Introduction

Keep up their daily correspondence, Moses Brown Ives, Thomas Dorr’s brother-in-law wrote to John Brown Francis with updates about Rhode Island’s constitutional crisis. Moses informs Francis that Dorr’s name was at the head of a prox under the People’s Constitution. Ives was confident that the Algerine law had deterred a large number of Dorr’s followers from participating in the scheduled election under the People’s Constitution. Ives was fearful that John Brown, the president of the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, had managed to solicit support for the People’s Constitution in the hall of powers in Washington.