[1] It is sad to know that this patriot missionary and his admirable wife were massacred in 1847, with a number of other persons, at their mission station of Waiilatpwi by the very Indians they were educating. There is reason to believe the massacre was indirectly the result of Whitman's service to his country in rescuing Oregon from the Hudson Bay Company. The treaty of 1846 greatly irritated that powerful corporation, and this feeling inevitably spread to the Indians who depended upon the company for supplies, and who naturally sympathized with its policy of keeping the land for fur-bearing animals and savage humanity. It is unnecessary to suspect the company or the Roman Catholic missionaries attached to the company of any plot against Whitman's life. It was sufficient for the savages to know that the company hated Whitman, and that the American Protestant missionaries sought to convert them not only to Christianity, but also to industry. During President Tyler's administration Rhode Island was the scene of a commotion known as the "Dorr War." While the property qualification for voters had been discarded in nearly every Northern State, Rhode Island still adhered to the system of government provided in the King Charles charter of 1663, which restricted the franchise to freeholders and their eldest sons. This restriction gave occasion for many abuses, mortgagees often exercising control over the votes of their debtors, and citizens who paid taxes on mortgaged property being sometimes denied the privilege of voting on the ground that they did not possess sufficient equity in their estates. The majority of the people desired a frame of government in accord with the spirit of American institutions, but were resisted by the minority in actual power. The party of reform, therefore, held an election in defiance of the charter, adopted a new constitution arid chose Thomas W. Dorr governor, along with other general officers and a General Assembly. The Dorr legislature met in a foundry and passed various laws, which they had no power to enforce. The charter government called out the militia, the Dorrites also took arms, and for some time there was danger of a collision. The Dorrites were ultimately dispersed without a battle, and the charter government remained in power. From a sanitary standpoint it was a healthy war, as more people were probably benefited by the outing than injured by bullets and bayonets.[2] Dorr was afterward sentenced to State Prison for life, but was pardoned after a few years, and his sentence expunged by vote of the legislature, from the records of the court. A constitution embodying most of the reforms for which the Dorrites had striven was legally adopted, and Rhode Island settled down to its customary calm and prosperity.