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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

9lmerican CommoniuealtfjiB?

RHODE ISLAND

A STUDY IN SEPARATISM

IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN
AUTHOB OP *' RHODE ISLAND :
ITS UAEJNG AND ITS URANmO "

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
<3i'i)e ilitaecjiibe ^rt0, Cambritige
1905

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY IRVING B. RICHMAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October iqos

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PREFACE
Upon the formative period of Rhode Island his
tory, the author of the present study has dwelt
at length in " Rhode Island : Its Making and its
Meaning," published in 1902. The period in ques
tion was characterized by a separatism that was
intense, but subsequent periods have by no means
been wanting in this feature, and it is largely the
object of the present book to point out the influ
ence of separatism in determining the course of
events in Rhode Island during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
Within the current year there has been pub
lished by Dr. Edward Channing, of Harvard, vol
ume one of a history of the United States. This
volume, at page 412, contains the statement, that
all existing histories of Rhode Island are "full
of prejudice against Massachusetts." The state
ment would seem to commit Dr. Channing to the
dictum that no historical writer may speak with
severity — discriminating severity even — concern-

vi PREFACE
ing the general attitude of early Massachusetts
toward early Rhode Island, without incurring the
charge of prejudice. Outside of the Bay State
severity against early Massachusetts intolerance
(vide Osgood and Andrews) is evidently not con
sidered by American historians an indication, per
se, of prejudice, nor is it evidently so considered
by such European scholars, English, Swiss, and
German, as Doyle, Bryce, Borgeaud, and Jellinek.
The possibility remains that in his dictum, that
all histories of Rhode Island (because of severity
toward early Massachusetts) are filled with preju
dice. Dr. Channing is right and others, American
and European, are wrong; but, as affecting the
weight of the dictum, the circumstance can hardly
be overlooked that Dr. Channing, by birth, educa
tion, and persistent environment, is a Massachu
setts man.
Animated with the hope that as one possessed
of no relationship, ancestral or contemporary, to
New England, his work may be found reasonably
impartial, the author desires to make acknowledg
ment for valuable aid to his friends, Mr. Clarence
S. Brigham, librarian of the Rhode Island His
torical Society; Mr. George Parker Winship,
librarian of the John Carter Brown Library ; Mr.

PREFACE vii
William E. Foster, librarian of the Providence
Public Library ; Professor William MacDonald,
pf Brown University; Mr. William P. Sheffield,
Jr., of Newport ; Dr. Frank G. Bates, of Alfred
University, New York ; and Mr. Reuben G.
Thwaites, of the Historical Society of Wisconsin.
I. B. R.
Muscatine, Iowa, September 23, 1905.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
Paet I. AGRICULTURE AND SEPARATISM '
I. Nabkagansett Bay ... , , 3
II, The Age op Roger Williams, ... 13
Part IL COMMERCE AND COOPERATION
III. Paper Money . . . , 65
IV, Rhode Island and the Sea , , , , 84
V, The Golden Age op Newport (Commerce) , 107
VI. The Golden Age of Newport — continued
(Letters, Arts, Science)  129
VII. Old Narragansett  146
VIII. Growth of Providence : Stephen Hopkins and
Moses Brown . . .... 159
IX, Constitutional Development . . . 180
Part III, UNIFICATION AND MANUFACTURES
X, Portents op Revolution  197
XI, Rhode Island the Theatre of War . . 216
XII. The Federal Constitution  241
XIII, Decline of Commerce and Establishment op
Manufactures . . . . 258
XIV. The Dorr Rebellion  285
XV. The Civil War and After .... 308

X CONTENTS
APPENDIX, A, Towns and Counties of Rhode Island, with
Dates of Settlement or of Incorporation 345
B. List of Chief Magistrates of Rhode Island,
1636-1905 ,,'...', 345
BIBLIOGRAPHY  351
INDEX , , , ,  387

The smallest [of the New England colonies], Rhode
Island, had features all its own; . . . the rest were
substantially one in nature and origin.
Fkancis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe,
vol. i, p. 25.

PART I
AGRICULTURE AND SEPARATISM
1636-1689

RHODE ISLAND

CHAPTER I
NARRAGANSETT BAT
Geography — Discovery — Present-day Environment
Before the age of Roger Williams Rhode Island
was separatist. It was so in its geography. It
consisted of a strip or section of territory — a con
tinental or mainland section embracing Narragan
sett Bay — and of a series of formations within
the bay constituting a section of islands.
Within present boundaries the greatest length
of the Narragansett Bay commonwealth is forty-
eight miles, and its greatest width thirty-seven.
Its area, including the bay, is nearly thirteen hun
dred square miles. The bay itself comprises about
two hundred square miles, and is broken into lesser
bays, and into straits and channels, by its groups
of islands. Of these islands Prudence, Conanicut,
and the island of Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, are
the largest. The entire coast line (bay and sea)
extends four hundred miles, and adjacent to it in
South Kingstown, Charlestown, and Westerly the
lands are low and marshy. To the northward and

4 RHODE ISLAND
westward there is a gradual increase in elevation,
the highest point — 805 feet — being attained at
Durfee's Hill in Glocester.
Narragansett Bay forms the outlet for three
considerable Rhode Island streams, — the Black-
stone (Seekonk), the Woonasquatucket, and the
Pawtuxet, — ^and the Atlantic Ocean for a fourth
stream, the Pawcatuck. These streams are in
terrupted by falls and rapids, and in the days of
the first settlers were bordered by strips of luxu
riant grass land. Aside from the river meadows
and coast marshes, the surface of aboriginal Rhode
Island was stony or sandy and covered by a thick
growth of forest.
Passage from the mainland to the islands, and
from the islands to the mainland, was in the early
days often difficult and sometimes dangerous, a
fact to which official records and private diaries
bear concurrent testimony. That Providence and
Newport, therefore, should develop on. divergent
lines is not surprising ; although in calm weather
the physical bond between them must have been
of a closer nature than would have been supplied
by as many miles of Indian forest trail.
In a letter to Erancis I of France, dated July
8, 1524, Jean Verrazano describes the shores
and islands of Narragansett Bay, a spot upon
which he had come, in the spring of the year
named, in searching for a channel through the
American continent to the regions of Cathay.

NARRAGANSETT BAY 6
" Weighing anchor," he says, " we sailed eighty
leagues toward the East, as the coast stretched in
that direction, and always in sight of it ; at length
we discovered an island of a triangular form,
about ten leagues from the mainland, in size about
eqUal to the island of Rhodes, having many hills
covered with trees, and well peopled, judging from
the great number of fires which we saw aU around
its shores ; we gave it the name of Your Majesty's
illustrious mother [Luisa].
" We did not land there as the weather was
unfavorable, but proceeded to another place, fifteen
leagues distant from the island, where we found a
very excellent harbor. . . .
" This region is situated in the parallel of Rome,
being 41 degrees 40 minutes of north latitude, but
much colder from accidental circumstances and
not by nature, as I shall hereafter explain to Your
Majesty, and confine myself at present to the
description of its local situation. It looks toward
the south, 09 which side the harbor is half a
league broad ; af tc wards upon entering it, the
extent between the coast and north is twelve
leagues, and then enlarging itself it becomes a
veiry large bay, twenty leagues in circumference,
in which are five small islands, of great fertility
and beauty, covered with large and lofty trees.
Among these islands any fleet, however large,
might ride safely, without fear of tempest or
other dangers. Turning towards the south, at the

6 RHODE ISLAND
entrance of the harbor, on both sides, there are
very pleasant hiUs, and many streams of clear
water, which flow down to the sea. In the midst
of the entrance, there is a rock of free stone [Goat
Island], formed by nature, and suitable for the
construction of any kind of machine or bulwark
for the defense of the harbor."
But Verrazano possibly was not the first Euro
pean to visit the bay in question. As early as the
tenth century, according to Norse tradition, Leif ,
son of Eric, sailed from Greenland to the west
and south and wintered upon the New England
coast at a point which he called Vinland, on a bay
identified by the Danish scholar Rafn as that of
Mount Hope. In the opinion of the enthusiastic
Rafn, the Old Stone Mill at Newport, the mill
which Governor Benedict Arnold had built about
1675, and of which he makes repeated mention in
his last will and testament, was of Norse construc
tion. After Verrazano, map-makers were wont to des
ignate Narragansett Bay as the Bay of St. Juan
Baptist, although Verrazano himself had chris
tened it the Bay of Refuge. It remained the
Bay of St. Juan until 1614, when a Dutchman,
Adriaen Block, emulating the brave Henry Hud
son, who fourteen years before had sailed up the
lordly North River, appeared off 'Point Judith in
a little ship of sixteen tons. Block touched at the
three-cornered island which Verrazano had named

NARRAGANSETT BAY 7
Luisa, and gave to it his own name, Block —
Block Eylandt. He then carefully explored the
Bay of St. Juan, calling it Nassau. The west
passage he called Sloop Bay, and the east passage
Anchor Bay. A small island, believed from his
account of its location to have been Hope (it lay
to the west of Aquidneck), he described as " een
rodtlich Eylandken."
For sketches of the Indians of the Narragansett
region we are indebted to both Verrazano and
Block. At the time of Block's visit the Wampa-
noags, or Pokanokets, would seem to have been in
occupation of the principal islands of the bay, and
the Mohegans and Nyantics of the mainland to
the west. Later on the Narragansetts, who abode
between the Mohegans and Wampanoags, extended
their dominion to the eastward. By 1636, the
date of the coming of Roger Williams, the Nar
ragansetts had established a suzerainty over the
Wampanoags, but on the west they were held in
check by the warlike Mohegans and Pequods,
the latter an invading tribe from the north. Of
all the tribes of southern New England, the Nar
ragansetts were the most numerous — eight or ten
thousand souls ; and their chief sachems, the aged
Canonicus and youthful Miantonomi, were men
of exceptional astuteness. Of unusual qualities
also were the chief sachems, respectively, of the
Wampanoags, Mohegans, and Pequods, — Massa-
soit, Uncas, and Sassacus,

8 RHODE ISLAND
Occupation of Rhode Island on the part of the
English was first by an agricultural class, and next
by a class that was commercial. In recent years it
has been by an industrial class. The agricultural
ists, who never formed a very numerous group, dis
persed themselves over Aquidneck and through the
valleys of the Seekonk, the Woonasquatucket, the
Pawtuxet, and the Pawcatuck, and became (in the
more remote sections) ignorant, superstitious, and
prejudiced. With the decline of agriculture, the best
representatives of the group entered commerce, or,
after the Revolutionary War, migrated northwest
ward into Vermont and New York ; and those left
behind — the less energetic — tended yet more to
degenerate into a class of poor whites.
Availing themselves (as they freely did) of the
fresh water meadows and salt marshes for their
cattle and horses, and of the woods and barrens
for their swine and sheep, the Rhode Island agri
culturists made no great impression on the Narra
gansett wilderness outside of Aquidneck ; and with
the development of commerce the impression made
was still less, for commerce tended to draw popu
lation (the best of it) to the commercial centres 
Newport and Providence. With the rise of manu
factures the river valleys became scenes of greater
activity than ever before ; but in the interior, away
from the valleys, there reigned a solitude that was
profound. Agriculture now became markedly de
pressed, and the depression has not as yet been

NARRAGANSETT BAY 9
dispelled. Mr, Josiah B. Bowditch, after a review
of the census figures for 1900, concludes that the
farming population of Rhode Island to-day is no
greater than it was in 1790. Some towns, as, for
example. West Greenwich, have declined from as
early a date ^s 1748.
To take one's station on a Rhode Island hill and
permit one's glance to traverse the Narragansett
Bay region, is to behold a commonwealth occupied
in its main valleys (those of the Blackstone and
Pawtuxet) and along its coast line by an active
population of nearly four hundred thousand souls
and its back country by an inactive population
of not much to exceed thirty thousand souls. This
back country, moreover, one would perceive to be
a country of hills and forest. " The huge rollers,"
observes Mr. Clarence Deming, " stretch to the
horizon in endless rise and slope . . . and over all
is laid the thick mantle of the woods, unbroken save
by one or two brown houses on a distant hill, or by
a clearing so infrequent and small that it accents
the ocean of forest. . . . Swift and clear streams
pour thrqugh the valleys, fed by springs and sus
tained in drought by the swamps ; , the underbrush
is dense, and through vast areas all but impenetra
ble, with such cover for quail, partridge, and wood
cock as seems to challenge the most destroying
energy of the pot-hunter; the wildest of wild
flowers, such as the cypripedium, grow by the very
roadside in their season ; lakes and ponds, reputed

10 RHODE ISLAND
to have good black bass fishing, show hardly a
dwelling on their shores or a boat on their waters.
. . . Old taverns, lodging no guest and with no
welcoming host, front the highways, the dim ghosts
of old revelry seeming to peer through shattered
pane and shutter. Half the farmhouses are de
serted and in every degree of infirmity. The
houses where families yet abide are in the decrepit
stage of unpainted clapboard, sagging rafter, and
wry fence. . . . But saddest of all are the decay
ing monuments of what was once a region of lively
and expansive industry — a whole mill village
deserted. ... In wildest Rhode Island the aban
doned mill jostles closely the abandoned farm, and
both have gone down together before the industrial
wave which has swept the smaller factories to the
railroad and shore and hived the workers in the
greater shops under higher productive organiza
tion." Of course amid a scene of desolation such as
this there are to be encountered types of character
all the quainter from their surroundings. Im
pressed with the fact. Miss Esther B. parpenter,
in 1887, published a delightful series of character
sketches — "South County Neighbors," The men
and women she depicts are survivals from the
pristine Narragansett stock with its " Old Jobs "
and " Young Jobs " and its " Uncle Simons ; " its
" Akadys," " Celindys," and " Lovisy Anns ; ' its
"Oseys" [Osiannas], "Pashes" [Patiences], and

NARRAGANSETT BAY 11
" Phylutys." " Now, neighbor," Uncle Simon was
wont to remark, " what d' ye think makes Squire
Potter and Squire Hazard always talk to me
wheresumever they see me?" "Why, I don't
know. Uncle Simon." " Well, neighbor, I '11 tell
ye. 'T is to draar knalidge — yes, to draar knal-
idge." It was (we are assured by Miss Carpenter)
a favorite hypothesis of Simon's that if he could
only have talked with King George the Revolution
need never have occurred.
But, to pursue a query propounded by Mr.
Deming, " What does the future hold for Rhode
Island's west, where nature is so fast overgrowing
man, where meadows and sown field year by year
shrink, where the woodlands expand, and the farm
problem of Yankeeland repeats itself in its super
lative degree ? Will the rich sporting patroons,
who have begun to buy up the forests by the square
mile at a dollar or two an acre, realize their hopes
of a paradise of rod and gun ? Will the strange
expanse of the very penumbra of busy cities be
given over at last to the well-watched preserves
of the sportsmen's ijlubs and syndicates ? Will it
in the maturing of the science of forestry, now in
bud, become the source of lucrative timber sup
ply ? Or as populations outside wax and a refluent
stream of wealth pours on the picturesque sites of
New England, will remote posterity see the semi-
wilderness cut by electric roads, the truck farmer
or tenant driving back the forest, the lands grown

12 RHODE ISLAND
fat and costly, and every scenic hilltop crowned
by the homes of the rich? To such surmise," says
Mr. Deming, " whether of economist, nature lover,
or sportsman, the deepening solitudes of wildest
Rhode Island give no reply."
Possibly not, but Professor N. S. Shaler of Har
vard confidently predicts a time when, by reason
of the exhaustion of more available lands, the
lands of New England, especially those of a marshy
character, will be widely reclaimed. Be that as it
may, " Rhode Island's west " — its sparsely peo
pled, its intensely individualistic and separatist,
west — is even now exerting a preponderant in
fluence in Rhode Island affairs. The nature and
tendency of that influence are reserved for consid
eration 'm our last chapter.

CHAPTER II
THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS
1. Founding of Providence and Warwick
The age of Roger Williams in Rhode Island cen
tres about six historic names and four geographical
points. The names are Roger Williams and Wil
liam Harris ; William Coddington and John Clarke ;
Samuel Gorton and Anne Hutchinson. The points
are Providence and Warwick on the Rhode Island
mainland, and Newport and Portsmouth on the
island of Aquidneck.
Roger Williams was born in London about 1603.
His parents were James and Alice (Pemberton)
Williams, and the occupation of his father was
that of merchant tailor. Of his boyhood years we
know nothing. Our first glimpse of him is ob
tained in 1620, when he was a lad of seventeen.
Williams (probably with a view to a livelihood)
had learned shorthand, and for the purpose of
practicing his art had obtained permission to at
tend sessions of the Court of Star Chamber. Here,
by his alertness of mind and openness of heart,
he won the regard of Sir Edward Coke — the
grim Sir Edward who, as chief justice of the Court
of King's Bench, had in 1616 withstood to his

14 RHODE ISLAND j
face on a question of prerogative the pedantic James
the First. Of Williams Coke straightway became
the patron, and as such he in 1621 secured for him
admission to the Charterhouse School, an institu
tion then newly founded and of which the jurist
himself was one of the overseers. In 1652 (long
after the death of Coke) Roger Williams sought
to enter into correspondence with a surviving
daughter, Mrs. Anne Sadleir of Standon, Puck-
ridge, but the dame — grim by disposition like her
illustrious parent and incensed at Williams for his
iconoclastic religious views — bound his letters into
a package and indorsed upon it : " This Roger Wil
liams when he was a youth would in a shorthand
take sermons and speeches in the Star Chamber
and present them to my dear father. . . . Full little
did he think that he would have proved such a rebel
to God, the King and his country. I leave his let
ters that, if ever he has the face to return into his
native country, Tyburn may give him welcome."
From the Charterhouse Williams went to Pem
broke College, Cambridge, where he graduated in
1626. His inclination at first was for the law, but
the times were times of theology, and in 1629 he
was filling the position of chaplain to Sir William
Masham of Otes, in Essex. While thus employed
he fell deeply in love with a niece of Lady
Barrington, the Lady Barring-ton being an aunt
to Oliver Cromwell. Williams's love affair was not
prosperous. He had, it is true, won the heart of

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 15
the maiden to whom he aspired; but in the eyes
of Lady Barrington he was a match altogether un
suitable for one of her family, and his passion was
frowned upon. In complete despair he wrote to the
obdurate lady on May 2, 1629 : " We [his sweet
heart and himself] hope to live together in the
heavens though ye Lord have denied that union
on earth." But this was not all that he did. Cam
bridge, where he had attended college, was in
Cambridgeshire, one of those eastern counties of
England into which there had long been migrating
from Holland Anabaptists and Mennonites imbued
with the idea of severance of Church from State.
With this idea Williams himself had become im
pressed ; so much so, indeed, that he had thought
it not unimportant to acquire a knowledge of the
Dutch tongue. In his present situation, therefore,
— crossed in love and a rebel against episcopacy, —
he began to bend his gaze across the sea to a new
land : that land whither already had departed the
Separatist congregation of Nottinghamshire Pil
grims, and whither the Winthrop company of
Puritans from Lincolnshire were soon to set out :
a land, moreover, tenanted by a race wild, fantastic,
and in need of Christianization — the land of the
Massachusetts Bay.
On February 5, 1631, Roger Williams disem
barked at Boston from the ship Lyon; and as
though to emphasize the entirety of his renunci
ation of bygone days and dreams, he disembarked

16 RHODE ISLAND
accompanied by a wife, Mary (nee Barnard), and
without having visited Stoke House to say farewell
to Sir Edward, his patron, whom indeed at this
time it would scarcely have been prudent for him
to face. In New England — first at Salem, then
at Plymouth, then at Salem again — Williams
found himself constantly and from the first in
opposition to prevailing ideas. Where he had
thought to find, if not his own conceptions, at
least room for the assertion of those conceptions,
he found a hierarchy of ministers and elders and
a stiff ecclesiastical discipline ; a hierarchy and
discipline to which the distinctively secular agency,
government, was in practice subordinated. Yet
the conceptions held by Williams were not such —
all of them — that any government of the day
could wholly have passed them by. They involved
opposition to the charter of the colony because it
recognized the king rather than the Indians as the
source of title to lands ; a delicate point at the
moment, for the king was then seeking a pretext
for recalling the charter. They involved opposition
to the autonomy of the colony under the charter,
for they were antagonistic to judicial oaths by
which that autonomy was sought to be confirmed.
Some things, however, they involved that the
government (had it been secular) could well have
tolerated: for instance, that the civil magistrate
ought not to be empowered to punish sins as such,
offenses purely against God — the acts forbidden

