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Introduction
Providence businessman Moses Brown Ives, who coincidently was married to Thomas Dorr's younger sister Annie, wrote to John Brown Francis to express his view that the federal government needed to intervene on the side of the Charter authorities. Francis was on his way to the nation's capital. Ives feared that Thomas Dorr would prevail if President John Tyler did not send troops to Rhode Island. Ives referred to the so-called Algerine law, a statute that was passed by the General Assembly on April 2, 1842. The draconian statute labeled all those who supported Dorr and the People's Constitution as traitors.