and the letters and documents mentioned in the schedule
hereunto annexed. From the correspondence between the Executive of the
United States and that of Rhode Island, it will not escape observation
that while I regarded it as my duty to announce the principles by which
I should govern myself in the contingency of an armed interposition on
the part of this Government being necessary to uphold the rights of the
State of Rhode Island and to preserve its domestic peace, yet that the
strong hope was indulged and expressed that all the difficulties would
disappear before an enlightened policy of conciliation and compromise.
In that spirit I addressed to Governor King the letter of the 9th of
May, 1842, marked "private and confidential," and received his reply
of the 12th of May of the same year. The desire of the Executive was
from the beginning to bring the dispute to a termination without the
interposition of the military power of the United States, and it will
continue to be a subject of self-congratulation that this leading
object of policy was finally accomplished. The Executive resisted
all entreaties, however urgent, to depart from this line of conduct.
Information from private sources had led the Executive to conclude that
little else was designed by Mr. Dorr and his adherents than mere menace
with a view to intimidation; nor was this opinion in any degree shaken
until the 22d of June, 1842, when it was strongly represented from
reliable sources, as will be seen by reference to the documents herewith
communicated, that preparations were making by Mr. Dorr, with a large
force in arms, to invade the State, which force had been recruited in
the neighboring States and had been already preceded by the collection
of military stores in considerable quantities at one or two points. This
was a state of things to which the Executive could not be indifferent.
Mr. Dorr speedily afterwards took up his headquarters at Chepachet and
assumed the command of what was reported to be a large force, drawn
chiefly from voluntary enlistments made in neighboring States. The
Executive could with difficulty bring itself to realize the fact that
the citizens of other States should have forgotten their duty to
themselves and the Constitution of the United States and have entered
into the highly reprehensible and indefensible course of interfering so
far in the concerns of a sister State as to have entered into plans of
invasion, conquest, and revo