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 17
in the first table of the Decalogue ; that, in other
words, magisterial power should extend only to the
punishment of misdemeanors and crimes, offenses
against man — the acts forbidden in the second
table of the Decalogue. Upon this principle there
was to be founded the commonwealth of Rhode
Island. The final result of the clash between Roger
Williams and Massachusetts was that on October
9, 1635, Williams was ordered to depart within
six weeks out of the jurisdiction of the Bay, as
one having "broached & dyvulged dyvers newe
& dangerous opinions, against the aucthoritie of
magistrates," and having " writ Ires of defamacon
both of the magistrates & churches." Afterwards
the sentence of expulsion was so far modified that
Williams was permitted to remain in Salem until
spring. But inasmuch as by private discourses
and exercises he continued "to draw others unto
his opinions," it was decided in January, 1636, to
send him to England. The plan was revealed to
the culprit in season for him to thwart it by evad
ing Captain John Underbill, who had been charged
with its execution, and soon, amid cold and deep
snow, he, with his servant Thomas Angell, was on
his way to the lodge of his friend Massasoit, the
sachem of the Wampanoags.
In the spring of 1636 Williams broke ground
for a habitation at Seekonk (East Providence), on
the east bank of the Seekonk River. Here he was

18 RHODE ISLAND
joined by three companions, among them William
Harris. The party would have remained where
they were, but were warned away as trespassers by
Plymouth, and in the summer removed to Moos-
hassuc and began to lay the foundations of Provi
dence. The arrival at Seekonk of William Harris was
an occurrence most significant for the Providence
settlement. Williams and Harris had come to
Massachusetts in the same ship, but by tempera
ment and training were antipathetic to a degree.
Williams was an idealist; Harris was a realist.
The former was generous, full of compassion, and
not altogether practical. The latter was keen,
hard, and regardful of personal advantage. The
Providence which together they succeeded in cre
ating partook of the characteristics of both ; and
throughout the lives of both, lives lasting almost
to the end of the seventeenth century, was racked
by the dissensions of themselves and of their re
spective adherents.
Among the motives which had inspired the com
ing of Roger Williams to America was a desire to
convert the Indians, " to do the natives good." At
Plymouth the newly arrived clergyman had early
made friends with Massasoit ; and as a result of
excursions into the Narragansett country, during
which he had carefully studied the Algonquin
tongue, he had entered into relations with Canoni
cus and Miantonomi. When, therefore, he and his

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS . 19
companions — a party of five — found themselves
at Mooshassuc, Williams was master of the situa
tion. The Indians knew him and respected him,
and in the fullness of their knowledge and respect
executed to him on March 24, 1638, a conveyance
of a township of land on the Mooshassuc and Paw
tuxet rivers. It was the intention of the grantee
to devote the gift to charitable uses. He meant to
make of it in part a mission station, and in part a
basis for a communal society composed of persons
"distressed for conscience." To the latter design
he probably was led by the circumstance that per
sons distressed for conscience — persons harassed
at Plymouth or at the Bay — were already congre
gating about him.
But just here William Harris began to assert
himself. He was willing that idealism, in the form
of affection, philanthrop'y, and religion, should win
from the Indians a tract of land ; but he was not
willing that the land so won should remain " a
common stock " for the benefit of all " distressed "
comers. Individual ownership was what he sought,
and by October 8, 1638, he had so far " wearied "
Williams by importunities that the latter executed
to twelve men — Stukeley Westcott, William Ar
nold, Thomas James, Robert Cole, John Greene,
John Throckmorton, William Harris, William Car
penter, Thomas Olney, Francis Weston, Richard
Waterman, and Ezekiel Holliman — a deed con
stituting the twelve (along with the grantor) a

20 RHODE ISLAND
" fellowship " in the Indian grant. The deed did
not create a partnership ; ' it created a corporation.
But to convert the corporate holding largely into
holdings in severalty was the work of but a little
time. In fact, during the same autumn so much of
the Indian grant as lay upon the Pawtuxet River
(a portion called the " Pawtuxet Purchase ") was,
by agreement between the proprietaries, parti
tioned into several tracts.
The government which under Williams was first
instituted at Providence was by " masters of fami
lies." The masters met once a fortnight and dis
patched business " by mutual consent." By August
or September, 1636, there had been admitted into
the community a body of " young men, single per
sons." The government now was rendered more
definite by a stipulation, concluded between the
early comers and "young men," that the latter
were to be subject "in active and passive obe
dience " to the orders of the major part of the
" present inhabitants, masters of families, incorpo
rated into a town, and such others as they should
admit, only in civil things." In 1640 a board of
five disposers, or selectmen, was established, to
" be betrusted " with general matters, and a sys
tem of arbitration was set up. In the above men
tioned cautious and tentative contrivances the in
dividualism implied in the doctrine of Soul Liberty
or Freedom of Conscience was sought as fully as
possible to be carried into the domain of politics.

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLlfAMS 21
There were no magistrates ; there was no consta
ble. As Williams had written to Governor John
Winthrop of Massachusetts in 1636, " the face of
magistracy did not suit with [the] condition [of
the settlement]."
In March or April, 1641, Samuel Gorton ap
peared in Providence. He was a man of some pre
tensions to family, and, like the father of Roger
Williams, a London clothier. He also was a theo
logian — one of those extreme products of the
Reformation in whom the age abounded ; men and
women actuated toward the large mysteries of life,
redemption, and immortality by a spirit of daring
challenge, and just enough schooled to obscure
their lucubrations by garbing them in Hebrew
imagery. As an extremist, Gorton believed in
Freedom of Conscience. Hence in politics he was
an individualist ; but to his political individualism
there was imparted stability by the circumstance
that he was a profound admirer of the English
common law. Wherever that law was enthroned
and observed, there for him was civil liberty ; and
wherever it was not enthroned, or was not observed,
there for him was civil tyranny.
Up to the time of his advent upon the Mooshas
suc, the life of Gorton in New England had been
a succession of small tempests. At Plymouth,
where, in 1637, he had removed from rigid Boston,
he had had an altercation with the magistrates over
their treatment of his serving maid for " smiling

22 RHODE ISLAND
in church ; " with the issue that in December,
1638, he had been banished for " contempt."
From Plymouth he (Roger Williams like) had
made his way, through "snow to the knee," to
Portsmouth, on the island of Aquidneck. Here,
within a brief time, he had become involved in
behalf of another serving maid — one charged with
assault — and in due course (for his own defiance
of authority) had been banished to the mainland.
But Gorton's career, though thus a series of conten
tions, was not altogether a madness. At Plymouth
the proceedings in restraint of the levity of his
servant were to him ecclesiastically tyrannous as
against conscience, and civilly tyrannous in that
(as conducted) prosecutor and judge, contrary to
English law, were one. At Portsmouth none of
the proceedings were to him justifiable, because on
Aquidneck the government was neither of royal
nor popular origin, but " set up of itself."
The reception accorded to Gorton by Rower
Williams was far from cordial. He demanded
that the fugitive, as a condition precedent to ad
mission to the town fellowship, exculpate himself
from the charges brought against him at Ports
mouth ; and in this demand he was sustained vig
orously by William Arnold. Gorton, on his part
found the situation at Providence no more worthy
of respect than on the island. A few men without
authority from the king of England, or from any
source other than themselves, were (with their fam-

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 23
ilies) occupying houses distributed along a nar
row highway skirting the Mooshassuc and called
" the towne street." Besides a house -lot, these men
owned each a six-acre pasture or arable field; and
as a body (as a fellowship or corporation) they
owned all the rest of Providence. And not only
so, but thirteen of them were owners, each, of a
great estate on the Pawtuxet. Surely this was all
wrong, all an illegal monopoly, and should be over
thrown. Gorton had been accompanied from Portsmouth
by various disciples, and he made further converts
at Providence. In his train now were Randall
Holden and John Greene ; and the entire party
— after bringing the settlement so near to revolu
tion that Roger Williams, who at first " in Christ's
name had withstood [the intruder]," at length
gave up the contest and seriously bethought him-
»self of flight to the island of Patience — settled
down at Pawtuxet. At Pawtuxet, however, there
were the Arnolds — William and his son Benedict ;
and the Arnolds were of no mean order of ability.
Their best energies were at once directed to the
task of ridding the region of the burden of Gorton.
Already in 1641 Massachusetts had let fall the
pregnant hint that it might operate for quiet and
good order on .the Mooshassuc and Pawtuxet if
the more substantial inhabitants were to subject
themselves to the jurisdiction of the Bay. So in
the autumn of 1642, the Arnolds and their family

24 RHODE ISLAND
connections made subjection in the name of Paw
tuxet, and notice of the fact was promptly con
veyed to Gorton by Governor Winthrop. The
Gortonists had been neatly circumvented, and in
January, 1643, they, after dispatching to Boston
a letter stigmatizing the Puritans as a merciless
Jewish brotherhood, removed to Shawomet. Shaw-
omet was a district embracing what to-day are
the towns of Warwick and Coventry. It was ob
tained by the Gortonists from Miantonomi and
two local sachems, Pumham and Sacononoco.
Gorton possessed something of Williams's faculty
for ingratiating himself with the Indians, and his
purchase of Shawomet marked the beginning of a
friendship between himself and Miantonomi that
was to be provocative of much.
Having forced Gorton from Pawtuxet, the Ar
nolds next resolved to force him from Shawomet,
Massachusetts had served their purpose once, it
should be baited to do so again. In May, 1643,
Pumham and Sacononoco were taken by Benedict
Arnold to Boston, and, offering to submit them
selves and Shawomet to the jurisdiction of the
Bay, were graciously received. Pumham acknow
ledged that he had signed a deed for Shawomet to
the Gortonists, but professed to have been driven
to the act through the sinister influence of Sam
uel Gorton over Miantonomi, his overlord. Ac
cordingly both Gorton and Miantonomi were
summoned to appear and show cause why the Gor-

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 25
tonists should not be evicted from their holdings
as trespassers. Furthermore, commissioners were
sent to Shawomet and Pawtuxet to inquire into
conditions on the spot, and to take in writing the
answers of the local sachems to a series of interro
gatories on the ten commandments. If Massachu
setts became sponsor for Pumham and Sacononoco,
it must be on a satisfactory profession of their
faith. The profession proved to be satisfactory,
and on June 22 a formal deed of submission from
the Indians was accepted.
Miantonomi obeyed the summons to Boston, but
Samuel Gorton did not. The latter in September
(pursuing a favorite method) reduced his views to
writing. These views were that the head of the
State in Massachusetts was an " Idol General — a
Satan transforming himself into an angel of light; "
and that his subjects " lived by blood " through
persecutions. " If," continued the epistle, " your
sword be drawn, ours is girt upon our thigh."
In this plain challenge to arms, Gorton perhaps
was indiscreet. At all events Massachusetts, the
next month, put in the field a company of soldiers
and advanced on Shawomet. The Gortonists took
refuge in a log house where they fortified them
selves, and to the fortress the invaders laid siege.
A lively fire was directed upon the structure with
out harm to the inmates, but, after a few days, the
latter — upon (as they always insisted) a promise
of " safe conduct " — consented to accompany the

26 RHODE ISLAND
besiegers to Boston; in a word, capitulated. At
Boston the Gortonists were put on trial, not as
would be supposed for trespass, or for anything
connected with title to the Shawomet lands, but
for heresy. If they could be convicted of that, all
else would naturally follow. They were convicted,
and death well-nigh became their portion. In lieu
of death they were thrust in chains and set at
hard labor. At length, in the spring of 1644, their
presence becoming an embarrassment, they were
liberated ; but with the understanding that they
were to betake themselves forever from the soil of
Massachusetts, Providence, and Shawomet.
When, in January, 1643, Miantonomi affixed
his hand to the deed of Shawomet to Gorton, he
little foresaw that virtually he was affixing his
hand to a warrant for his own undoing ; but so it
proved. On May 19, 1643, the New England Con
federation was formed. It embraced Massachusetts,
Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. Of these
colonies Connecticut was on the border and had
suffered severely from the Indians. It responded
in alarm to every rumor of an Indian uprising and
kept urging upon Massachusetts action concern-
ing the Narragansetts, against whom the jealousy
of its own Indian allies — the Mohegans  con
stantly bred charges of treachery.
Massachusetts, in 1640 and again in 1642 had
investigated like charges, and, finding them with
out foundation, had become convinced of the good-

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 27
will of the subjects of Canonicus and Miantonomi ;
but after the sale of Shawomet to Gorton its atti
tude changed. The presumption now in the mind
of the Bay — now that Miantonomi had cemented
a friendship with Gorton, with Gorton the heretic,
Gorton " the beast," Gorton " the blasphemer " —
was converted from one of innocence to one of
guilt. Accordingly, when in July, 1643, Mianto
nomi, as the result of an attack upon the Mohe
gans, was made captive by them and held pending
a decision as to his fate by the United Colonies,
Massachusetts, acting the part of a Pontius Pilate,
surrendered the unfortunate sachem — its own oft-
tried friend — unto the vengeance of Connecticut
and its allies. Miantonomi was condemned to death,
and on a day in September, at a spot near the pre
sent Connecticut town of Norwich, was slain by
Uncas the Mohegan, with a war-hatchet.
2. The Pequod War ; Portsmouth and Newport.
On the part of the Pequods — the most warlike
of the New England Indian tribes — a hostile at
titude toward the English bad early begun to be
manifested. By the summer of 1636 this attitude
had become so marked that Massachusetts, fearing
the consequences, set to work to secure the friend
ship of the Narragansetts. With the latter (through
the earnest and hazardous labors of Roger Wil
liams) an alliance was formed. The Pequods thus
placed in isolation were, on the morning of May 26,

28 RHODE ISLAND
1637, surprised in their stronghold on the Mystic
River by the combined forces of Massachusetts and
Connecticut, and almost to a man delivered to the
sword. The destruction of the Pequods removed from
the Narragansett region all immediate peril from
the Indians ; and winning in the aspect of its woods
and waters as by nature the region was, it held
forth in its unsettled parts a seductive and insist
ent invitation to the pioneer. Those to accept the
invitation were a band of refugees from Boston —
the Antinomians. Not long after the banishment
of Williams there had arisen at Boston a spirit of
strong reaction against the formalism, the rigid
ecclesiasticism, of Massachusetts. Here and there
protests began to be heard regarding the Puritan
doctrine of salvation by works as inculcated on
Sabbaths and Lecture Days by the pastor of the
Boston Church, the Rev, John Wilson. Anne
Hutchinson and her brother-in-law, John Wheel
wright (both from near Boston in Lincohishire)
were the most pronounced of the innovators ; but
John Cotton, the associate of Wilson, was himself
an innovator ; and even Sir Henry Vane, who in
1636 had been chosen governor, was an anti-legalist.
With a view to settling doctrine and restorino-
discipline, there was held at Cambridge in Septem
ber, 1637, a synod of the Massachusetts churches.
The movement was so far effective that it bridled
Cotton ; but neither Mistress Hutchinson nor John

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 29
Wheelwright was cowed by it, and in November
both were brought to trial as fomenters of sedition
— disturbers of the civil peace. Wheelwright was
found guilty and at once banished. Mistress Hutch
inson, too, was found guilty, but banishment was
deferred until she should have been tried by the
Boston Church for heresy.
As a result of the proceedings above described,
and of an order by the Massachusetts government
for disarming such persons as sympathized with the
victims, a considerable party of Boston people,
headed by William Coddington and John Clarke,
set forth in March, 1638, to seek to the southward
a more congenial place of abiding. The party had
Delaware in view, but owing to detention at Cape
Cod were enabled to hold (through their leaders)
a conference with Roger Williams at Providence.
At Williams's suggestion, and by his aid, there
was obtained on March 24 a deed from Canonicus
and Miantonomi " to William Coddington and his
friends united under him " for Aquidneck (the is
land of Rhode Island) in Narragansett Bay ; and
hither the Antinomian company straightway re
paired to lay the foundations of Portsmouth.
William Coddington was born in Boston, Eng
land, in 1601, and in his native town was a man of
substance and position. When the corporation of
Massachusetts Bay was formed, he was made one
of the assistants or council, and later became trea
surer. On the trial of Anne Hutchinson for sedi-

30 RHODE ISLAND
tion, he boldly withstood Winthrop, John Endicott,
and the clergy. John Clarke was born on October
8, 1609, in Bedfordshire. He was by calling a phy
sician, and his general education was unusual for
the time. On arriving at Boston in 1637, he, like
Williams before him, was astounded at the bigotry
which he found enthroned, and immediately began
casting about him for a more liberal retreat. Now
that a retreat had been found, the next step was to
erect a government ; and it seems to have been a
step somewhat summarily taken. Indeed, at first,
the Antinomians did little else than re-erect the
Jewish system whence they so lately had fled. Al
ready at Providence they had chosen Codding
ton chief magistrate under the title of Judge,
and upon their occupation of the island no change
was made until January, 1639, when three elders
(John CoggeshaU, Nicholas Easton, and William
Brenton) were chosen " to assist in the execution
of justice and judgment,"
In the nature of things a theocracy on the island
of Aquidneck could not long endure. Antinomian-
ism in the very term implied oppugnancy to forms.
It was of the spirit, and the spirit must be free.
Then, too, on Aquidneck, Antinomianism was suc
cored by the influence of two extraordinary person
alities — Anne Hutchinson and Samuel Gorton.
The former had come to Portsmouth (where her
husband William Hutchinson had preceded her)
at the conclusion of her trial for heresy,  a trial

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 31
in the issue of which she had been pronounced
excommunicate and delivered up to Satan, — and
Gorton had come fresh from his legal tussle with
the magistrates of Plymouth. So pronounced now
was the latitudinarian tendency that it alarmed
both Coddington and Clarke. On April 29, 1639,
they, together with their more immediate friends,
— William Dyer, Thomas Hazard, and Henry Bull,
— abandoned Portsmouth, and, proceeding to the
southerly end of the island, established a new settle
ment — Newport.
At Newport the system of government by judge
and elders was reinaugurated, and to the judge
there was accorded " a double voice." At Ports
mouth, meanwhile, ideas essentially Antinomian
were given scope. The community made formal
acknowledgment of King Charles I and (perhaps
as a concession to Gorton) adopted the common
law. They elected, for one year, a chief magis
trate (William Hutchinson) and eight assistants
or councilmen, and established quarterly courts
and trial by jury. The separation of the two island
towns lasted until March 12, 1640, when, dis
covering that separated they were weak, they
resumed the original union. Separation, however,
had taught to each a lesson — the lesson taught
of old by Menaenius Agrippa. At Portsmouth it
had taught that radicalism may be too radical
and end in anarchy. At Newport it had taught
that conservatism may be too conservative and end

32 RHODE ISLAND
in tyranny. The government which the reunion
brought into effect was characterized by wise fea
tures of both radicalism and conservatism. There
were to be a governor and deputy-governor and
four assistants — all annually chosen. The gov
ernor and two of the assistants were always to be
chosen by one of the towns, and the deputy-gov
ernor and two of the assistants were always to be
chosen by the other of the towns. There also were
to be chosen, annually, two treasurers, a secretary,
two constables, and a general sergeant. Nor did
. the work of statesmanship stop here. In 1641 the
State was formally declared a democracy under
the control of the " Body of Freemen orderly
assembled, or the major part of them," and no
one was to be " accounted a delinquent for Doc
trine " who kept the civil peace. Already there had
been adopted the common law with its scheme of
magisterial courts, courts of quarter sessions, and
jury of the vicinage.
Now that the island of Aquidneck had become
a political entity, the contrast between it and the
entity (or wow-entity) Providence was marked in
the extreme. By Providence there was symbolized
individualism both religious and political — a force
centrifugal, disjunctive, and even disruptive. By
Aquidneck (and especially by the Newport part of
it) there was symbolized collectivism — a collec
tivism thoroughly individualized as to religion, but
in politics conjunctive and centripetal. On Aquid-

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 33
neck, as at Providence, the employment of the peo
ple was agriculture — swine and sheep breeding,
the breeding of horses, and dairy farming. Agri
culture everywhere tends to separatism ; and in
early Rhode Island it emphasized the individual
istic bent imparted by the idea of Freedom of Con
science. During the age of Roger Williams that
which we are bidden to contemplate on the shores
of Narragansett Bay is a struggle for supremacy
between separatism and collectivism.
3. Providence Plantations — the Patent of 1644-.
When pondering the question of reunion with
Portsmouth, the Newport government had instructed
Mr. John Clarke and Elder Nicholas Easton " to
inform Mr. Vane by writing of the state of things
here, and desire him to treate about the obtaining
a Patent of the Island from his Majesty." Nothing
had resulted, and in 1642 it was decided to send to
England a representative — Roger Williams.
Williams, because of the decree forbidding his
presence in Massachusetts, set sail in 1643 from
New York in a Dutch ship, and late in the summer
or early in the autumn reached London. Here he
met Sir Henry Vane, — the young Sir Henry whom
he had known in Boston in 1635, now prominent in
the councils of the Long Parliament, — and through
Vane he came to know Oliver Cromwell. The
affairs of the colonies were in charge of a Parlia
mentary board at the head of which was Robert,

34 RHODE ISLAND
Earl of Warwick. To this board application was
made by Williams for a patent of incorporation for
the Narragansett settlements — Providence, Ports
mouth, and Newport ; and on March 14, 1644,
there was issued a patent under the appropriate
seals. The instrument empowered the inhabitants
of the settlements in question to " govern and rule
themselves by such a form of civil government as
by voluntary consent of all, or the greater part of
them, they should find most serviceable ; ... the
laws ... of the said plantation to be conformable
to the laws of England, so far as the nature and
constitution of the place would admit."
Seemingly all was well. But since 1641 there
had been sojourning in London two ardent repre
sentatives of Massachusetts — the Rev. Thomas
Welde and the Rev. Hugh Peters. Hearing of the
mission of Williams in quest of a patent, they early
had taken measures to thwart it. By dint of con
triving, they, on December 10, 1643, had obtained
(under the signatures of nine members of the colo
nial board — one member less than a majority) a
patent whereby there was addfed to the bounds and
limits of Massachusetts the " tract of land . . . called
the Narragansett Bay in America." The Narragan
sett Patent, as it was designated, was sent to Bos
ton in 1645, and there made the basis of a claim
to the whole of the unoccupied part of the Narra
gansett region ; but the insufficiency of the instru
ment was too obvious to admit of much parleying.

