Introduction

In this remarkable letter, Providence author Catharine Williams, a close friend of Dorr’s from the early 1840s to his death in 1854, relates a meeting she had with President John Tyler in Washington, D.C. Williams also details her time in New York City with radical Democrats, most notably Levi Slamm, the editor of the New York Plebeian. The letters that Williams refers to from the Democratic governors of Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut can be found on page 3 here. Williams also describes a clambake in which a large portrait of Dorr was on display.