Dorr, Thomas Wilson (1805–1854)

US lawyer and political reformer. Admitted to the bar (1827), he was elected governor for Rhode Island in 1842. He was at the forefront of a campaign to establish a new, fairer state constitution which led to a ‘rebellion’ against the established government.

He was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Under his proposals for a new state constitution such anti-democratic practices as the requirement that only adult males who owned a fair amount of land could vote would have been abolished. During the minor civil war that broke out in Rhode Island over these proposed constitutional reforms, he was arrested and charged with treason. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1844, but was released in 1845. He retired from public life, but the new constitution did at least embody some of his goals.