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 35
and the claim under it was unsuccessful. One fact
it made manifest ; namely, that Roger Williams had
come to England none too soon.
With his own patent in possession, Williams re
turned to Providence in September, 1644, and his
coming was made the occasion of a demonstration
at Seekonk. He was met by a small flotilla of
canoes, and triumphantly escorted home. But those
who escorted him were all from Providence. None
from the island participated in the act of welcome.
Williams had been sent abroad to procure a patent
for Aquidneck. It is not recorded that the people
of Providence had even expressed a wish for a
patent. When, therefore, the agent for the island
returned bearing a patent which not only coupled
Aquidneck with Providence, but bestowed upon the
infelicitous combination the name " Providence
Plantations," Coddington and his friends were
little pleased. They exhibited their chagrin by
postponing to the latest practicable moment re
cognition of validity in the instrument which had
been secured. So far did they carry resentment
that upon learning, just before Williams's arrival, of
the step which he had taken, they hastened to apply
to the New England Confederation to be received
into alliance. " I desire," wrote Coddington to
Winthrop on August 5, 1644, " to have either such
alliance with yourselves or Plymouth, one or both
as might be safe for us all." To this intimation
the confederation replied declining an alliance, but

36 RHODE ISLAND
counseling subjection ; and here for a season the
matter dropped.
Although Coddington and his friends were loath
to accept the Roger Williams patent, there were
others upon the island who deemed acceptance the
wiser course, and on May 19, 1647, a general
convention was held at Portsmouth to organize for
Providence Plantations a government. In this con
vention Providence was represented by ten dele
gates, but in the main the convention was probably
a Landsgemeinde or popular gathering of free
holders. A year later the freeholders met again,
this time at Providence; and in 1649 and 1650
further meetings were held. In October, 1650, the
Landsgemeinde was superseded by a court of repre
sentatives. The work of the several conventions consisted in
creating a government, legislative, executive, and
judicial, and in adopting a code of laws. Legisla
tive power was vested in the freeholders through
a committee of six from each town, called the
General Court. A measure might originate with
a single town or with the General Court, but was
only to become a law upon adoption by " the Major
parte of the Colonic," In 1650 this device was so
far modified that the General Court was given
" the f uU power of the General Assemblie " or free
men, but must submit its acts to the freemen for
possible rejection. In its modified form the device
was that of the Swiss Referendum. Executive

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 37
functions were made to devolve chiefly on the pre
siding officer of the General Court, called " the
President." The president was to be aided by four
assistants, one from each town ; and besides these
officers there were to be a treasurer, a sergeant, a
general recorder, an attorney-general, and a solicit
or-general. A " Generall Courte of Tryalls," com
posed of the president and assistants, was instituted.
It was to exercise original jurisdiction in graver
criminal cases and in cases arising between town
and town, between residents of different towns,
or between a town and a resident of a neighbor
ing colony. Likewise there was instituted trial by
jury. The code of laws which was adopted (the
Code of 1647) is noteworthy in a high degree. By
it the death penalty was limited to a few heinous
offenses; banishment and imprisonment for debt
were repudiated ; divorce might be granted only
for adultery ; and the maritime code, " the Lawes
of Oleron," was declared in force.
The Code of 1647 was the work of the people
of Aquidneck. It embodied their organizing and
systematizing spirit and thus wrought for coUectiv- '
ism. But in its framing there were not overlooked
the claims of particularism. Providence, in com
missioning its ten delegates to the Portsmouth
convention, had been at pains to instruct them to
make known its wish " to have full power and au-
thoritie to transacte all [its] home affaires," and
the wish was both made known and regarded. A

38 RHODE ISLAND
biU of rights, containing the familiar provisions of
Magna Charta in defense of personal liberty, was
passed. In the sessions of the Court of Trials the
magistrates of the town where the court was held
were empowered to sit with the general magistrates
for " councile and helpe." The court, furthermore,
was to sit permanently in no one town, but, as also
(after 1652) the General Assembly, was to make
the circuit of the towns, beginning with Newport.
Warwick, which had not been named in the patent,
was accorded the privileges of the other towns;
and in order that the one underlying principle in
which Providence, Portsmouth, Newport, and War
wick were agreed — the supreme raison d'etre for
their several and collective existence — might be
duly emphasized, the Code of 1647 was drawn to
a conclusion thus : " Otherwise than what is . . .
herein forbidden, all men may walk as their con
sciences persuade them, everyone in the name of
his God."
The first president of Providence Plantations
was a Newport man, John CoggeshaU ; but upon
the island William Coddington had been almost
continuously chief magistrate, and in May, 1648,
he was chosen president. He however did not come
forward to accept the office. He was too busily en
gaged in intriguing for the admission of Aquidneck
into the New England Confederation. Indeed, in
September, 1648, he and a few others formally
petitioned the confederation to be received in "a

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 39
firme and perpetuall League of friendship." The
petition was rejected, and in October Coddington,
accompanied by his daughter, set sail for England
to make trial what he himself might be able to do
toward obtaining for the island that autonomy
which it had failed to receive at the hands of
Roger Williams. In London Coddington met Sir
Henry Vane and Hugh Peters. The latter had
become a preacher to the Council of State, and
through his aid, perchance, the Aquidneck magnate
gained an introduction to the council itself. At all
events, he laid before that body a petition in which
he described himself as the " discoverer and owner "
of the islands of Aquidneck and Conanicut in
Narragansett Bay, and asked to be confirmed in
his title to these islands and to be made governor
over them. The petition was referred in March,
1651, and, despite protests from Edward Winslow
in behalf of Plymouth, was so speedily acted upon
that by April 3 Coddington found himself ap
pointed governor of the two islands for life — a
veritable king in miniature, with power to select a
council of six, to administer law, and to raise forces
for defence.
Short lived was his glory. In August, 1651, he
reached home. Meetings forthwith were held at
Newport, Providence, and Portsmouth. On every
hand there was shown a determination to secure a
revocation of the new and revolutionary patent.
Accordingly, in November, Roger Williams for

40 RHODE ISLAND
the mainland and John Clarke for the island were
on their way to the mother country. There they
met Vane and Cromwell, and on October 2, 1652,
an order was obtained directing that Providence
Plantations continue under the government au
thorized in the Roger Williams patent until further
commanded. Roger Williams returned from England in 1654 ;
but although news of the revocation of the Cod
dington patent had been received in the Plan
tations in February, 1653, the mainland and the
island were found still to be maintaining a divided
existence. Samuel Gorton had filled for one year
the office of president of the mainland towns, and
in 1652 a law had been enacted by these towns, pro
viding that " whereas there is a common course
practiced amongst Englishmen to buy negers that
they may have them for service or slaves forever,"
it be ordered that " no black mankind, or white,"
may be forced to serve any man or his assigns
longer than ten years. On the island Coddington
had been met by armed resistance, and, forced to
seek safety in flight, had in April, 1652, at Boston,
signed a disavowal of exclusive personal proprietor
ship of the island lands. In 1653, the island, anti
cipating a future source of wealth and power, had
commissioned privateers in the war then in pro
gress between England and Holland.
It remained for Williams, by virtue of a severe
arraignment of the colony under the hand of Sir

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 41
Henry Vane, and by virtue of an eloquent and
moving appeal under his own hand, to effect a
reunion of the island with the mainland. Formal
articles of agreement were ratified on August 31,
1654, and on September 12 Roger Williams was
elected president of the rehabilitated common
wealth. As for William Coddington, his last hope
was extinguished when, in March, 1655, Oliver
Cromwell, now Lord Protector, wrote that the col
ony were to proceed in their government " accord
ing to ye tenor of their charter formerly granted."
A year later the Newport magnate put his hand
to the declaration : "I William Coddington, doe
freely submit to ye authoritie of his Highness in
this Colonic, as it is now united, and that with all
my heart."
The struggle against collectivism, by which the
first period of Rhode Island history is chaBacter-
ized, was a struggle not confined to bodies politic
such as the mainland and island. It extended to
religious sects. Providence from the first had been
Anabaptist. At Newport the original Antinomian
ism had gradually been tending to Anabaptism
and Quietism. Upon removing to Aquidneck, Anne
Hutchinson had become Anabaptist; so much so
that, impelled by distrust of the coUectivistic spirit
of Coddington with its longing after the United
Colonies, she, in 1642 or 1643, had removed to
East Chester, New York, where she and all her
family, save one, had faUen a prey to the Indians.

42 RHODE ISLAND
In Roger Williams Anabaptism had, in 1639
or 1640, become Seekerism, the ne plus ultra of
religious individualism ; and in WiUiam Harris
secularism (by reason of the poverty of the man
— land was an inconvertible asset) had become a
kind of anarchism. In 1657, during the presidency
of WiUiams, Harris, because of his advocacy of
the doctrine that " he that can say it is his con
science ought not to yield subjection to any human
order amongst men," was arrested and tried for
high treason. By 1651 Anabaptism on the island
was grown distinctively aggressive. In July three
Anabaptists — John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes, and
John CrandaU — boldly ventured into Massachu
setts with their practices. They were seized, and
one of them (Holmes) was scourged for his temerity
with a three-thonged lash.
To Anabaptist aggressiveness there succeeded
the more intense aggressiveness of the Quakers.
The sect began coming to Boston from England
in 1656. Driven from that town by stripes, they
were received at Newport. In September, 1657,
the New England Confederation upbraided Provi
dence Plantations for its course. At this time
Benedict Arnold was president, and his reply was :
" We have no law whereby to punish any for only
declaring by words their minds and understandings
concerning the things and ways of God as to Sal
vation and an eternal condition." Between 1656
and 1660 many were the Quakers that from the

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 43
convenient harborage of Aquidneck essayed the
wrath of the Bay and of its high priest of persecu
tion, John Endicott. Among them were Mary
Clarke, Christopher Holder, John Copeland, Wil
liam Brend, William Robinson, and Marmaduke
Stevenson; but the most noteworthy of them all
was Mary Dyer. She was wife to the secretary
of the colony, William Dyer, and though sweet of
disposition, had, under Anne Hutchinson, her pre
ceptress, become so infatuated an individualist, so
relentless a challenger of theocratic pretensions,
that she can hardly be regarded as possessed of
perfect mental balance. By reiterated baitings of
Endicott she provoked her own death, and on June
1, 1660, was hanged on Boston Common.
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations — The
Charter of 1663
On March 13, 1644, the General Court of
Aquidneck changed the name of that island to
the " Isle of Rhodes or Rhode Island." No little
discussion has from time to time been occasioned
by surmises as to the origin of the name ; but
Roger Williams, writing in 1666, remarked that
"Rhode Island, like the Isle of Rhodes, in the
Greek language is an island of Roses ; " and deri
vation more authoritative we perhaps shall not be
able to discover.^ At all events, in 1663, when
1 In the English Historical Review for Ootoljer, 1903, Mr. Louis
Dyer, of Oxford, England, advances the theory that the name

44 RHODE ISLAND
John Clarke was negotiating with the restored
monarch Charles II for a royal charter for the
Narragansett Bay colony, he was careful to repay
WiUiams for his assumption (in the Patent of
1644) of the name " Providence Plantations " by
placing before the latter, in the new instrument,
the name " Rhode Island."
The restoration of Charles, which took place in
1660, was for the Narragansett Bay settlements
an event of the first importance. Now that the
king was on his throne, the question arose. What
validity has the Patent of 1644 ? It was felt that
measures to secure a royal charter should be taken
without delay. John Clarke was in England, where
:he had lingered on private business after the re-
|turn of Roger Williams in 1654, and to him in
1661 there was sent a commission as agent for the
colony in its new undertaking. Clarke set earnestly
to work, and on July 8, 1663, the charter was issued.
It was conveyed to the Plantations by Captain
George Baxter, and on November 24 the freemen
assembled at Newport to inspect the instrument
and to hear it read. It was taken by Baxter from
" Rhode Island " is merely a translation of the Indian name for
the island of Rhode Island — Aquidneck. "Aquidneck," observes
Mr. Dyer, "the island in the bay, was englished into Road or
Roads Island. The prevalence in the early texts of the spelling
Boad goes to confirm this account of the matter, , , 'Roade
Island is' (we read in a, document dated in 1661 [Richman's
Shode Island, vol. ii, p. 239]) "a road, refuge, asylum, to evil
livers.' " From the above Mr. S. S. Rider strong-ly dissents in
Book Notes, vol. xx.

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 45
its box, and by him " with much becoming gravity
held up on hygh to the perfect view of the peo
ple." It then was read aloud and returned for safe
keeping to its receptacle. The alterations which it
effected in the existing constitution were not funda
mental. Boundaries were made more certain ; Free
dom of Conscience was elaborately confirmed ; the
president was superseded by a governor and deputy-
governor ; the assistants were increased from four
to ten ; the General Assembly was made to consist
in the governor (or deputy -governor), the assist
ants, and a body of deputies to be chosen, six from
Newport, four each from Providence, Portsmouth,
and Warwick, and two each from all other towns ;
the courts were left much as before, but the Court
of Trials was made a fixture at Newport.
In obtaining for their government and jurisdic
tion the sanction of a charter from the king, it was
hoped by Rhode Islanders to insure for themselves
the toleration and, perchance, respect of their
neighbors on the east and on the west. But so it
did not turn out. By both Massachusetts and Con
necticut the charter was deemed a sword rather
than an olive branch. Since the acts of subjection
on the part of the Arnolds, and of Pumham and
Sacononoco, the Bay and Plymouth (one or both)
had asserted a claim to eastern Rhode Island,
including the island of Aquidneck. These claims
were practically disallowed in 1665, when commis
sioners of the king fixed the eastern littoral of Nar-

46 RHODE ISLAND
ragansett Bay as the western limit of any possible
claim by Plymouth ; and the whole question was
settled in 1746-47, when, by a final decision of the
crown, Massachusetts (the heir in 1691 to Plymouth
territory) was obliged under the charter to sur
render to Rhode Island the border towns of Cum
berland, Warren, Bristol, Tiverton, and Little
Compton. But it was with Connecticut that the principal
difficulty was encountered. On the return of the
Gortonists from Boston in 1644, they found a tem
porary asylum at Portsmouth. Thence Samuel
Gorton was summoned by Canonicus to an impor
tant conference. The Narragansett Indians, observ
ing that the Gortonists had been liberated by the
Puritans, came to the conclusion that the former
must be identified with the stronger party in Eng
land (where war was known to be in progress), and
the Puritans with the weaker. They therefore, as
against the weak Puritans (by whom Miantonomi
had been put to death), decided to espouse the cause
of the strong Gortonists, and desired of Gorton that
he would make record of a formal act of subjection
by them to the English sachem. The record was
duly made on April 19, and in December Samuel
Gorton, together with Randall Holden, was on his
way with the document to the shores of a distracted
realm. During the period of the English Commonwealth
the act of subjection by the Narragansetts to the

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 47
king was of course entirely void of effect. Oppres
sion on the Indians by the Puritans increased rather
than diminished.
The territory chiefly occupied by the Narragan
sett nation was that part of the present State of
Rhode Island south of the south line of Warwick
and Coventry, It was a region of stony soil, but
its lagoons and streams were well supplied with
fish. As early as 1640 or 1641 Richard Smith, a
Gloucestershire man, had built a trading house at
Cawcamsqussick (Wickford) ; and in 1645 or 1647
Roger Williams also had come hither to trade. In
January, 1657, the easterly part of so much of the
present town of South Kingstown as lies west of
Boston and Point Judith Necks was purchased
from the Indians by a company of Newporters
called the Pettiquamscutt Company ; and in June,
1660, a further company of Newport men purchased
Misquamicutt (Westerly). The purchase by the
Pettiquamscutt Company — an association compris
ing among its members one stanch Bostonian,
John "Hull ^ — gave Providence Plantations occa
sion to reflect, and in 1658 there was passed a law
forbidding purchases from the Indians without
consent of the colony. In 1661 confirmation of the
Misquamicutt purchase was secured ; but for a pur
chase made in 1659 by a company of Massachusetts
1 The other members of the company were Samuel Wilhor,
Thomas Mumford, John Porter, and Samuel Wilson. Afterwards
Benedict Arnold and WiUiam Brenton became members.

