their leaders and are now every day
enrolling themselves in the volunteer companies which are being
organized in every part of the State for the suppression of any further
insurrectionary movements that may be made. A large majority of those
elected or appointed to office under the people's constitution (so
called) have resigned their places and renounced all allegiance to that
constitution and the party which supports it, so that the insurgents are
now without any such organization as would enable them to carry out
their original purposes if they otherwise had the power.

Governor King and his council alone, of all the intelligent persons with
whom I consulted, fear an irruption upon them of an armed force to be
collected in other States, and this is the only difficulty of which they
now have any apprehension. This fear is excited by the boasts frequently
made by the few who still avow their determination to adhere to the
constitution that they have at their control large bodies of armed men,
as well as camp equipage, provisions, money, and munitions of war, which
have been provided for them in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.
The supposition that Rhode Island is to be invaded by a foreign force,
when that force would neither be led nor followed by any considerable
number of the people of the State, does not seem, to say the least,
to be a very reasonable one. If those who think they are suffering
injustice are not disposed to make an effort to redress their supposed
wrongs, they would hardly expect the work to be done by others.

The ostensible object of the insurgents now is not the real one. They
meditate no further forcible proceedings. They bluster and threaten for
several reasons:

First. Because they suppose they shall thus break their fall a little
and render their retreat a little less inglorious than it would be if
they should beat it at once.

Second. They believe that if they keep up a shew of opposition to the
existing government they shall be more likely to revolutionize it by
peaceable measures; and

Third. They think they can make their influence so far felt as to
operate favorably upon those who are now under arrest for treason or who
may be hereafter arrested for the same offense.

That these are the views and purposes of the insurgents I am
confidentially assured by the notorious individual from whom I told you
I could learn their plans and designs; and no one has better means of
kno