's champion, but in 1841, Thomas Dorr became just that. At a time when only white male landowners could vote, the idealistic Dorr envisioned a more democratic state. In October of that year, the People's Convention ratified a new constitution that extended voting rights to those without land, and Dorr was named governor. That act would spark a small civil war, and violence erupted as the people of the state stood sharply divided in a conflict that reached the president and United States Supreme Court. Author Rory Raven charts the tumultuous and ultimately tragic history of a man and a movement that were too far ahead of their time.
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