48 RHODE ISLAND
men, called the Atherton Company, confirmation
was not even asked.
The objects of the Atherton association were two
fold : to obtain a vast tract of land, and to place
this tract under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts
or Connecticut. In the attainment of their first
object they secured, in 1659, Indian deeds for
Quidnesset (northeasterly North Kingstown) and
Namcook (Boston Neck) ; and in 1660 they secured
from Ninigret, the Nyantic, and other sachems, an
Indian mortgage upon all the unoccupied lands of
Narragansett. The mortgage was given to insure
to the association repayment of an indemnity which
had been exacted from Ninigret by the United
Colonies, but which the association had artfuUy
assumed. Under the mortgage (in 1662) the asso
ciation undertook to perfect a title by foreclosure.
The same year the second object of the Atherton
Company was seemingly effected through a charter
issued by the crown to Connecticut for territory
extending on the eastward to the " Narragansett
River." The agent principally concerned in negotiating
the charter for Connecticut was John Winthrop,
Jr., son of the early governor of Massachusetts,
and Winthrop had been made a member of the
Atherton Company. The issuing of the Connecti
cut charter narrowed controversy, for thereby
Massachusetts, which had been claiming a part of
Narragansett as land conquered from the Pequods,

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 49
was completely ousted. As between Connecticut
and Rhode Island, the jurisdiction of the latter
over Narragansett was at the last moment sought
to be saved by John Clarke by a stipulation,
concluded between himself and Winthrop, that
wherever in the Connecticut charter the eastern
boundary of that colony was described as fixed by
the Narragansett River, the words "Narragansett
River " should be taken as signifying Pawcatuck
River — the western limit of Rhode Island under
the Patent of 1644.
Out of the Clarke- Winthrop stipulation there
grew a controversy as prolonged as it was bitter.
In 1665 Sir Robert Carr, Colonel George Cart-
wright, and Mr. Samuel Maverick, as commissioners
of .the king for settling the royal authority in New
England, visited Rhode Island, and while there
they met in council the sachems of the Narragan
setts. They found them enraged at Massachusetts
and the United Colonies because of the indemnity
mortgage and pretensions of the Atherton Com
pany. They also found them possessed of a lively
recollection of the submission which, in 1644,
they as a nation had made to King Charles I.
Under these conditions, and privately instructed
as the commissioners were by Lord Clarendon, they
annulled the Atherton mortgage, and placed the
Narragansett country (entitled the King's Pro
vince) under the administrative authority of Rhode
Island. This act, however, by no means put an

50 RHODE ISLAND
end to the claims of Connecticut. These claims
were asserted and reasserted. Sustained in 1683
by a royal commission headed by Edward Cran-
field, they were rejected in 1687 by Sir Edmund
Andros. Sustained again, in 1696, by the attorney-
general of King William, they were yielded vol
untarily in 1703 (out of policy) by Connecticut
itself. Revived in 1723, they were abandoned for
ever in 1728. Meanwhile, in 1674, Rhode Island
had erected the Kings Province into the town of
Kingstown, and in 1677 had detached from Kings
town the town of East Greenwich.
The men to whom the preservation of Narra
gansett to Rhode Island is mainly to be ascribed
were Samuel Gorton, Randall Holden, and the
John Greenes, father and son. Gorton and Hol
den, as a result of their journey to England in
1644 with the sachems' deed, obtained an order
permitting the reoccupation of Shawomet (War
wick). Afterwards (1660) WiUiam Harris, whose
appetite for land was insatiable, had, under cer
tain deeds from the Indians (caUed "confirmation
deeds "), obtained color of title to a wide area for
the Providence town fellowship and the Pawtuxet
proprietors. Some of the Pawtuxet land (under
the " confirmation deeds ") extended south of the
north line of Warwick, and this circumstance led
to a union on the part of the Gortonists with Roger
Williams to resist Harris.
In 1677 Holden and John Greene, Jr., visited

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 51
England, but gained no permanent advantage. In
1679 Harris set forth for the same destination.
He did so not merely in his own interest, but
as the authorized agent of Connecticut and the
Atherton associates to further their pretensions
to Narragansett. While on the way (January,
1680) the ship in which he was embarked, the
Unity, was captured by Algerians, and he himself
was made a slave and held for ransom. Piteous
were the letters which Harris sent home to his
family and friends. "I pray you therefore," he
Wrote on April 4, " to stir up both parties to
send biUs of the said sum 1191 pieces of eight
and 5 royals. If the sum fail, or the time, it is
most likely to be my death ; — for then I fall per
manently into the cruel man's hands that hath
like to kill me already." The money was secured
and sent, and in the winter of 1680-81 Harris was
given his freedom, but the boon came too late. On
reaching London, the victim of Algerine barbarity
died from exhaustion. Had he lived, the cause of
Connecticut would have been powerf uUy advocated.
That he did not live, that through the labors and
pains exacted of him he perished, is significant of
the vigor and pertinacity with which he was with
stood. In the midst of the struggle for Narragansett
(indeed, much as though in mockery of it), there
broke forth King Philip's War. The conflict was
one which long had been impending. Little by

52 RHODE ISLAND
little the Pokanokets — the people of the region
once ruled by Massasoit — had been crowded to
the westward and had grown suUen and suspicious.
Causes, too, in the case of the Narragansetts had
been making for alienation. First there was the
execution (never to be forgotten) of Miantonomi.
Next there was the fruitless and disappointing
submission and resubmission of the nation to the
Stuart kings. It was the English of the United
Colonies that chiefly were responsible for the un.-
happy situation ; but the time had at length come
in New England when it was realized by the In
dian that he and his white brother were not com
patible, could not dwell together, but must contend
for supremacy.
The immediate occasion of hostilities was the
death of Wamsutta or Alexander, the elder son of
Massasoit. In 1662 Alexander had been arrested,
by order of the governor of Plymouth, on suspicion
of conspiracy, and during his detention had died
of a fever. It was thought by the Indi.ins that he
had been poisoned. His successor was his brother
Meatacom or Philip. It was resolved by Philip to
avenge Alexander's death, and in June, 1675, he
withdrew into the country of the Nipmucs (central
Massachusetts), leaving behind him a ti-ail of fire
and blood. At this time the war sachem of the
Narragansetts was Canonchet, a son of Mianto
nomi. The war begun by PhUip was regarded by
Canonchet as aji opportunity to avenge the death

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 53
of his parent, and he lent what aid he could against
Plymouth and Massachusetts. In December the
three colonies — Plymouth, Massachusetts, and
Connecticut — invaded the Narragansett country.
Assailing the Indians in their stronghold or forti
fied village, they inflicted upon them a crushing
defeat. Early in 1676 the dispersed Narragansetts
burned Warwick and a portion of Providence.
In their advance on Providence they destroyed
" Study HUl " in Cumberland, the abode of Wil
liam Blackstone, an eccentric recluse of the Church
of England and friend of Roger Williams. As for
WiUiams himself, it is the tradition that on the
approach of the savages he fearlessly met them,
staff in hand, and sought to dissuade them from
further acts of devastation, but in vain.
In April Canonchet was captured and put to
death. His executioner, strangely enough, was
Oneko, son of Uncas, the destroyer of Miantonomi.
The final event in King Philip's War was the killing
of Philip himself by a force under Captain Benja
min Church of Plymouth. Driven from point to
point, Philip, in June, concealed himself in a swamp
at the foot of his ancient fastness of Mount Hope.
Church was told of his whereabouts, and, secretly
investing the spot at night, startled his prey. The
entrapped sachem made a bold dash for liberty,
but was shot through the heart by one of Church's
men, and fell headlong in the mud and water.^
^ King Philip's War left the Narragansett Indians much reduced

S4 RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island as a colony took little part in
King Philip's War. The cause was the dominance
of the Quakers. Antinomianism on Aquidneck
had now been merged in Quakerism. The early
famUies — the Coddingtons, the Eastons, the
Clarkes, the Bulls — nearly aU had become Quak
ers. In 1672 George Fox himself had visited New
port, and his presence had been made by Roger
Williams (who stiU was enough of a Puritan to
and dispersed. By 1707 Ninigret (the head of the tributary Ny
antics) was the only sachem of Narragansett affiliations with
whom the Rhode Island government could treat. With him, ac
cordingly, on March 28, 1709, an agreement was made by which
all of the vacant Narragansett territory (the region which had
been sought to be appropriated by the Atherton Company) was
conveyed to the colony, except a tract eight miles square in
Charlestown, which was kept as an Indian reservation. In 1713
an act was passed by the General Assembly inhibiting sales
within the reservation save by consent of the colony. In 1759
the inhibition was removed. In 1763 various members of the
Narragansett nation made complaint that, through the removal
of the inhibition, their sachem (Thomas Ninigret) was rapidly
dispossessing the nation of all its lands. The colony therefore in
terposed, but the alienation of lands (especially upon long leases)
was not much checked, and in 1792 a committee was appointed
to establish regulations. By 1791 the whole number of Narra
gansetts in Charlestown had dwindled to two hundred aud fifty,
and by 1833 to one hundred and ninety-nine, of whom only seven
were of the genuine blood. In 1880 the tribal relations of the
Narragansett nation were abolished and rights of citizenship were
conferred upon the members, — Opinion ofthe Justices ofthe B. I.
Supreme Court relative to the Narragansetts, January, 1898. A
Statement of the Case of the Narragansett Tribe of Indians as shown
by the Manuscript Collection of Sir William Johnson, compiled by
James N. Arnold, 1896.

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 56
detest the heresy of the " inner light ") occasion
for a chaUenge to public debate. Fox had departed
before the challenge could be delivered to him, but
it had been accepted by his associates, John Burn-
yeat, John Stubbs, and William Edmundson. On
August 9 a tumultuous controversy — one which
WiUiams had come all the way from Providence
in an open boat to conduct — had been held in the
Newport Quaker meeting-house.
By the Charter of 1663 there was imparted to
Rhode Island, despite the machinations of Massa
chusetts and Connecticut, stability both territorial
and administrative. Under the instrument, collec
tivism gained over separatism. The several towns
were reduced in their privileges, and the colony
became for the first time an entity. So far did
the process of integration extend that Block Island
(which down to 1662 had been an appanage of
Massachusetts) was in 1664 incorporated with
Rhode Island, and in 1672 erected into the politi
cal division New Shoreham.
4. Sir Edmund Andros and the Quo Warranto.
At the end of the seventeen years during which
England had been ruled by Parliament or by
CromweU, the American colonies — particularly
Massachusetts — had grown weU-nigh independent
and had developed a considerable commerce. They
had traded without hindrance with the friends and
enemies of the mother country ; with the Dutch

56 RHODE ISLAND
more especially ; and their freedom (in words at
tributable to Roger WiUiams) had perhaps been
for them " a sweete cup," rendering them " wan
ton and too active." Now that the monarchy was
restored, it became the royal policy — a policy
inaugurated by Clarendon — to curb colonial pre
tensions. The curbing was to be in two directions : in that
of Puritan religious intolerance and in that of dis
regard of the acts of Revenue and Navigation. So
far as Massachusetts was concerned, the king's
commissioners had in 1664 endeavored to change
the basis of the suffrage from church membership
to property, and to secure recognition for the book
of common prayer, and of a right in the crown to
try revenue cases ; but with little result other than
to provoke hostile demonstrations. In Rhode
Island there of course was no religious intolerance,
and the colony possessed little commerce ; so the
crown was content with the situation. Nor perhaps
would a different feeling have arisen had it not
been for the renewal of difficulties with the Neth
erlands, But difficulties were renewed ; and when,
in 1674, peace at length was declared, the exas
peration of the English crown and merchants at the
disloyal trading spirit of the colonies, which had
dwelt on gain while Monk struggled in the Channel
with De Ruyter, was intense.
The revenue acts, breach of which had been
complained of by the commissioners, were acts

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 57
passed respectively in 1660 and 1663 (12th and
15th of Charles II) ; and they so far restricted
colonial trade as to prohibit, with slight exception,
the direct importation of European commodities
into the colonies. Such commodities must be carried
thither by way of England. The acts in reality
imposed no particular hardship on the colonies, for
England was for most things the best purchasing
market in any event. Indeed, in one important
respect the acts were positively beneficial. Under
them trade with the colonies might be conducted
only in English built or British colonial built
ships, and for the building of such ships the colo
nies themselves (especially in New England) were
well adapted. More than aught else, therefore,
breach of the acts was an expression of resentment
on the part of colonial importers and shippers at
being required to abandon the easy, convenient,
and long - established practice of employing the
ubiquitous Dutch bottoms.
In 1675 and 1676 the English merchants — Lon
don silk mercers and others — petitioned the crown
for redress against New England as the " mart and
staple whereby the navigation of the kingdom is
injured ; " and the same year Edward Randolph
was sent over, as agent for the Lords of Trade and
Plantations, to make an investigation. He visited
several of the colonies, and in 1678 his position
was strengthened by an appointment as coUector
and surveyor of customs. Thenceforth his every

58 RHODE ISLAND
effort was put forth toward securing what he knew
the crown desired, namely, proof of . violations of
law and privileges on the part of the chartered colo
nies sufficient to justify an annulment of the char
ters themselves. As a result of his toils, the charter
of Massachusetts was annuUed in 1684. In 1685
he was instructed to " prepare papers . . . upon
which writs of quo warranto might be granted
against Connecticut and Rhode Island."
Randolph promptly complied in a document
which aUeged, in the case of Rhode Island, that
the colony disregarded the laws of England and,
like Massachusetts, "violated the Acts of Trade."
A writ accordingly was issued, and in May, 1686,
the collector (who for a season had been in Eng
land) reached America with it in his possession.
It was served in June, and the General Assembly,
loyal to the last, voted " not to stand suit with his
Majesty but to proceed by . . . humble address
... to continue our humble privileges and liber
ties according to our charter." It had been the
plan of the crown to unite Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, Maine, Plymouth, and Narragansett
into a royal province ; but in February, 1685,
Charles II had died, and under James II, his
successor, there was provisionally adopted a
plan whereby Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and
Narragansett were placed under the government
of a " President and Council." The president
was Joseph Dudley of Boston, and for a short

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 59
period Narragansett, which had been organized as
Kingstown, was fated to bear the name of Roches
ter. On June 3, 1686, the whole of New England
was created a royal province under Sir Edmund
Andros as governor in chief, and the chartered
liberties of Connecticut and Rhode Island seemed
by the act forever to be forfeited and concluded.
Late in the year Andros made official announce
ment of his authority to receive the surrender of
the Rhode Island charter, and in 1687, while on a
visit to Newport, he demanded the instrument. It,
however, had been put out of the hands of Walter
Clarke, the governor, and could not be found. In
Rhode Island the rule of Andros was little note
worthy. The General Assembly, taking advantage
of the separatist spirit stiU strong in the common
wealth, had in 1686 sought to devolve political au
thority on the several towns ; had sought, in other
words, to meet danger (after the manner of some
forms of crustacean life) by resolving the threat
ened organism into its integral and elemental parts.
How far the plan might have succeeded cannot be
told, for in April, 1689, on news of the abdication
of James II, New England rose against Andros
and imprisoned him. In Rhode Island government
was reestablished under the charter in February,
1690, with Henry Bull as governor ; and in 1693
(December 7) the attorney-general of the crown
rendered a formal opinion that in point of law

60 RHODE ISLAND
nothing stood in the way of a confirmation of the
charter by WUliam and Mary.
With the flight of James from WhitehaU the
age of Roger Williams comes fuUy and finally to
a close. Since 1643, the year of the founding of
Warwick, the four geographical points — Provi
dence, Portsmouth, Newport, and Warwick — had
grown slowly. At Providence and Warwick the
people still pastured their cattle and horses, and
turned loose their depredating swine. Rarely did
they get news of the outside world, and none of
them, save William Harris, achieved anything like
the position of a magnate. At Newport sheep and
horses were bred, and men such as WiUiam Cod
dington, William Brenton, Nicholas Easton, and
Henry BuU, identified themselves with picturesque
estates which, in " Coddington Cove," " Brenton's
Neck," " Easton's Beach," and " BuU's Point,"
have perpetuated their names. By 1686 the popu
lation of the island was perhaps twenty-five hun
dred. That of Providence was perhaps six hundred,
and that of Portsmouth and Warwick together,
perhaps eight or nine hundred.
As contrasted with each other, the island was
refined, flourishing, aristocratic, while the main
land was primitive, poor, and plebeian. Yet despite
the limitations of an agricultural existence — an
existence ameliorated at Newport after 1660 by
intimations of commerce — the age of Roger Wil-

THE AGE OF ROGER WILLIAMS 61
liams in Rhode Island was a great age. For the
first time in human history State had wholly been
dissociated from Church in a commonwealth not
Utopian but real. For the first time the funda
mental idea of modern civilization — that of rights
of man as a being responsible primarily to God
and not to the community — had been given an
impulse powerful and direct.
As for the six historical personalities about
whom the age centred, all now were dead. Anne
Hutchinson, the vindicator of faith against works,
had died in 1643. John Clarke, the procurer of
the Charter of 1663, had died in 1676. Samuel
Gorton, the founder of Warwick and defender of
Narragansett, had died in 1677. William Codding
ton, the first Newport magnate, had died in 1678.
WiUiam Harris — more even than Coddington the
Mammon of the group — had died in 1681. The
last to pass away was Roger Williams himself. He
died between January 16 and May 10, 1683, aged
about eighty years.

PART II
COMMERCE AND COOPERATION
1690-1763

CHAPTER III
PAPER MONET
Canadian Expeditions — The Ten " Banks '' — Trevdt vs. Weeden.
King William, who with Mary his spouse came to
the English throne in 1689, was a ruler who knew
thoroughly his own mind, and that mind was to
diminish in the world the disproportionate power
of France under Louis XIV. He purposed to
make war upon Louis ; and as war would involve a
clash between the French and English in America,
it became part of his policy to dispose the Ameri
can colonies into groups, and to place the control
of each group (for military ends) in a single hand.
Thus Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Is
land were constituted a New England group under
the military control of Sir William Phips.
Of the policy of King William, however, the
part spoken of was conspicuous for ill success.
Neither Connecticut nor Rhode Island (because of
its charter) would recognize in Phips the least
authority. Then there was France. Already Count
Frontenac had hurled bands of savages against
New York, New Hampshire, and the dwellers on
the Penobscot. Schenectady had fallen in massa-

66 RHODE ISLAND
ere, and Boston itself had not been without alarm.
In 1692, therefore, the Enghsh government gave
urgent direction that a conference be held at Al
bany. Most of the colonies — distant Maryland
included — sent delegates, but Rhode Island did
not ; nor did it respond to a direct appeal for help
addressed to it in 1693 by the governor of New
York, Benjamin Fletcher.
In fact, throughout the whole of King William's
War (1690-1697) the Narragansett Bay colony
furnished aid neither to Phips nor Fletcher, and
one at least of its pleas in apology must excite a
smile. Owing, it said, to the undeterminated state
of its eastern boundary, Massachusetts was enabled
to " detain from it several of its towns," whereby
it was "incapacitated." But another plea Rhode
Island offered which was honest and in large mea-
sure a justification. ' " May it please your most
exceUent Majesty," the General Assembly wrote to
the king in 1693, " this your Cottony is a frontier
to your collonies in JVew England, hy sea." Rhode
Island and the Sea is a topic that awaits us with
the next chapter, but we may here pause to reflect
how truly this early official letter struck the key
note of Rhode Island history in the eighteenth
century. Privateering gave rise to hardihood and
skill upon the wave ; hardihood and skill brought
to Narragansett Bay wealth from the West Indies ;
and by wealth there was built up that Newport
which, throughout the three decades just preced-

PAPER MONEY 67
ing the Revolution, surpassed New York for trade
and quite eclipsed Boston for culture.
The death of WiUiam in 1702 left Louis XIV
to be dealt with by Queen Anne, and the queen
(by Marlborough's help) waged war against him
from 1702 to 1713. In the earlier stages of the
war Rhode Island failed to meet demands for men
made by New York and Massachusetts ; but in
1707 it changed its attitude, furnishing, at the
request of Massachusetts, militia and a ship in the
abortive expedition against Port Royal. This ac
tion it emphasized in 1709 by cheerfully respond
ing with its quota and with two ships of war for the
contemplated Vetch-Nicholson expedition against
Canada ; and again in 1710 it was at hand with
more than its quota and with three warships for
the second and, this time (as it proved), successful
Port Royal expedition. From 1707 to 1763 — a
period marked by the disastrous invasion of Canada
in 1711, the disastrous attack upon Cartagena in
1741, the brilliant capture of Louisburg in 1745,
and by the whole series of struggles ending with
the conquest of Canada in 1763 — Rhode Island
was pervaded by a martial spirit, a spirit involving
of necessity much also of the spirit of cooperation.
In 1710 (during the governorship of Samuel
Cranston) the cloud like a man's hand appeared.
In that year the colony, staggered by the cost of
its military undertakings, voted an issue of bills of

68 RHODE ISLAND
credit for £5000. These were to mature in five years
and were to be redeemed in specie. To insure re
demption, an annual tax of XIOOO was laid for the
period during which the bills were to be outstand
ing. In making the issue in question, Rhode Island
foUowed the example of Massachusetts, a colony
which in 1690 had had recourse to biUs to meet
the demands of its soldiers disappointed of booty
in Canada. Cotton Mather quaintly condones these
demands, observing : " Arma tenenti, omnia dat,
qui justa negat ; " and in truth it is difficult to see
what course other than to pledge its good faith
was open either to Massachusetts or Rhode Island
in the circumstances in which both were placed.
Harm for Rhode Island lay not in a smaU issue
of redeemable bills of credit ; it lay in the taste of
the joys of credit ^er se — unlimited credit — which
these bills were the means of affording a hungry
demos. In 1710 the colony was not beyond the
agricultural stage ; it had few merchants ; its pre
dominant class were landowners ; and what is
more these landowners were land poor. Add the
fact that in the eighteenth century the nature of
money and of the relation of money to credit was
in general ill understood, and it is not surprising
that in Rhode Island the demos (the landowners),
balked of a circulating medium, should at the first
opportunity have gone credit mad.
A second issue of colony bills came in the year
1715, and this issue differed from the first. The

PAPER MONEY 69
bills (£40,000) now no longer were secured by tax
levy, but by mortgages upon land. Any person
wishing to supply himself with money might mort
gage his land to the government and receive bills
to the amount of his mortgage. Upon the bills he
was to pay five per cent interest, and the principal
represented was to be met in ten years. Here evi
dently was a contrivance that exactly fitted the
Rhode Island landowner's case. Such owner had
plenty of land; this land he could convert into
money by help of the government ; and when the
day should arrive for converting the money back,
he might get an extension of time. What the land
owner did not perceive was that the land in which
he abounded had, by reason of lack of demand,
little immediate or convertible value. When put
in pledge to the colony, it was not an available
treasury asset. Had it had convertible value, the
owner could have sold it, or borrowed upon it upon
easy terms in the open market, and the government
need not have been involved.
Between 1710 and 1751 there were nine several
"banks" (as the loans upon land security were
called) floated in Rhode Island ; and what these
" banks " typified for the colony was distinctly a
rake's progress. At first (1715) the "bank," like
the bill of credit, was honestly resorted to as a
means of meeting the cost incurred in Queen Anne's
War. Next (1721, 1728, 1731, 1733, and 1738) it
was resorted to as a means of postponing liquidation

70 RHODE ISLAND
and so of keeping the people satisfied ; although,
to put a better face upon the operation, stress was
laid on bounties, on the opportunely ruinous condi
tion of Fort Anne (afterwards Fort George) at the
entrance to Newport Harbor, and on the likewise
opportunely ruinous condition of the Newport jail.
By 1731, when the total amount of biUs out
standing exceeded £120,000, uneasiness began to be
shown. Depreciation had set in to such an extent
that silver, which had been worth eight shillings
an ounce, now rose to twenty. Besides, counter
feiting was becoming a vexatious grievance.^ But
there was another cause for the gathering alarm,
Rhode Island was no longer wholly agricultural.
At Newport mercantile interests were waxing
strong. Accordingly, on the 25th of June, just after
the General Assembly had decreed a " bank " of
£60,000, Governor Joseph Jenckes, relying upon
an order-in-council issued in 1720, requiring the
' Under date of February 17, 1729, John Comer makes note in
his diary of " a number of persons found in ye act of counter
feiting ye bills of credit of this colony," These persons had, as
they expressed it, " unanimously joined in a Lea^e and Contract,
to use our best endeavors in our respective places to make and'
put o£P without discovery a quantity of paper money." The
" Leagpie " was concluded thus : " God save ye King, prosper onr
progress herein, and keep us from all traitors. . . , Then each
and every one of us taking ye Bible in our hands swore by ye
contents thereof, to observe these Articles of Agreement." It
further appears from Comer's diary that on April 28, 1729,
Nicholas Oatis, one of the " League," " stood in ye pillory and
had his ears dipt for making money."— ij. 1. Hist. Coll. vol.

