THE MERITS OF THOMAS W. DORR AND GEORGE BANCROFT, AS THEY ARE POLITICALLY CONNECTED. BY A CITIZEN OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Boston: Eastburn, 1844. 36pp, stitched. Lightly dusted. Old library rubberstamp on blank portion of title page. Good+. Presentation inscription to J.H. Clifford from G.T. Curtis.
Curtis, the prominent lawyer who would later represent Dred Scott in the U.S. Supreme Court, says two Massachusetts Democrats, Marcus Morton and George Bancroft, have done great "evil" by meddling, with "questionable motives," in neighboring Rhode Island's Dorr controversy.
They have been "exciting the hatred of our own people against their neighbors, relying upon the prejudices thus aroused as the machinery by which to collect votes for themselves." Both men support the Dorr doctrine, "that a majority of the people have at any time, without the action of the existing government, the power and the right, to establish a constitution."
Curtis calls such a doctrine "monstrous," sweeping away "all the precautions taken by our ancestors to establish those liberties upon the firm foundations of principle and justice." Eastburn published a second edition in the same year.
FIRST EDITION. Cohen 14133. AI 44-1785 [4]. Sabin 18041. Item #40004
Price: $175.00