July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
Broadside entitled “Door Returned!!” 15-7/8”x22-1/4” and reads in part: This would be Governor, the public enemy of Rhode Island, author and arch-leader of treason, sedition and rebellion, whose bones were not left at Acote Hill, whose ambition has cost the state $100,000, in one year, had returned to our borders to superintend the election of his secret, legal adviser and fellow conspirator, THOMAS F. CARPENTER !!! Fellow Citizens! let us not bind ourselves to the perilous significance of this re-union of General Carpenter with this unprincipled, ambitions [sic] leader of those restless, misguided men, whom a few months since, Carpenter himself denounced as ˜rascally insurgents’ ... Carpenter’s occasional pretensions of fidelity to the principles of Law and Order, are hollow, deceptive and false. You cannot trust him, for you cannot understand him. You can understand, and you can trust no man, who contradicts himself. In the city he is known; and whatever virtues he may possess as a man, no one trusts or confides in him as a politician: no one of any party ... Behold him then, fellow-citizens, as above drawn, coiling about his own contradictions, and his absurd, false, wicked pretensions, taken up almost at random, from the vast accumulations of a single year. Behold him, and discard him. If you take him, you take Dorr, and SEDITION with him. If you discard him you put down the demon of insurrection for a hundred years.” Some toning and edge wear. Tape repair to folds on verso. Hole at center of document filled, affecting less than ten words. Overall Very Good. The Dorr Rebellion remains one of the truly bizarre events in American political history. Led by politician and reformer, THOMAS DORR (1805-1854), the infamous political rebellion named after him gained a large amount of support in Rhode Island. Dorr formed his own political party in an effort to have his reforms concerning voting rights for all men of legal age adopted. At the time, voting privileges were restricted to land holders of their eldest sons. In 1841, Dorr’s party held a convention, drafting a new constitution which ultimately received a decisive majority in a separate election. Dorr’s party then held its own election and chose him as the state’s governor in defiance of the existing and now minority government. Federal troops were called in to quell the rebellion. Dorr was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment, but he was released after serving one year.
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