PAPER MONEY 71
royal assent to acts for the emission of bills of
credit, interposed a veto. A storm at onfee arose,
and the governor, backed by such representative
Newporters as Abraham Redwood, WiUiam EUery,
John Freebody, Nathaniel Kay, Daniel Ayrault,
and others, appealed for justification to the king.
The situation was one of interest. Never before
had a Rhode Island governor presumed to try to
checkmate the General Assembly. So to presume,
indeed, was revolutionary of Rhode Island ideas —
an attack upon the colony's individualistic demo
cracy. As it proved, the old principles were en
tirely safe. The king decided, first, that by the
Rhode Island charter the governor himself was
" a part of the Assembly," hence void of power
against it ; and, second, that by the charter the
crown even had no discretionary power of repeal
ing laws in Rhode Island. AU laws enacted there
were valid, save such as contravened the laws of
England. The foregoing decision but served of course to
encourage the supporters of the credit system, and
under the regime of the Wantons and of Governor
William Greene the launching of "banks" went
merrily on in the years 1740 and 1744. These years
were years of war, and as such afforded to the
scheme of " banks " a better pretext, for now per
haps Fort George did require repairing, and of a
certainty there were required both ships and men.
Still depreciation was only accelerated ; nor could

72 RHODE ISLAND
it be brought to pause by the device of inscribing
upon the bills their declared value in gold and
silver. So serious had the depreciation become by
1746 that the Assembly was forced to raise the
qualification of voters from two hundred to four
hundred pounds, in order to keep the franchise
within anything like its original limits.
All this was bad enough, but it was not the worst.
In 1747 Parliament appropriated £800,000 to re
imburse the colonies for their outlay in the expedi
tion against Louisburg, and Massachusetts with its
proportion of the sum proceeded to redeem in part
its outstanding paper. It at the same time passed
an act prohibiting the circulation of the biUs of
the other colonies within its borders. Here was
a further blow to Rhode Island money, a blow
fraught with bankruptcy for not a few.
The strength of the landholding class around
Narragansett Bay and the fatuous blindness there
of nearly everybody else, excepting a few merchants
at Newport, is illustrated by an elaborate defense
of paper money addressed by Governor Richard
Ward to the Lords of Trade on January 9, 1740.
The governor confessed to bills outstanding in the
aggregate of £340,000 ; but calling attention to the
trade of the colony, which was represented by one
hundred and twenty sail, drew the hardy inference
that " if this colony be in any respect happy and
fiourishing, it is paper money and a right appUcar
tion of it that hath rendered us so."

PAPER MONEY 73
With 1750 Rhode Island in its financial " pro
gress " came to a turning point. In the month of
August a " bank " of £50,000 was ordered by the
lower house of the Assembly. Counterfeiting was
made punishable with death, and the Assembly
adjourned to reconvene in September. On Sep
tember 4 a petition bearing seventy-two signa
tures, signatures of substantial, intelligent men —
of the Freebodys, the Ayraults, the Harrisons, the
Redwoods, the Tillinghasts — was forwarded in
desperation to the king.
" The currency or instrument of commerce of a
country [declared the petitioners] being the stand
ard and measure by which the worth of all things
bought and sold are established and determined,
it ought to be fixed invariably, otherwise property
can neither be ascertained nor secured by any plan
or method whatsoever." Five allegations were
then categorically put forth : That the currency
of Rhode Island had sunk in value " above one
half in seven years ; " that the colony had now
outstanding in bills £525,335 ; that these bUls
"ought to be drawn in by a tax;'' that so far
from levying such a tax the house of deputies
had just passed a vote for .£50,000 of further
bills ; that of the biUs outstanding £390,000 had
been secured by mortgages upon land, and that a
strong reason for the authorization by the depu
ties of the £50,000 more of similar bills was that,
in the general plethora, landowners might be en-

74 RHODE ISLAND
abled to discharge their mortgages for a song.
The petitioners humbly prayed that his Majesty
would prevent the government of its colony of
Rhode Island " from emitting any more biUs of
credit upon loan " without his Majesty's permission.
The prayer was effective. In 1751 Parliament
passed an act forbidding aU further "banks,"
and permitting the issue of bills of credit for but
two objects, — current expenses of the colony and
expenses arising from the exigencies of war. BiUs
for the first object might run two years, and for
the second, five. Provision for redemption must
be made at the time of issue ; there was to be no
legal tender feature, and the royal approval was
to be a sine qua non.
By means of bills of the character indicated,
Rhode Island was enabled, without serious strain,
to meet its proportion of the cost of the expedi
tion projected in 1755 against Crown Point; and
when, in 1756, there were received from England
six chests of silver and one of gold as a partial
reimbursement of outlay, the money was promptly
used for redemption purposes. In 1763, at the
end of the struggle for Canada, gold and silver
coin were made by act of the Assembly the only
lawful money in the colony. The recovery by
Rhode Island of sanity upon the money question
was remarkably swift; as swift almost as had
been the recovery by Massachusetts of sanity upon
the question of witchcraft. Moreover, throughout

PAPER MONEY 75
the war of the Revolution Rhode Island main
tained its good reputation. In 1776 it with great
docility accepted the recommendation of a com
mittee of the New England States to emit no
unnecessary bills of credit, but rather to levy
taxes or borrow ; and, in 1780, acting upon a
resolution of the Continental Congress, it passed
a measure so equitably adjusting between debtor
and creditor the complexities growing out of
Continental currency that its course was widely
imitated. For the reformed commonwealth, as for the
reformed individual, lo, the pitfalls and tempta
tions ! For Rhode Island the temptation now to
be recorded was sore indeed.
In launching its first "bank" the colony had
been moved by a cry for money, a convenience,
rather than by a cry for bread, a necessity.
In 1786, when the tenth and last "bank" was
launched, bread to an alarming extent was the
object sought.
In this situation what the enlightened part of
the people desired to do was to grin and bear
misfortune ; what the unenlightened part desired
to do was to secure immediate relief. In 1785 the
General Assembly (still in the hands of the com
mercial class) rejected a petition for an emission
of paper. In 1786 the General Assembly, now
divided between the commercial class and their

76 RHODE ISLAND
opponents the agriculturalists, gave strong signs
of regarding paper as not the worst of evils. New
port and Providence thereupon presented strong
protests, and again the movement for paper
received a cheek. But in 1786, at the spring
election, the agriculturalists carried aU before
them, and an Assembly was elected pledged to
paper as the only means of relief.
The triumph of the agriculturalists on the
money question was in reality the triumph (tem
porarily) of the old individualism over cooperation.
It was a reactionary step, and, like most steps of
the kind, culminated in extremes. The new As
sembly, on convening, passed an act for the
launching of a " bank " — • the famihar old bank
of the years 1710 to 1750 — for £100,000. But
the old bank was made fresh by a clever device.
Should any creditor refuse to accept its biUs in
payment, the debtor might secure a discharge by
depositing bills in the amount of his debt with
one of the judges of the Superior Court or of the
Court of Common Pleas. It nevertheless was part
of the device that, upon the completion of the
deposit, the judge must cite the creditor personally
to appear within ten days to receive his money;
and under this provision many and diverting were
the incidents. The natural order of things (as in
"Alice Through the Looking Glass ") was entirely
reversed. Instead of debtors seeking to escape
their creditors, creditors now were seeking franti-

PAPER MONEY 77
cally to escape their debtors. Haggard and har
assed, the pursued creditor found (we are told)
asylum in his attic ; or perchance leaped headlong
from a convenient window.
But two months were required to demonstrate
that existing measures would not prevent a de
preciation of the new bills. An act, therefore, was
passed imposing a penalty of one hundred pounds
upon any one who should refuse to accept them at
their face value in exchange for commodities. This
act made clear the wisdom of those who had coun
seled a policy of endurance rather than one of
credit. Merchants closed their stores. People left
the State. Food became scarcer than ever. Uncon
vinced still, and wrathful at opposition, the agricul
turalists got together in town meetings and farmers'
conventions and arranged for a convention which
should be representative of farmers throughout the
State. By this body, to which sixteen towns sent
delegates, it was advised that the paper money
laws be "supported." And supported they were
to the bitter end.
At a special session of the General Assembly
held in August, 1786, at Newport, there was created
a court for the trial of complaints against creditors.
The court consisted of not less than three judges
drawn from the Superior Court or Court of Com
mon Pleas, and was to convene at any time upon
three days' summons. There was to be no jury,
decision was to be by majority vote, and from such

78 RHODE ISLAND
decision there was to be no appeal. The one-hun
dred pound penalty for refusing to give commodities
for paper was reduced, but the reduction was largely
offset by a provision that upon the conviction of a
creditor sentence was to be put immediately into
execution. Neither delay nor suspension was to be
permitted. Against the above described sweeping
attack by the legislature upon personal liberty, the
commercial element, through the deputies from
Newport, Providence, Bristol, Warren, and New
Shoreham, made vigorous protest, but absolutely to
no effect. It remained for a poor Newport butcher
— a man so poor that within a month he had re
ceived town aid — to vindicate Magna Charta by
precipitating one of the most memorable trials in
American history.
The butcher referred to was" John Weeden. In
September, 1786, he refused a piece of paper cur
rency tendered him by John Trevett in payment
for a piece of meat. Trevett at once filed a com
plaint, and the case was heard before the judges
of the Superior Court on September 25. The
defendant was charged with a violation of the
statute, and this charge he met by a threefold
plea : first, that the statute had expired (a technical
contention based on the ambiguous wording of the
act); second, that the matter complained of had
been made triable before a special court uncon
trolled by the supreme judiciary ; and third, that
the statute was unconstitutional and void, because

PAPER MONEY 79
by it there was denied to the defendant a trial by
jury. Weeden's counsel were James M. Varnum of
East Greenwich and Henry Marchant of Newport,
men of the highest standing and best talent. Var
num addressed the court first, and in opening said :
" Well may a profound silence mark the attention
of this numerous and respectable assembly ! Well
may anxiety be displayed in every countenance !
Well may the dignity of the bench condescend to
our solicitude for a most candid and serious atten
tion, seeing that from the first settlement of this
countrj' until the present moment a question of
such magnitude as that upon which the judgment
of the court is now prayed hath not been judicially
agitated ! "
The first two points of the plea for the accused
were dwelt upon briefly. The third — that of denial
of trial by jury — was elaborated exhaustively and
with deep feeling. It was Varnum's contention that
trial by one's peers (the mode of trial secured to
every Englishman by Magna Charta) had been
established in Rhode Island by the charter of the
colony, which provided that the inhabitants " should
have and enjoy all liberties ... of free and nat
ural subjects . . . as if they . . . were born
within the realm of England." American independ
ence, it was averred, did not affect the matter, for
the colony charter had been retained and was in
force as the constitution of the State. With this

80 RHODE ISLAND
point settled there remained but one other. Who
in a given case was to decide whether an in
habitant—a citizen — had been deprived of a
chartered right? "Have the judges a power to
repeal, to amend, to alter laws, or to make new
laws ? " asked the advocate. " God forbid ! In that
case they would become legislators." "But," he
continued, " the judiciary have the sole power of
judging of laws . . . and cannot admit any act of
the legislature as law which is against the consti
tution," Here was the whole case for the accused,
and it was a strong one.
But strong on the constitutional point as Wee
den's case Was, the point itself was hardly (as Var
num had claimed in his exordium) one never before
" judicially agitated " in America. A single court
prior to this time (the Supreme Court of New Jer
sey in 1779) had weighed the question of the com
petence of the judiciary to declare an act of the
legislature void on constitutional grounds, and hq,d
found unanimously in favor of such competence.'
^ The New Jersey case was Holmes vs. Walton, 4 Halstead,
N. J., 444. (See Am. Hist. Rev. vol. iv, p. 469.) Trevett vs. Weeden,
although not decided upon constitutional groonds, is often quoted
as if so decided. (See Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, 4th ed.
p. 196 ; Bryce, The American Commonwealth (earlier editions), vol.
i, p. 244 ; Arnold, History of Rhode Island, vol. ii, p. 525 ; McMas-
ter, History of the People of the United States, vol. i, pp. 337-339
(but see vol. v, p, 398) ; Fiske, The Critical Period of American
History, p, 175; Channing, The United States of America, p, 119.
The true ground of the decision (lack of jurisdiction) was stated
in 1883 by Judge Thomas Durfee of Rhode Island in his " Glean-

PAPER MONEY 81
In Trevett vs. Weeden the Rhode Island judiciary
waived the constitutional point, and, tacitly indors
ing the plea of the accused that the body charged
with the trial of the offense was not the Superior
Court, but one specially constituted, dismissed the
complaint before it for lack of jurisdiction.
ings from the Judicial History of Rhode Island " (Rider's Hist.
Tract No. 18, p, 52), It was also stated by Mr, S. S. Rider in 1889,
in a review of Bryce's Americar. Commonwealth (Book Notes, vol.
vi, p. 41), and in 1902 by Mr. E. C. Stiness in his " Struggle for
Judicial Supremacy in Rhode Island," contributed to Edward
Field's Rhode Island at the End ofthe Century, vol. iii).
What makes the New Jersey and Rhode Island cases of sur
passing interest is a consideration of an historical nature. Until
these decisions were made, it was an open question in America
whether the courts (state and national) would, in gauging legis
lative power, follow English Parliamentary precedent, or the dicta
of certain English judges. According to Parliamentary precedent,
the legislature (Parliament) was an omnipotent body bound by no
set of fundamental principles. According to the dicta of a few
English judges, " the Common Law doth control Acts of Parlia
ment." Thus Lord Coke (the patron of Roger Williams) in Bon-
ham's case (8 Rep, 114) and Chief Justice Hobart (Hobart's
Reports) held that the common law was supreme over Parliament,
In Trevett vs. Weeden, Varnum cited both Coke and Hobart, as
also Plowden and Bacon's Abridgment (iv, 635), in support of his
contention that the legislature was bound to regard constitutional
limitations. Presumably similar citations were made in Holmes vs.
Walton. The American courts, therefore, chose at the very out
set (1779 and 1780) to indorse the dicta of judges like Coke,
Hobart, Plowden, and Bacon, in support of the common law
(constitutional law) rather than to follow the strict precedent of
English Parliamentary practice. On the whole subject the reader
is referred to an admirable paper by Judge Charles B. Elliott of
Minneapolis, printed in the Political Science Quarterly for June,
1890,

82 RHODE ISLAND
At first the dismissal — construed as it was as a
vindication of both Weeden and honest money —
promised ill consequences. Rhode Island's individ
ualistic democracy was shocked profoundly ; more
so than it had been at the attempted exercise by
Governor Jenckes of the veto power. Was it then
true, it was indignantly asked, that in Rhode Island
the ruling element was no longer the people ? Were
governors and judges to set themselves up against
the General Assembly ? Not if the General Assem
bly rightly gauged its power. Paul Mumford,
Joseph Hazard, Thomas Tillinghast, Gilbert Devol,
and David HoweU — the five judges who had heard
the now famous case — were summoned promptly
to appear before the Assembly and to assign the
reasons of their judgment. The court (so the sum
mons recited) had declared an act of the supreme
legislature unconstitutional and void, and such
adjudication " tended to abolish the legislative au
thority." Howell, the youngest of the judges, but a
Princeton graduate and the only trained lawyer
of the court, explained that the act had not been
declared unconstitutional. He at the same time
proclaimed it the right of the bench to pass upon
the constitutionality of any legislative act. At
length the Assembly, counseled by the attorney-
general (WUliam Channing, father of WiUiam
EUery Channing), brought itself to declare : " As
the judges are not charged with any criminality
in rendering the judgment upon the information

PAPER MONEY 83
Trevett vs. Weeden, they are discharged from any
further attendance upon this Assembly, on that
account." At the spring election of 1788 Hazard, Tilling
hast, and Howell all failed of reelection ; but such
evidences of spleen proved to be only the dying
convulsions of the paper money party. By 1789
(when the legal tender statute of 1786 was re
pealed) death had quite supervened ; not, how
ever, before Rhode Island's reputation had been
smirched ; nor before a Connecticut poet had sung
in jeering distich, —
" Hail realm of rogues, renowned for fraud and guile,
All hail ye knaveries of you little isle.
The wiser race, the snares of law to shun.
Like Lot from Sodom, from Rhode Island run."

