HIST-UA 9 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Caucus, Thomas Wilson Dorr, Spoils System
Document Summary
Thomas dorr and his group of followers made the people"s party. He tried drafting a new constitution and after sending it to a popular vote, a lot of the people agreed for it. The legislature at the time didn"t accept the new dorr document. The follower"s of dorr decided to make a new government and constitution in 1842. This was a problem because there were two governments that claimed they were rhode island. The old government said that dorr government were rebels and started to put them in jail. The situation was called the dorr"s rebellion and it failed miserably. However, it led to a drafting of a new constitution that expanded suffrage: spoils system. In the spoils system, jackson targeted entrenched officeholders because he felt that the jobs belonged to the people who were capable of doing the job. Jackson removed around a fifth of the officeholders because they had misused government funds or cause of other corrupt purposes.
