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Introduction
In this letter, Thomas Dorr responds to questions from George Turner relating to historical material for use in the Luther case. Dorr tells Turner that his close friend and confidant Walter S. Burges made an attempt (in vain) to find some material from the late 18th century. In this letter, Dorr references the Roman Catholic population of Rhode Island, one of the few times in the vast Dorr catalog in which he references Catholics and the suffrage question, even though Irish Catholics were one of the largest groups who stood to gain from the activism of the Rhode Island Suffrage Party in 1841-42. In the end, following the direction of clerics, Catholics abstained from directly aiding the Dorrites. Indeed, the arrest records from June and July 1842 show hardly any Irish names.