CHAPTER IV
RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA
Piracy and Bellomont — The Wantons and Privateering — Colony
Sloop Tartar — The Spanish Main.
If, down to 1759, the wars with France and Spain
led in Rhode Island to the manifold woes of paper
money, these same wars, together with the great
French war of 1756, led to other things as weU.
•They led through privateering to the golden age
of Newport. They led also, through the same
means, to an American navy.
It was in May, 1690, that Rhode Island waged
its first fight upon the sea. A French privateer
ing fleet of seven smaU sail had captured Block
Island. For a week the captors had rioted there,
plundering and maltreating the inhabitants and
threatening a descent upon Newport itself. In the
emergency Captain Thomas Paine, a Newport
seaman, manned two sloops with ninety men and
sought the enemy. He soon fell in with five sail,
and, running into shaUow water to avoid being
surrounded, gave battle against odds. The French
captain bore down in melodramatic style, wishing.
himself "damned if he did not board immedi
ately," but was repulsed and after two hours of

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 85
musketry combat withdrew. The day following,
when Paine would have renewed the attack, his
enemy put hastily to sea, scuttling a prize laden
with wines to expedite his progress.
The year 1690 was that of the beginning of
King William's War, but it was by no means that
of the beginning of Rhode Island's familiarity
with privateering. As long ago as 1653 the island
of Rhode Island had sent out vessels against the
Dutch ; and since 1680 captains bearing question
able West India commissions had found the shores
of Narragansett Bay not inhospitable. In fact, the
redoubtable Paine was of this class, for in 1683,
on arriving at Newport in command of a ship com
missioned from Jamaica, he had escaped arrest
only by the timely interposition of Governor Wil
liam Coddington.
The report as to Paine which the deputy col
lector at Boston sent to England may weU have
elicited the letter which in 1684 was dispatched by
the king to Rhode Island, commanding the enact
ment of a law for the " suppressing of privateers
and pirates." At all events such a law was passed.
But law or no law, the business of privateering
(now piracy) at Rhode Island was not lessened,
and by the close of King William's War, in 1697,
it was to attain proportions truly formidable.
From 1690 to 1695 John Easton was governor
at Newport. From 1696 to 1698 the governor was
Walter Clarke. Both Easton aud Clarke were

86 RHODE ISLAND
Quakers, and as such purposely inactive with re
gard to the war then in progress. But during the
entire decade, 1690 to 1700, John Greene was dep
uty-governor. Upon him as emphatically a fight
ing man there devolved the task of prosecuting the
confiict — a task which, as Rhode Island did virtu
ally nothing on land, consisted mainly in commis
sioning privateers. Greene in some respects was a
unique character. He was a strong Gortonist, and
in that capacity had rendered important public
service by withstanding Harris and the Atherton
Company. But his Gortonism was avowedly Anti
nomian in the extreme. There was involved in it
the doctrine that, provided a man were at one with
God inwardly, it mattered not what his mere out
ward conduct might be ; " he might [if he chose]
do what a beast might do." So, in commissioning
privateers, Greene with tranquil "inwardness"
took no bonds and kept few troublesome copies of
papers. The fact that these privateers in many
instances turned out piratical craft is something
which may or may not have been anticipated.
Nathaniel Coddington, register of the local Court
of Admiralty, charges Deputy-Governor Greene
with having commissioned thirty privateers during
the year 1694. Among them was a barque com
manded by John Bankes and a brigantine com
manded by WiUiam Mayes. Apropos of Mayes, the
Lords of Trade advised the Governor and Company
of Rhode Island in 1697 that it was reported that

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 87
their colony was " a place where pirates were or
dinarily too kindly entertained ; " and it is true
that in 1699 the return of Mayes from the Red
Sea " with vast wealth " was eagerly awaited. But
Bankes is of more interest to us than Mayes, for
he had as a partner or companion the famous
Rhode Islander, Thomas Tew.
The vessels of Bankes and Tew — the latter ves
sel a large sloop with accommodations for eighty
men — lay side by side at Newport, and the strife
to fill a berth in either was intense. Says Cod
dington : " Men come from all the country round ;
servants left their masters and sons their parents ;
many hid themselves on board ; it may be with a
grief e spoken the endeavors some men made to send
away the youth of the land." " Of these men,"
Coddington continues, " our good governor [Easton]
laboured to hinder the wicked designs." And again :
" All the vessels had great guns mounted ; no cost
was spared for smaU arms and powder. . . . The
discourse was generally that they were bound to
Madagascar, but some [thought] they were to go
to the Red Sea * where the money was as plenty as
^ " We [a band of English pirates] came early in 1696 to Lipa-
ran Island at the mouth of the Red Sea, where three more sail
of English came to us, one commanded by Thomas Wake, an
other, the Pearl, WiUiam Mues [Mayes] commander, fitted out at
Rhode Island, the Amity, Thomas Tew commander. . , , They
all joined partnership, putting Captain Every [Avery] in com
mand. . . , After five or six days the Moors' ships, twenty-five
in number, passed them in the night ; but hearing of this from a

88 RHODE ISLAND
Stones and sand, saying the people there were infi
dels, and it was no sin to kiU them," Bankes got
away in due form by Greene's connivance; but
Tew made the mistake of applying for a commis
sion to Easton, and the further mistake of offering
the governor a douceur of £500, He did not get
his commission, so put to sea without a clearance.
He joined forces with the noted pirate Mission ;
estabhshed a colony in Madagascar; resisted the
Portuguese ; amassed an immense fortune ; and
returning to Newport paid the owners of the vessel
in which he had sailed fourteen times the cost of
their adventure.
One day a pirate more desperate even than Tew
appeared — Joseph Bradish. In 1698 Bradish was
boatswain's mate on board the ship Adventure,
captured ketch they resolved to follow them. , , , Steering for
Surat we caught up one of the ships which we took after she had
fired three shots, she had £50,000 or £60,000 on board in silver
and gold. We shortly afterwards spied another ship, mounting
forty guns and carrying (as was said) 800 men. She stood a fight
of three hours and yielded."
" We kept possession of both ships, and all the crew, except
one man, boarded her by turns, taking only provisions, necessa
ries, and treasure, which was very great, but Uttle in comparison
with what was on board ; for though they put several to the tor
ture they would not confess where the rest of their treasure lay.
They took great quantities of jewels, and a saddle and bridle set
with rubies designed as a present for the Great Mogul. Several
of the Indian women on board were, by their habits and jewels,
of better quality than the rest." [Report by the secretary of the
East India Company to the Lords of Trade concerning acts of
piracy committed in the Indian seas in the spring of 1696. —
British State Papers — America and West Indies — 1696, 1697.]

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 89
bound from London to Borneo. Winning twenty
men to his design, he awaited his chance, seized
the vessel, put ashore part of the crew on a desert
spot to starve, and made all sail for Block Island
— that same Block Island which in 1690 had been
so gallantly rescued from piratical hands by Cap
tain Paine. But in the estimation of the Block
Islanders there evidently were pirates and pirates.
One kind came (as had come the French) to plun
der and lay waste ; another kind — the Bradish
kind — came to find shelter and to divide spoil.
The latter were welcome. Capture, however, over
took Bradish, and he was lodged in jail in Boston.
He soon contrived to escape, and with fine discrim
ination as to places fled back to Rhode Island.
Throughout the period covered by King Wil
liam's War and the deputy-governorship of Greene
it was well-nigh impossible in Rhode Island to
secure the apprehension, the detention, or the con
viction of any person for piracy. Pirates resorted
there, spent their money there, even married there.
Arrests, it is true, were sometimes made, as in the
case of Robert Munday and George Cutler of the
Henry Avery crew, who were unable to account for
money and East India goods in their possession ;
but escape by connivance of jailers was more cer
tain than arrest, and when it was sought to indict
the jailers grand juries were wont to indorse " ig
noramus " upon the bills. Indeed, by 1699 so per
fect a haven for freebooters had Narragansett Bay

90 RHODE ISLAND
become that certain of the associates of the never-
to-be-forgotten William Kidd were making it their
asylum. Among them was the murderous James
GiUam. Also among them was our own worthy
Captain Thomas Paine, soon to be enroUed a
founder of Trinity Church, Newport. To him, in
his unobtrusive abode on the island of Conanicut,
Kidd from his jail in Boston sent a messenger for
gold ; and by him the aforesaid messenger was in
trusted with " seven bars."
But the day of reckoning was at hand. Seriously
aroused by complaints and threats from the Great
Mogul of India, the English government had re
solved to suppress piracy. In March, 1697, the
Earl of Bellomont was appointed governor of
New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire,
with powers of captain-general over Rhode Island
and Connecticut. Shortly afterwards Peleg San-
ford was appointed judge of admiralty for Rhode
Island. In 1653, during the war with Holland,
the island of Rhode Island had estabhshed an
Admiralty Court ; and in 1694 the colony, as a
convenience for condemning prizes, had (until the
king's pleasure should be further known) revived
the institution. When Peleg Sanford presented
his commission as admiralty judge by royal ap
pointment, judicial offices conflicted. The gov
ernor, Walter Clarke, solved the point for the
present by taking the Sanford commission and
keeping it.

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 91
In May, 1698, Clarke was succeeded as governor
by his nephew, Samuel Cranston, and soon Ed
ward Randolph, surveyor-general of his Majesty's
customs in America, visited Rhode Island. There
followed a series of stinging dispatches to Cran
ston from the Lords of Trade demanding sight
of the commissions and bonds (mostly non-exist
ent) under which privateers had been sent out by
Deputy-Governor John Greene, and notifying the
governor of the deputing of Lord Bellomont as
a special agent of the crown to inquire into the
local " disorders and irregularities."
Bellomont's inquiry was conducted by himself at
Newport in September, 1699, and when concluded
an elaborate report of it was sent to the Lords
of Trade. The report was scathing. It declared
that the colony usurped and exercised admiralty
power contrary to the charter; that the prosecut
ing attorney was "' a poor, illiterate mechanic ; "
that John Greene, the deputy-governor, was "a
brutish man of very corrupt or no principles in
religion ; " that his commissions ' to privateers
were made out " to the captain or his assignees,"
hence to anybody and everybody ; and finally,
that " the government was notoriously faulty in
countenancing and harboring of pirates who had
openly brought in and disposed of their effects,
whereby the place had been greatly enriched."
Cranston, meanwhile (awakened to the peril in
which the colony stood), was eating exceedingly

92 RHODE ISLAND
humble pie before both the Lords of Traxle and
BeUomont, — " begging a favorable construction
in what of weakness may appear in us, we being
a plain and mean sort of people ; " or, as he fur
ther expresses it, " an ignorant and contemptible
people." Before Bellomont's report could be acted upon,
its author died at New York and Joseph Dudley
was appointed governor of Massachusetts. This
appointment was made in 1701. It carried with
it, as in the case of Phips and Bellomont, power
over the Rhode Island militia, and there was soon
annexed a power of vice-admiralty.
Dudley, in 1705, revived against Rhode Island
Bellomont's charges. But now, with war begun,
the disposition of the home government to be criti
cal of the maritime ethics of its privateering colony
was perceptibly lessened. Nor should it be over
looked that at this juncture the London agent of
Rhode Island was the accomplished WilUam Penn,
nor that Penn's relations with Queen Anne were
those of a trusted courtier.
Clear as the culpability of Rhode Island is with
respect to piracy, one fact should be emphasized:
no governor of the colony was ever actually caught
trafficking in official favors. Even Deputy-Gov
ernor John Greene — whose explanation to BeUo
mont of the negotiable and unbonded commissions
issued by him to Mayes, Bankes, and the others,
was that the recipients were good home folk, hence

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 93
presumably sans reproche as they certainly were
sans peur — probably gained little by his malle
ability. In the early eighteenth century piracy was
rife all along the Atlantic coast, and Rhode Island
sustained to it relations less odious than did New
York or the Carolinas.^
1 Extracts from the official correspondence of Lord BeUo
mont and of Governor Benjamin Fletcher : —
" 1 find that those Pyrates that have given the greatest disturb
ance in the East Indies and Red Sea, have been either fitted from
New York or Rhode Island, and mann'd from New York. , , ,
And Capt° Tew that had been before »¦ most notorious Pirate
(complained of by the East India Company) on his retume from
the Indies with great riches made a visit to New York, where
(although a man of most mean and infamous character) he was
received and caressed by CoU : Fletcher, and they exchanged pre
sents, as gold watches ettc, with one another," etc, [New York,
May 8, 1698, BeUomont to the Lords of Trade, N. Y. Col. Docs.
voL iv, p. 306.]
" I am informed by Mr Randolph, Surveyor General of the
Customs, that R. 1. pretends to a Jurisdiction of a Court of Ad
miralty, and that they have seized a pirate there with his money
and designe to try him and perhaps a^quitt him. I know not yet
what priviledge they have by their Chari^er, but I am weU in
formed what constant encouragement they give to Pirates to come
in there, and bring in their spoils, and likewise what connivance
is made to the breach of all the Acts of Trade, and from thence
it may be concluded that there wiU be but very faint prosecu
tions in a Court of Admty of their owne enacting," etc. [New
York, July 1, 1698, BeUomont to the Lords of Trade. N. Y. Col.
Docs, vol, iv, p. 334,]
" We are very sensible of what your Lordship writes about
the partiality and favour to pirates in R. 1." [Oct. 25, 1698,
Lords of Trade to BeUomont. N. Y. Col. Docs, vol, iv, p,
414] " Capt Tew had formaly rec'd a commsn from the Govr of

94 RHODE ISLAND
With the passing of the peril from BeUomont
and Dudley, Rhode Island for the most part set-
Bermuda [so] I granted him a third to make warr upon the
French," etc.
" This Tew appeared to me not only a man of courage and ac
tivity, but of the greatest sence and remembrance of what he had
seen, of any seaman I had mett. He was allso what they oaU a
very pleasnt man, so that at some times when the labours of my
day were over it was some divertisment as well as information to
me, to heare him taike, I wish'd in my mind to make him a.
sober man, and in particular to reclaime him from a vile habit of
swearing. I gave him a booke to that purpose ; and to gain the
more upon him a gunn of some value. In retume hereof he made
me also a present which was a curiosity and in value not much ;
and this is the sum of all the kindness I am chged with,'' etc.
[Dec. 24, 1698, Col. Benj. Fletcher's answer to charges. N. Y.
Col. Docs. vol. iv, p. 446,]
" Preparations [have] some while [been] mak'g of sending a
squadron of ships of Warr to suppress them [the pirates] there
[at Madagascar] and at Sta Maria," [Jan, 5. 1698-99, Lords of
Trade to BeUomont. N. Y. Col. Docs. vol. iv, p. 454.]
" Jos. Bradish bom at Cambridge near Boston. Ran away with
ship Adventure an interloper to East Indies. Came to East end
of Nassau Isl [Long Island] & sunk the ship between that &
Block Isl — a ship of abt 400 tons. B. left money with Lt Col.
Peirson £942,19,3 — gave govr of R. I. notice where the money
concealed, which 1 heare he has since secured, Block Isl being in
his government. Some of the men who ran away with the ship
went out with Tew," [New York, May 3, 1699, BeUomont to
Lords of Trade, N. Y. Col. Docs. vol. iv, p, 512.]
" I send you the speech of Mr Cranston Gov of R. I. to the As
sembly there about a fortnight since, wich you may please show
to the Lds of Trade as a specimen of the Temper of the people.
'Tis an original for Insolence and Nonsense. I do not mention it
in any of my letters to their Ldships, etc. But that 1 know that
Govmt and People to be the most piraticall in the Kings Domin
ions." [Boston, Sept. 15, 1699, BeUomont to Sec. Popple. N. Y.
Col. Docs. vol. iv, p. 586.]

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 95
tied down to the practice of legitimate privateer
ing ; henceforth pirates, when caught, were hanged.
In Queen Anne's War the most distinguished
privateersmen were the Newport Wantons. The
founder of this family was Edward Wanton, a
Massachusetts man converted to Quakerism by
sight of the stark bodies of Quakers dangling on
Boston Common. Two of Edward's sons, WiUiam
and John, removed to Newport and established
themselves in ship-building. They were hardy and
resourceful, with a natural aptitude for the sea,
and just before the Peace of Ryswick, which ended
King William's War, performed with a volunteer
crew the daring feat of getting alongside a twenty-
gun French privateer which had been harrying the
coast and boarding and capturing her. For this
service, and for the capture (in 1702) of three
armed French vessels iu the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
the brothers were summoned to England and
made the recipients of flattering attention by the
court. The Wantons were valiant, yet in the family
character there evidently lurked something of the
spirit of mischievous perversity. It was brother
" I formerly acquainted your Ldships that Nassaw Isl alias
Long Isl was become a great Receptacle for Pirates ; 1 am since
more confirm' d that 'tis so, Gillam a notorious pirate was sufBered
to escape thither from E, I, and tis believed he is stiU there. . . .
I take that Isl especially the East End of it to exceed E. 1."
[Oct. 20, 1699, Bellomont to Lords of Trade. N. Y. Col. Docs.
vol. iv, p. 59L]

96 RHODE ISLAND
John, magistrate, that in 1719 arbitrarily impris
oned Nathaniel Kay, the king's collector, in the
royal custom-house. It was brother John, deputy-
governor, that in 1731 reconvened the General
Assembly to discuss Governor Jenckes's veto of
the paper money bill after the governor himself
had declined to act. Ultimately the unpredictable
John — foUowing his father's example — turned
Quaker ; but not a whit the less for that did he
continue a fighting servant of the crown. As gov
ernor from 1734 to 1740 he issued commissions to
privateers, with a chuckle at the scandal thus
created. Admonition he met with the dry remark,
that " in all concerns he had listened to the still
smaU voice of divine emanation, and been obedient
thereto." Queen Anne's War was brought to a close in
1713 with the signing of the Peace of Utrecht,
In 1714 the queen herself died. The next year
she was followed to the grave by the great Louis,
her own long-time enemy and the ancient enemy
of King WiUiam and of Marlborough. UntU 1739
there was unwonted repose among the nations.
Then, under George II, there broke forth against
Spain the War of Jenkins' Ear. In 1744 France
went to the aid of Spain. Thereupon the conflict
became known as the War of the Austrian Suc
cession, or King George's War, and the Rhode
Island privateers, which meanwhile had been do-

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 97
ing service merely as trading craft, renewed their
armaments and put to sea. But as this war in a
naval way had an important official as well as
privateering phase, it will be well to consider the
official phase of it first.
It is an interesting circumstance that the first
lord (Jf the admiralty under the Walpole govern
ment — the government responsible for the Span
ish War — was Sir Charles Wager, for as a lad
Wager had lived in Newport with John HuU.
While with HuU the youth had shown such re
markable talent for the sea that he had been taken
into the royal navy. Here he had risen through
the grades of captain and of rear- and vice-admiral.
In 1718 he had passed into civil office as a lord of
the admiralty. In 1733 he had been made first
lord, — a position which he held at the outbreak of
the hostilities now under review. Sir Charles was
much regarded by Rhode Islanders. His brilliant
career served to fire their seafaring natures with
restless zeal against both Spain and France.
The chief naval provision now (1740) made by
the colony was the construction of the Tartar, a
twenty-six gun sloop capable of berthing a hun
dred men. This vessel, sometimes alone and at
other times in company with the Connecticut col
ony sloop Defence, patrolled the coasts from Long
Island to Martha's Vineyard and effected a num
ber of captures. The Tartar served as convoy in
the fruitless Cuban expedition of 1741, but its

98 RHODE ISLAND
principal service was performed in 1745, under
Captain Daniel Fones, against Louisburg.
Rhode Island was of the opinion that the Louis
burg expedition — the project of Governor Wil
liam Shirley of Massachusetts — was a piece of
reckless folly. As Governor Gideon Wanton said,
" The scheme [which was carried by but a single
vote at Boston] supposed the concurrence of many
accidents, the consequences of any one of which
failing would be fatal ; the pretense to surprise
such a town at such a distance with such a fleet
and army appear'd to us ... a most vain expec
tation. . . . As there was not to be one experi
enced officer or soldier . . . nor one engineer in
the whole army, we could not avoid reflecting on
the fatal miscarriages at Augustine and Cartha-
gena." Shirley had a faith which Rhode Island
lacked, and the foUowing thrust by him in a letter
to Governor William Greene is not wanting in
keenness : " I must acknowledge. Sir, when I con-
sider'd what frequent and very large emissions of
paper biUs of credit your assembly has of late
made for the conveniency of the inhabitants of
your colony, ... I could not entertain the least
doubt but that it would have made one emission
for his ihajesty's service."
Although somewhat retarded by convoy duty,
the Tartar reached Louisburg on April 25, 1745.
On the way the sloop had fallen in with his Cath
olic Majesty's ship Renomm^e of thirty-six guns.

