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Introduction
Elisha Potter, Jr., perceptively recognized that continued arrests and incarcerations under the Algerine law were politically damaging to Democrats connected with the Law and Order party. Potter notes that things are quiet because the quiet portion of the suffrage party think they are to have all they wished for in a legal way. Potter argued that arrests were only serving to resurrect the Suffrage Party. Potter wrote a letter to Governor Samuel Ward King on July 4 complaining of the arrests. At the end of his letter to Francis, Potter discussed the controversy over black voting. African American males had been disenfranchised since 1822. Though the Irish in Rhode Island never came to Dorr’s aid, they were deemed by many conservatives to be responsible for the civil and political unrest. African Americans served in Law and Order militias in June 1842 and were thus considered more worthy of receiving the ballot.