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 99
bringing dispatches from France, and Fones had
been compeUed to run the gauntlet of four broad
sides in order to avoid capture. In June the plucky
captain was sent with the Tartar and two consorts
to intercept a body of French and Indians which,
to the number of some twelve hundred, were
approaching in a fleet of sloops, schooners, and
canoes to the relief of the fortress. He met his
enemy in Femme Goose Bay and beat them pre
cipitately back.
The next year (1746) the Tartar was held in
readiness to convoy Rhode Island's quota in the
third great expedition planned by the colonies
against Canada ; but to such a design the French,
by a dramatic and whoUy unforeseen movement,
put an end.
On the 6th of September, the Kinsale, one of
Vice-Admiral Townsend's fleet off Louisburg,
brought into port a prize — La Judith. The mas
ter, Antony Rodinguez, stated that on the 22d of
June he had left RocheUe in company with a fleet
of seventy sail, men-of-war and transports; that
the former consisted of fourteen ships of the line
of from fifty to seventy-four guns each ; that the
transports carried eight thousand troops ; and that
the entire force was under the command of the Due
d'Anville. The news was at once forwarded to
Governor Shirley, and by him in turn, on Septem
ber 22, to Governor William Greene at Newport.
Shirley's message was accompanied by a declaration

100 RHODE ISLAND
by Rene Het (a merchant of New York) that it
had been learned from the captain of a French
prize that Admiral Conflans, while at Petit Gouave
in Hispaniola, had taken from a fleet of merchant
men under convoy by him all the masters and pUots
acquainted with North American waters, and that,
putting others in their room, he had sailed away.
What the two statements — Rodinguez's and Het's
— meant was that D ' AnviUe and Conflans were to
rendezvous somewhere to the north, and, united, to
make a descent upon Louisburg.
In the midst of the excitement resulting from
this disclosure Fones and the Tartar were sent out,
at the request of Governor Shirley, to meet if pos
sible Admiral Lestock, who was daily expected at
Louisburg from Spithead with a body of troops,
and to warn him of D'Anville's approach. Orders
were that until October 25 Fones was to cruise
to the southward of Nova Scotia with sealed dis
patches for the admiral. If the Tartar should be
taken by the French, Fones was to destroy his dis
patches, " by no means suffering them to fall into
the enemy's hands." But the plans of French and
English alike came all to naught. As it chanced,
Conflans had reached Halifax (the stipulated ren
dezvous) early in September. Not finding D'An-
viUe, he had sailed for home. A terrible gale had
arisen and the fleet of D'AnviUe had been badly
shattered. To complicate things still more, D'An
ville had been stricken down with apoplexy and

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 101
had died. His second in command, D'Estournel,
overcome with horror at the situation, had literaUy
fallen upon his sword, and the third officer. La
Jonquiere, had conducted the fleet, battered and
pestilence ridden, back to France. The Tartar,
meanwhile, sought in vain for Lestock ; that officer
was yet upon the English coast.
In 1748, upon the conclusion of peace at Aix, the
Tartar — the Old Ironsides of Rhode Island —
was put up at auction (that melancholy limbo of
so much that is historic) and sold to the highest
bidder. The privateering phase of King George's War
was brilliant in the extreme. After twenty-six years
of quiet the king had authorized Rhode Island to
issue letters of marque and reprisal. The streets of
Newport, therefore, were thronged with seamen in
quest of adventures and prize money. Shirley com
plained roundly that the Boston sailors all fled to
Newport to avoid impressment for Cape Breton,
and the complaint was in great part just. Rhode
Island, too, was highly cautious about restrain
ing the practice, for privateering was a principal
source of wealth to its people. The Malbones, the
Browns, the Wantons, the Ayraults, the Freebodys
— Newport merchants who had gained wealth in
the West India trade — converted their fast sailing
ships into armed cruisers, or built ships especiaUy
for cruising, and sent them out (brigantines and

102 RHODE ISLAND
brigs), a dozen or fifteen in a year, to prey upon
Spanish and French commerce.
There were the Triton, the Victory, the Defiance,
the Caesar, the Mary, the King George, the Yeung
Godfrey, the Prince Frederic, the Prince Charles
of Lorraine, and a host more. Each had its own
favorite ground of operations. Silently, beautif uUy,
yet withal grimly, they dropped one by one out of
the harbor : some for the shrouding fogs of the
Newfoundland Banks ; some for the straits and
channels of the Leeward Islands ; some for Mada
gascar and the Red Sea. If to watch the departure
was interesting, it was thriUing to watch the re
turn. Within hulls scarred in fight and beaten by
weather there lurked one knew not what treasures
of silks or " Kirman " wool, of gold, wines, or ivory.
In 1746, 22,500 pieces-of-eight were brought back
by the Defiance — John Dennis, captain. As early
as 1744, wealth had been garnered by the Prince
Charles under Captain Simeon Potter. In the lat
ter case it took the form to some extent of sacred
plate rifled from churches along the Spanish Main,
The tale of the despoiling of one of these churches
— that of Oyapoc — has been told by a Jesuit mis
sionary. Father Fauque, in a letter to his superior.
The good priest (he was of exceptional charity)
finds excuse for the avariciousness of his Yankee
enemy in the fact that "Rodelon [as he caUs
Rhode Island] was a kind of Uttle republic which
did not pay tribute to the King of England, which

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 103
elected its governor every year and which had not
even any silver money but only notes for daily
commerce." Sometimes privateers went forth and did not
return. In 1745, on the day before Christmas,
there sailed from Newport for the Spanish Main
two large vessels owned in part by Godfrey Mal-
bone and manned by four hundred men. They
were met by a fierce " northeaster " accompanied
by snow, were never heard of afterwards, and
nearly two hundred Newport women were left dis
consolate. Then there often was stiff resistance to
be encountered. Captain John Dennis was the
chief hero in such affairs. In January, 1746, he,
while cruising in the West Indies with the Defi
ance, came up with a French ship of twenty guns,
attended by two lesser craft. He boarded the ship,
losing fifteen killed and fifteen wounded in the
operation, but was rewarded with five hundred
hogsheads of sugar and fifty-seven of indigo. It
was Dennis who, at this period, got the Rhode
Island government into trouble with the governor
of Havana by carrying to Newport and selling into
slavery (because of their mulatto complexions)
twenty -two free Spaniards, In retaliation the
Spanish governor, securing one of Dennis's prize
crews, shut them up; treating them, as they in
dignantly wrote, with more brutality than any
slaves. An exchange was soon happily effected.
The deeply insulted freemen of Spain were bought

104 RHODE ISLAND
back from their Yankee subjection by the owners
of the Defiance and of the Duke of Marlboro' (a
privateer involved with the Defiance), and sent to
Cuba in a flag of truce.
Dennis's crowning exploit was performed in
1747 near the island of Martinique, His name
had become a terror to French traders, and the offi
cials at Fort de France sent out a vessel of four
teen guns and one hundred and forty men to make
an end of him. After a four hours' conflict, in
which Dennis himself was slightly wounded, he
took his would-be captor captive and sailed with
her proudly to St. Kitts.
Rhode Island, after the Bellomont and Dudley
period, was guilty of little that could be called
piracy. Nevertheless that ingrained spirit of in
dividualism which showed itself on land in the
policy (persistently maintained) of an irredeema
ble paper currency, and of which the colony's
marked freebooting tendencies may also be con
sidered an indication, was not easily tamed. Dur
ing King George's War, flags of truce (vessels
bearing to the French islands French prisoners to
be exchanged for English ones) were systemat
ically made use of to carry not alone prisoners
but provisions, thus giving direct aid and comfort
to the enemy. In 1748, no less than twenty such
fraudulent " flags " left Newport. Colonel Robert
Rogers, the celebrated scout of the French and
Indian wars, boldly declares that the Rhode

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SEA 106
Islanders would divide a company of prisoners
among a whole fleet of flags of truce, and then
with official connivance send to the enemy arti
cles more welcome than all the prisoners, or than
would have been the ship and cargo originally
taken. In the war with France that began in 1754
(technically 1756) — the Old French, or Seven
Years, War — Rhode Island did nothing at sea as
a cojony. On land its quotas were kept well filled,
and at Lake George, Fort William Henry, Ticon-
deroga, and Fort Frontenac (as also in 1762 at
Havana) it gave a good account of itself. But
while at this juncture putting in commission no
Tartar, the colony, besides furnishing seamen to
the royal navy, commissioned over sixty privateers
carrying fifteen hundred men, and repeated the
triumphs of former years. Now, though, by reason
of the growth of commerce, the losses in merchant
men were heavy. Providence (which since 1740
had come rapidly forward) lost nearly fifty vessels,
and Newport more than one hundred. Possibly the
greatest loss of all was not that of any merchant
men but of the privateer Foy with bold John Den
nis in command. Whether this loss was by tempest
or by the enemy was never known. Neither ship
nor commander was heard of after August, 1756.
In the war of the Revolution William Dennis, a
son of John, commanded successively thirteen pri
vateers. Stronger proof there could not well be

106 RHODE ISLAND
that the wonderful privateering of Rhode Island
led (among other things) to an American navy,
— to a Talbot, to a Whipple, to a Hopkins, to the
Decaturs, and to the Perrys.

CHAPTER V
THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT
(CommerGe)
Sugar and Molasses — The Slave Trade — Merchant Magnates
— Slaveholding — The Jews as Merchants,
A MOKE immediate result of the sea power of
Rhode Island was the rise into commercial, social,
and intellectual importance of the town of New
port. ^
By 1675 the exportation from Rhode Island
(from Newport especiaUy) of lumber, horses, pork,
butter, and cheese had become considerable. At
Barbadoes and Nevis these commodities were ex
changed for sugar and molasses ; and in sugar and
molasses the future of Newport became bound up.
That is to say, the future of this mart became thus
bound up for aU of the seventeenth century and
for a part of the eighteenth. With the waxing
of the eighteenth century the slave trade arose,
and thereupon Newport's future became bound up
with it.
By means of the reports of the colony governors
to the Lords of Trade the evolution of the island
of Rhode Island from the agricultural stage into

108 RHODE ISLAND
the commercial may be readily traced. In a report
made by Peleg Sanford in 1680 we are told that
there were then in the colony no merchants nor
" men of considerable estates ; " that there was
" no shippinge " save a few sloops ; and that no
customs duties were imposed. Twenty-eight years
later the story is quite a different one. In 1708,
Governor Samuel Cranston made report that the
colony within a decade had buUt one hundred and
three vessels. Of these it possessed twenty-nine
itself, and by means of them a brisk trade was car
ried on with Jamaica, Barbadoes, and Nevis ; with
the Bermudas and the Bahamas ; with Madeira and
Cura9oa ; and with the American settlements from
Massachusetts to South Carolina. The articles im
ported were sugar, molasses, cotton, indigo, wool
ens, linens, salt, rum, wines, cocoa, rigging, and
iron. A naval officer had been regularly appointed
by the governor since 1681. At the date of the
Cranston report the population of the colony was
7181. Newport led with 2203, of whom 220 were
negroes ; Providence came next with 1446, of whom
seven were negroes ; and third came Kingstown
(the Narragansett country) with 1200, of whom
the negroes were 85.
As regards Newport, the most significant state-»
ment by Cranston is that now for a considerable
period the land of the island had aU been " taken
up and improved in small farms," a condition
which had compelled later generations to betake

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 109
themselves to the sea. It was from this cause that
ship-building had been developed. From this cause,
too, there were beginning to appear those "mer
chants," those " men of considerable estates " the
lack of whom in 1680 was dolefuUy recorded by
Peleg Sanford. The sugar and molasses which
ever since 1660 had been coming into Newport
were distiUed there into New England rum, and
this article (together with caudles made from tallow
or oil substances) found a market throughout the
West Indies. By 1731, when Governor Joseph
Jenckes made his report to the Lords of Trade,
it is evident that sugar and molasses on the one
hand, and rum on the other, were the staples of
Newport, and so of Rhode Island, prosperity.
Newport consisted now of four hundred houses.
It had passed beyond the time (1707) when, as
the town records inform us, the streets were at the
mercy of filth precipitated from stables and sinks to
" ye spoyling and damnifying of peoples AppariU."
In 1731 the centre of life was "the parade"
(Washington Square), at the head of which stood
the Colony House. Into the parade Thames Street
opened, and from it there projected westwardly
into the old town cove a wharf — Long Wharf.
The principal dwellings were about the parade and
on Thames Street. Along the wharves were ware
houses and sailors' boarding-houses, together with
the shops, of venders of anchors and cordage and
of sail-makers, caulkers, and shipwrights. Long

110 RHODE ISLAND
Wharf was largely the scene of the activities of
Newport's four hundred seamen. From this station
there passed out to sea the colony's ten or twelve
sail that each year visited Surinam, St, Eustatia,
and St. Thomas ; and the one or two that ranged
as far as Genoa, Leghorn, Holland, or the British
Isles. At this station there were unloaded the
duck, cordage, broadcloths, serges, hoUands, thread,
laces, needles, pins, tape, scythes, and iron-ware
brought in coasters from Boston.
The prosperity thus indicated, and a like pros
perity indicated by the crowded wharves of Boston
— aU based on sugar and molasses — was by no
means relished by the English sugar planters of
the West Indies — of Jamaica, Barbadoes, An
tigua, and Nevis. These planters were desirous of
exclusively supplying the northern colonial mar
ket ; and when they found themselves (as in 1781
they constantly did) anticipated by the Dutch of
Surinam and St. Eustatia, they complained loudly
to the Lords of Trade. By the latter, in 1731,
steps began to be taken toward the imposition of
a sugar duty. The agent for Rhode Island in
London was Richard Partridge (a successor to
WiUiam Penn and, like him, a Quaker), and, be
tween 1731 and 1733, he did what he could by
representation and petition to defeat the projected
measure. It was, he pointed out, the profits of the
trade in sugar and molasses that enabled Rhode
Island merchants to purchase English manufac-

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 111
tured goods. All, however, was to no avail, and in
1733 a law went into effect imposing 9d. per gallon
on rum and 5s. per hundredweight on sugar. This
law was continued without modification down to
1764. It was while the Sugar Act was pending that
Governor Jenckes submitted his query regarding
the veto power (if any) which pertained to his
office, and Partridge was highly concerned lest the
query should complicate Rhode Island's position
toward the act. But when at length the act was
about to pass, the agent — a man evidently of con
viction as well as of circumspection — prophetically
wrote : " I am of opinion if such a Law take place
(besides the present Injury it will do), it will be
rather worse in the consequence of it than the Bill
of prohibition last year, because of the levying a
subsidy upon a Free People without their know
ledge agst their consent, who have the libertys and
Immunitys granted them of Natural born Subjects,
and when they have enough to do to raise Taxes
for their own Support ; besides it may be drawn
into a President for the future, for by the same
Rule that a British Parliamt imposes a duty on
the King's Subjects abroad, who have no Repre
sentatives in the state here, they may from 4/ ad
vance to 20/ — to £100, on different things, and
so ad infinitum, which is an Infringement on Lib
erty and Property and as I apprehend a violation
of the Right of the Subject."

112 RHODE ISLAND
The law against human slavery, passed by the
mainland towns of Rhode Island in 1652, expressed
the sentiment of the northern part of the colony.
It may be doubted whether it expressed the sen
timent of the southern part then under an inde
pendent government. Whether it did or not, it did
not do so after that part had (about 1700) begun
to exchange agriculture for commerce. Yet even
the slave trade was divisible into varieties. There
was the respectable or, as it has been called, " gen
teel " variety lasting throughout the period when
the traffic was legal — the first three quarters of
the eighteenth century. There also was the out
lawed and piratical variety lasting to the middle
of the nineteenth century. Newport was concerned
with both varieties, but it was the " genteel "
variety that built up its fortunes.
By the Treaty of Utrecht, concluded between
Queen Anne and Louis XIV on April 11, 1713,
England obtained the Hudson Bay territory, Aca
dia, Newfoundland, and Gibraltar. Further, there
was obtained an assignment of the Assiento — a
contract with Spain on the part of a French cor
poration, called the French Guinea Company,
whereby forty-eight hundred African slaves were
to be landed each year in Spanish America for
thirty years. The execution of the contract was
intrusted by England to a company, called the
Royal African, which, besides paying a large
sum to Spain in cash, was to divide one half its

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 113
profits annually between the Spanish and British
kings. But so much fault was found with this
monopoly by Parliament that it was deemed ad
visable to continue the former practice of admit
ting private persons to the benefits of the trade,
on the payment of a duty of ten per cent on all
goods sent by them to Africa to be exchanged for
negroes. The overthrow of the Assiento monopoly was
followed by an immense expansion in the slave busi
ness. Prior to 1708 Rhode Island had imported
but one human cargo from Africa. It came in 1696,
and the negroes were disposed of at between £30
and £35 per head. Between 1698 and 1707 ne
groes to the number of twenty or thirty a year were
imported from Barbadoes. They sold at from £30
to £40 per head, but were in no great demand. By
1700, however, Rhode Island had begun to perceive
where lay the path to fortune. In that year, instead
of importing negroes for itself, it sent (under the
tutelage of two Barbadian merchants) three vessels
to Africa to obtain a cargo of slaves to be sold in
Barbadoes. Henceforth it was not seldom that advantage
was taken of the West India market to cover the
so-called triangular course: from Newport (with
rum manufactured from West India sugar and
molasses) to Africa; from Africa (with slaves
purchased with this rum) to the West Indies ; and,
finally, from the West Indies (with more sugar and

114 RHODE ISLAND
molasses purchased with the proceeds of the slaves)
back again to Newport. Yet the business of home
importation was not neglected, for out of the avaUs
of a £3 duty levied in 1708 upon each negro im
ported from Barbadoes, provision was made for
paving and renovating those Newport streets
along which people had not yet ceased to fare
to " ye spoyling and damnifying of [their] Appa
riU." But to resume from 1739. Between that date
and about 1760 the trade in slaves was at its height ;
and as by means of the trade in question there was
amassed the wealth which formed the foundation
of Newport society and of Newport culture, an ac
count of it will be of use.
In 1740 the colony, according to Governor Rich
ard Ward, possessed 120 sail, " some on the coast
of Africa." By 1763 the number of sail had in
creased to 184, exclusive of coasters, which were
852. In navigating the various craft there were em
ployed 2200 seamen. Eighteen himdred hogsheads
of rum had for a long period been carried annually
to Africa and exchanged for negroes, gold dust,
and ivory. To supply the rum there were operated
in Newport between twenty and thirty " distiU
houses." In a word, between 1750 and 1760 New
port was the great slave mart for America, as Lon
don and Bristol were for England. Its wharves —
in the multiplicity of which Long Wharf could
barely be distinguished — were so crowded " with

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 115
vessel lading for Guinea " that often, we are told,
it was impracticable " to get one hogshead of rum
for the cash."
A coterie of Newport merchants, let us suppose,
are about to send out two or three slavers in the year
1750. One of the vessels wiU be a new one built
for the occasion. The work of building probably
wiU be done at Newport, but it may be done at
Warren or Bristol — towns among those acquired
in 1747 from Massachusetts, and both eager traders
in slaves. In freeboard dimensions the new vessel
(according to the naval writer Mr. John R. Spears)
will compare with the largest " cup defenders "
constructed to-day at Bristol by the Herreshoffs.
Her register will be not far from fifty tons ; she
will be rigged as a sloop or brigantine ; and her
approximate cost will be £1350.
Our three craft (now ready for their cargo) wiU
be laden each with 120 or 150 hogsheads of rum, a
quantity of provisions, muskets, and powder, and
an assortment of shackles. There will still remain
insurance to be effected, and this — secured at a
rate of eighteen or twenty per cent — wiU be found
to justify its cost by the indemnity afforded against
such hazards (besides fire) as " men-of-war, enemies,
pyrates, rovers, thieves, jettisons, letters of mart
and countermart, sorprizals, taking at sea, barratry
of the master and marines," etc. Then the little
fleet will sail " bound," as the bill of lading will
piously declare, " by God's grace for the coast of

116 RHODE ISLAND
Africa." Even yet there may be no sailing if the
horoscope has not been cast ; or if, on being cast,
it has not been found favorable ; for the captains
of the day are nothing if not superstitious, and will
as soon think of quitting port without a clearance
as without warrant from a soothsayer.
Once on the coast (at Anamaboe let us say), the
captains will summon the native chiefs or head
men to a collation weU spiced with rum and gifts,
and in return the chiefs will supply to the captains
slaves : men, women, and children made captive in
war, or otherwise reduced to subjection. As fast
as received the slaves will be paid for at an aver
age price (per head of sound adults) of a hundred
gallons of rum, and stowed in the between-decks
space, — a space three feet and ten inches in
height. Here the women and children will be
given their freedom, — a freedom to sit or lie down.
The men will be stretched upon their backs feet
out-board, and in this position will be ironed fast
by chains or rods. When a cargo of one hundred
or one hundred and twenty negroes for each ship
has been collected, the return voyage or, as it was
technicaUy called, the " middle passage " will be
begun. It will consume from six to ten weeks and
terminate at Barbadoes, where the cargo wiU be
sold at a profit of from £12 to £25 per head. Our
little coterie of Newport merchants will (as a
coterie) reap a profit, per ship, on their venture
of from £1800 to £2000 ; aU, too, in six or eight

THE GOLDEN. AGE OF NEWPORT 117
months' time, and without taking into the account
the cargo of ten thousand gallons, or more, of mo
lasses with which they will load at Barbadoes for
Newport. In spite of soothsayers and horoscopes, iU luck
occasionally beset a voyage. It was in view of an un
usual bit of ill luck that David Lindsay of Newport,
captain of the brigantine Sanderson, wrote from
Anamaboe and Barbadoes, in 1753, those delight
fully misspelled letters which proclaim him (along
with Mrs. Benjamin Franklin) a true child of the
eighteenth century. " I have Gott 13 or 14 hhds
of rum yet Left aboard," wrote the captain from
Anamaboe, "and God noes when I shall Gett
clear of it." " Ye traid is so dull it is actually a noof
to make a man creasey. . . on the whole I never
had so much Trouble in all my voiges." Neverthe
less from Barbadoes he could write : " My slaves
is not landed yet: they are 56 in number for
owners, all in helth & fatt. I lost one small gall."
Not so bad this, after all. And that Captain Lind
say got his cargo through "in helth & Fatt,"
only " one small gall " having been so inconsider
ate as to die on his hands, shows that he was a
worthy servant of those Newport magnates who,
as James Fenimore Cooper tersely phrases it, in
becoming slave-dealers had become gentlemen.-'
1 "Sales of Forty Seven Negroes, & a parcel of Lumber &
Water Casks imported in the Brigg'a. Sanderson, & put into my
hands by Captain David Lindsay, on the proper account and

118

RHODE ISLAND

The magnates at Newport between 1730 and
1770 — while the town was advancing in popula
tion from five to nine thousand souls — who were
they? There had just died (1727) one of the most
risque of Messrs, WiUiam Johnston & Peter Brown, of Rhode
Island, owners of said Brigg'a.

d I a
a> o a,
s ^ s

i & ¦ %
« « . s °
S

I I S I 6
1 &< ai DO P

June 18 10

14 9 11 8

42S6 1353 - -
-8500 20

Chabges deduced, viz.
To caah paid for Permit to Land the Slaves . . .
" Duty on 47 Slaves @ 6b 
" for Drummer attending the Sales . . . .
" paid for carrying Notes into the Country,
for Liquor at the Sales & for Wherry
hire 
To the Captain's Coast Commission on £1432 12 6
To Commissions ou £1466 13 6 @ 5 p. ct 
Nett Proceeds carried to the credit of
Messrs. WiUiam Johnston & Peter Brown,
Rhode Island ; Their Acct. Curt.
Barbados July 10th 1753
Errors excepted

Am. Bist. Record, vol. i, p. 339.

Prices £ s. d.
£35 . . 875 0 0
 30 0 0
25 00
£29 ., 58 0 0
 28 00
 30 00
 22 10 0
 22 10 0
 22 10 0
 29 0 0
.. . 24 26
 21 0 0
 30 0 0
Ord'ry£25 100 0 0
do. do. 100 0 0
 15 0 0
 £1432 12 6
@ £4 per m. 22 13 6
® 15s. & 5s. 11 7 6-
£1466 13 6
£00 5 0
11 15 0
0 60

1 19 5
65 2 2
73 6 8

142 16 3
£1324 0 3

Elias MEBiviELiiB.'

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 119
notable Newport magnates of the old or landed
order — the order of William Harris, WiUiam
Coddington, and WiUiam Brenton — namely,
Samuel Cranston. Thirty successive times had he
been elected governor of the colony. Within the
period of his incumbency there had faUen the ex
citing decade of piracy, perplexing years of the
endless disputes over money and boundaries, and
one war — Queen Anne's. At no time had he
failed to inspire public confidence by the exercise
of that rare faculty which he possessed of sympa
thetically reflecting public feeling ; a faculty exer
cised no less in the admitting of pirates to bail
than in a careful avoidance of acts offensive to
either the advocates of soft money or hard.
Of the new or mercantile class — the class of
genuine sea-lords — the first in point of date and
consequence were undoubtedly our acquaintances
William and John Wanton. With them ship
building, privateering, and mercantile adventuring
were interchangeable occupations.
A later group of merchants (and upon the
whole the group most characteristic of eighteenth
century Rhode Island) embraced in large part
men already known to us through their protests to
the king against paper money. These men (New
porters aU) were Abraham Redwood, WiUiam
EUery, Henry Collins, John Brown, Peleg Brown,
Daniel Ayrault, John Freebody, Samuel Freebody,
Godfrey Malbone, John Malbone, Sueton Grant,

120 RHODE ISLAND
John Channing, Gideon Wanton, Joseph Wanton,
Samuel Vernon, Thomas Hazard, Solomon Town-
send, and Abraham Whipple. And not only were
these men merchants ; they in the main were mer
chants of magnanimous minds. They belonged to
the class that in the Italy of the fifteenth century
delighted to adorn the State with palaces, and to
fill these palaces with beautiful and costly objects
of art. It of course was at a humble distance that
the Newport dealer in sugar, rum, and slaves trod
in the steps of the Venetian or Florentine who had
trafficked in silks, tapestries, precious stones,
aromatic woods, and ivory, but none the less he
trod there ; so obviously, indeed, that in one in
stance (that of Henry Collins) the appellation be
stowed is that of the Lorenzo de Medici of New
port. The dwellings of the mercantile group before us
consisted in spacious wooden houses of two and a half
or three stories, with gambrel or hip roofs. The door
ways were ornamented by fluted posts and scroUed
pediments. The halls were central and wide, and
the principal chambers were wainscoted nearly to
the ceiling. Moreover, there were not wanting (to
those possessed of the wealth or humor for them)
country places — suburban viUas. The latter were
approached by roads (none too good) over the
undulous and, in that day, tree-clad surface of the
island; and, when gained by the visitor, were
found surrounded by gardens somewhat formally

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 121
laid out but made bright by flowers and sweet by
scented shrubs. The country abode of Abraham
Redwood was in Portsmouth, and, under the name
of " Redwood," was widely known for its unusual
botanical specimens.
According to tradition, the rural mansion and
estate which, between 1744 and 1766, outranked
aU others near Newport was that of Godfrey Mal
bone. There is little in the way of information
about Malbone that is trustworthy ; but we know
that he was a rough and ready seafaring man of
Virginia birth, a bold trader in slaves, fond of
privateering enterprises, and a stanch churchman,
in short a Byronic character. In 1744, just after
the Spanish War had merged into that of King
George, and just after a handsome return had be
gun to be realized from the sale of condemned
Spanish and French prizes, Malbone purchased at
the foot of Miantonomy HiU a tract of six hun
dred acres sloping full to the bay on the west.
Here he built of Connecticut stone a large house
which he surmounted with a cupola and surrounded
with grounds embeUished by hedges, terraces, par
terres of flowers, and ponds of glinting fish. A
famous hon vivant was our nabob in the style of
the day — the Georgian style — one rather heavy
and coarse when the company consisted of men.
And of men we may be assured that it frequently
did consist with a host who relished exceedingly
his turtle, his joint, his punch brewed of rum, sugar.

122 RHODE ISLAND
lime-juice, and arrack, and above aU, his oath and
his broad jest.
As early as 1740 Newport was cosmopoHtan.
The Redwoods were there from Antigua ; the De
Courcys from Ireland ; the Grants and Edward
Scott (grand-uncle of Sir Walter) from Scotland ;
and the Bretts from Germany. Huguenot f amiUes,
too, from the CaroUnas, driven away by the In
dian wars, had to some extent made the place a
refuge with their slaves. Society possessed strong
elements of attraction. Clubs, or what Were the
equivalent of clubs, soon appeared in such organi
zations as the Newport ArtiUery, formed in 1741,
and the Fellowship Club (a mariners' society),
formed in 1752. In 1761 the town was visited by
a theatrical troup. For two months renditions of
plays were given ; of Shakespearian plays some
times, but oftener of " The Spectre Bridegroom,"
" The Conscious Lover " (by Richard Steele),
"The Lying Valet," and "The Devil to Pay."
The same company afterwards went to Providence,
but the colder temper of that locaUty proved in
hospitable, and the next year theatrical exhibitions
were prohibited throughout the colony.
At this time, as during the Revolution, the
young women of Newport were charming for color
of cheeks, lightness of foot, and grace of deport
ment ; and the fact that many of them were from
Quaker famiUes did not interfere with their partici
pation in the gayeties that prevailed. Besides the

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 123
theatre and the prim "teas," there were parties to
Fort George at which dainties were served and sets
formed to dance the " Faithful Shepherd " and
" Arcadian Nuptials." Then, too, the shops held
forth a constant lure in fabrics and curiosities from
both Europe and the Indies ; and if naught else
offered, a young woman could join a spinning
match at Dr. Ezra Stiles's, buy a lottery ticket for
a fcharity, or invest her pin-money in spermaceti
candles to be carried abroad and converted into
Irish liilen for her future domestic establishment.
Newport life was ministered to by slavery as a
traffic. It also to some degree was ministered to
by slavery as an institution. In 1708 the town
possessed 220 negroes, and even in 1680 Governor
Peleg Sanford had reported the presence of
" blacks " as a distinct element. By 1730 there
were in the town 649 " blacks." In the entire
colony at this date the negroes were 1648. Eigh
teen years later the total for the colony, including
those belonging to the recently acquired towns on
the east of the bay, was 3077 ; and by 1756 this
number had been increased to 4697 — the maxi
mum before the Revolution.
It was no unusual sight at a Newport wharf,
that of some slaver discharging its human cargo ;
" the sellers and buyers of men, women, and children
thronging the market place." The fact that a man
was a Quaker did not as yet much restrain him as

124 RHODE ISLAND
a buyer. Joseph Wanton, son of Governor Wil
liam Wanton, and last colonial governor of Rhode
Island, made affirmation that "in 1758 he had
sailed from Newport in the snow King of Prussia,
with a cargo of 124 hogsheads of rum," etc., and
that " while at anchor at Annamibo, having on
board fifty-four slaves," he was taken by a French
privateer, etc. Yet this same Joseph was careful
to record at the beginning of his statement that
" he was one of the people called Quakers and
conscientiously scrupulous about taking an oath."
Every Newport family of pretensions owned slaves.
They were kept as domestic servants and not
treated harshly. Upon one occasion the Newport
" Mercury " printed an advertisement as follows :
" Wanted : a negro from sixteen to twenty -five,
free from bad smell, strait limbed, active, healthy,
good-tempered, honest, sober, quick at apprehen
sion, and not used to run away." If the advertiser
got what he sought he was fortunate.
On the whole, the negro slave at Newport was
more a nuisance than a benefit. There was little
work there for him to do that could not be done
better by a white man, and the climate gave him
no superiority in point of endurance. He had three
distinct failings : he was fond of rum,- he would
steal, and he would run away. The offenses of theft
and absconding were usually combined. In the New
port " Mercury " there may be found notices not a
few of the escape of Pomp " very artful and insinu-

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 125
ating ; " of the escape of Caesar " who plays well
the violin ; " or of the escape of Sarah, " a lusty
mulatto, polite and ingenious at needlework " —
each and all the bearers of some purloined article.
To place the slave under better control, various
laws were passed. In 1704 negroes were forbidden
to be abroad after nine at night. In 1714 ferry
men were forbidden to transport them without a
certificate from their masters. In 1743 (and of
special significance is this law) a punishment by
branding and scourging was provided for " negroes
that shaU attempt to commit rape on any white
woman." Between 1728 and 1770 acts also were
passed regulating manumission and against the
keeping by free negroes of " disorderly houses."
Among the free negroes of Newport the most
celebrated was Newport Gardner. He is described
as " tall, straight, and dignified ; " and his attain
ments (for one of his race) were remarkable. He
taught himself much of the science and art of
music, composed tunes, conducted a successful
singing school, and founded a colored church. In
addition to being able to read and write English,
he could speak French. His weakness was an
appetite for rum.
Two classes of the Newport merchant magnate
have been considered : the class that was as much
privateersman as merchant (of which the Wanton
family in its earlier representatives is an apt illus-

126 RHODE ISLAND
tration) and the class that though engaged in privar
teering were not so engaged personaUy and that
depended more and more for emolument upon the
slave trade.
But there was a third class. It consisted of the
Newport Jew, and it differed from the others in
that, besides the rum and slave trade,- its members
followed general commerce, reaching out for the
commodities of the Mediterranean and the Le
vant. Jews are heard of in Newport in 1658 — the
Campannalls, the Packeckoes, the Levis, and others.
Then in 1694 a number of families arrived from
the West Indies (Curagoa). It was natural that
Jews should seek Rhode Island. In enumerating
the persecuted races and classes for the benefit of
whom the " livelie experiment " was designed,
Roger WiUiams had specifically spoken of the
Children of Abraham. " By the merciful assistance
of the Most High," WiUiams had said, " I have
desired to labor in Europe, in America, -with Eng
lish, with Barbarians, yea, and also I have longed
after some trading -with Jews themselves, for
whose hard measure, I fear the nations and Eng
land have yet a score to pay." " All these con
sciences (yea the very consciences of the papists,
Jews &c.,) . . . ought freely and impartiaUy to be
permitted their several respective worships." Yet
even in Rhode Island the lot of the Jew was not
always happy. As early as 1684, Simon Medus,

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 127
David Brown, and other Jews found it expedient
to secure from the Rhode Island General Assembly
a declaration that they " might expect as good pro
tection as any stranger . . . residing amongst us,
. . , being obedient to his Majesty's laws."
The Jews who became Newport magnates were
of the eighteenth century — Aaron Lopez, Abrar
ham Rodriguez Rivera, and Myer JPoUock. They
arrived from Portugal and Spain, by way of New
York, between 1740 and 1760. Aaron Lopez was
the most prominent of them, and he had fled from
Portugal to escape the Inquisition. Associated with
Aaron Lopez was his brother Moses. This firm
and Myer Pollock gave attention to the trade in
molasses and slaves. The Lopez Brothers — who
owned no less than twenty-five or thirty different
craft — encouraged also a movement (seriously be
gun in 1783) for the participation of Rhode Island
ers in whale-catching, extending the " catch," it is
said, as far as the Falkland Islands. It was Rivera
who more particularly devoted his energies to com
merce -with France and the East. But his activities
were not limited to commerce. Superior methods
for the production of sperm oil were introduced by
him. Indeed, so successful were his methods that
by 1761 there were in existence at Newport seven
teen oU and candle establishments. Largely at the
instance of the Jewish merchants in the various
colonies, there had come to be formed an intercolo
nial combination or trust for the maintenance of

128 RHODE ISLAND
prices by an apportionment of material and regu
lation of output.
" We had yesterday," wrote Richard Partridge
from London on November 26, 1755, " advice via
France of the dreadful Earth Quake and Fire at
Lisbon on 1st Novr. wherein were destroyed as its
judged 100,000 People and the greatest part of the
City." As a sequel to this catastrophe, the number
of Portuguese Jews in Newport was increased. Just
prior to the Revolution there were there in aU per
haps two hundred Hebrew families.
By the early trade in molasses and rum ; by the
privateering of the Wantons ; by the slave trade of
the Malbones ; and finally, by the wider and more
princely commercial ventures of the families of
Lopez and Rivera, Newport so waxed in wealth
that although between 1750 and 1770 still behind
Boston, " a bold prophet was he who said then
that New York one day might equal Newport."

CHAPTER VI
THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT — Continued
{Letters, Art, Science)
Dean Berkeley — ^^The Redwood Library, Gilbert Stuart, the Jew
ish Synagogue — Dr. Ezra Stiles — Newport vs. Boston.
The individualism of Rhode Island — based, as it
was, on that which was spiritual — on the Soul
Liberty of Roger Williams and the " inner light "
of the Antinomians, 'Anabaptists, and Quakers —
could not, under favoring conditions, but flower
forth in idealism. Beginning with 1729, these
conditions were supplied at Newport by the devel
opment there of wealth through commerce, and by
the presence there, for a time, of the greatest ideal
ist among English philosophers — George Berkeley,
Dean of Derry.
It was early in the year when Dean Berkeley
reached Newport. He brought with him his wife
(daughter of Chief Justice Forster), whom he had
just married, and the portrait painter Smibert, of
whom Walpole makes mention in his "Anecdotes
of Painting." Dr. Thomas Moffatt, a learned Scot
tish physician, was also to have been of the party,
but was detained by illness. " The Dean," said the

130 RHODE ISLAND
" New England Weekly Journal," announcing his
arrival, " is a gentleman of middle stature, of an
agreeable, pleasant, and erect aspect." The object
of Berkeley in coming to Rhode Island was to await
the remittance by Sir Robert Walpole of £20,000
for the founding of a college in the Bermudas for
the Christianization and education of Indian youth ;
but the coming was not significant for Newport be
cause of this. It was significant because of some
thing altogether different ; because, in a word, of
what Berkeley himself was in mind, spirit, and
training. The advent of the dean in Newport was like that
of Petrarch in Parma or Avignon ; it was the ad
vent of a renaissance. Along with him there came
not alone great intellectual independence and
abounding human charity, but there came culture
— the atmosphere of intimate association with men
of letters : with Richard Steele, with Dean Swift
(to whom our visitor was indebted for presentation
at Queen Anne's court), with " Young Mr. Pope,"
and finally with Addison, whose " Cato " he had
witnessed on its first night in the company of the
author, the latter a bit nervous but fortified for the
occasion by two or three flasks of burgundy and
champagne. Nor was the culture which came with
him by any means purely insular. It breathed of
the Continent and of travel : of France and Gothic
cathedrals; of North Italy and dim fugitive ma
donnas ; of Naples pulsing with life ; of Vesuvius ;

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 131
of Capri ; of Cumse and Misenum and the spirit of
Virgil. As has been intimated, there was at Newport a
considerable preparedness for the influences ema
nating from Berkeley. In what, specifically, did
this preparedness consist ?
Throughout the colony there was little in the
way of means of public education. Despite the
earnest plea of Master William Turpin, preferred
in impeccable script in 1685, Providence main
tained no public school, nor was to do so for many
years to come. Conditions were somewhat better,
though not much, in Portsmouth and Warwick, In
that part of Rhode Island which in 1729 was still
claimed by Massachusetts things were promising.
At Barrington and Bristol there were schools —
schools that since 1673 and 1682 had taught such
formidable branches as " Grammar, Rhetoric,
Lattin, Greek, and Hebrew." Newport, in respect
to schools, might not compare with Barrington or
Bristol, but it had not fared ill. There was a school-
house there in 1685, and by 1710 permission had
been granted for " a Latin school in the two little
rooms " in the town schoolhouse.
The press — a further means of education —
had no place in the colony at large ; but in 1727
James Franklin (brother of the progressive Ben
jamin) had removed from Boston to Newport, and
now was printing books. In a short while (1732)
he was to begin the publication of Rhode Island's

132 RHODE ISLAND
first newspaper, the " Grazette," and in 1758 his
son was to found the " Mercury."
But if — even at Newport — public education
was in no very forward stage,' a measurable sub
stitute for it existed in an active sectarianism.
There was, it is true, no longer manifest that
feverishness which had provoked sorrow in Win
throp and ire in Cotton Mather. The theological
mixture no longer seethed in its tiny caldron.
Precipitation, indeed, was well advanced, for,
where once there had been Gortonism and Anti
nomianism and Anabaptism and Quakerism and
Seekerism, there now were only Baptism and
Quakerism ; and instability in these elements was
checked by Episcopalianism and Congregational
ism. At the time of Berkeley's coming there were in
flourishing condition in Providence the original,
or Roger Williams, Baptist Church and one
Congregational and one Episcopal body ; the
Congregational body ministered to by the Rev.
Josiah Cotton, a great-grandson of John Cotton,
the early antagonist of Williams in public con
troversy. In Westerly the Seventh Day Baptists
held strong sway. In Narragansett — scene of the
^ Down to 1904 Rhode Island was without a uniform system of
education. Until 1902 children could be withdrawn from school
at the age of twelve. They still may so be withdrawn at thirteen.
Attendance up to thirteen is unsatisfactory, as local sentiment^
(especially among the foreign-born) sanctions the employment of
young children in factories. — R. I. School Reports, 1903, 1904.

THE G-OLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 133
d,g5ft»ti6nal labors of both Roger WiUiams and
William Blackstone — Episcopalianism was estab
lished. In Newport itself there were no less than
seven churches, four of them Baptist — one a
Seventh Day church organized in 1671. Of the
others, one was Congregational, one Episcopal,
and one Quaker ; the latter, of course, very large.
The men — the more prominent of them — at the
head of these bodies were the Rev. Nathaniel
Clap (Congregationalist), the Rev. John Comer
(Baptist), aud the Rev. James Honyman (Episco
palian). Moreover, in the case of Honyman, a
handsome church edifice with ample interior and
lofty steeple was at command ; as, withal, a tower
ing pulpit from which the visiting dean might, as
he often did, deliver his chastened message to the
flock below.
The preparedness of Newport for Berkeley,
however, is made evident not so much by the
existence of varied and active church circles as
by the fact, first, that these circles were mutually
tolerant ; and by the fact, second, that in the case of
such among them as had wealth, that wealth had
been used in the cultivation of a taste for books,
pictures, and architecture.
On April 24, 1729, the dean wrote to his friend
" Tom Prior " at Dublin : " Here are four sorts
of Anabaptists, besides Presbyterians, Quakers,
Independents, and many of no profession at all.
Notwithstanding so many differences, here are

134 RHODE ISLAND
fewer quarrels about religion than elsewhere, the
people living peaceably with their neighbors of
whatsoever persuasion." Of the intellectuality of
the Newporters the writer was fast making proof
through his acquaintances: William Wanton,
churchman and governor of the colony; Daniel
Updike of Narragansett, attorney - general and
lover of history ; William EUery, father of the
William EUery who one day was to be a signer
of the Declaration of Independence ; the munifi
cent Henry CoUins, soon to be accounted a patron
of Smibert ; and Samuel Johnson, future presi
dent of King's, afterwards Columbia CoUege,
New York. It is altogether likely that the plan
which now was conceived by a number of these
men for forming a society for literary and phUo-
sophical discussion — the Philosophical Society
so-caUed, precursor of the Redwood Library —
was an outcome of the presence at Newport of
Berkeley. At all events, it was in 1730 that this
body was organized.
Less than three short years the dean remained
in Rhode Island, — an interval which he improved
by building a country home (Whitehall) near the
Hanging Rocks and the sea, and by composing
his Plato-like " Alciphron," — but the radiance with
which his coming had been attended did not vanish
away at his departure. When, in the autumn of
1731, assured at length of the recreancy of Wal
pole in the matter of the Bermuda College, he

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 135
took ship for England, he left behind him a
stimulus that lasted far into the century.
With the unique figure of Berkeley removed —
that figure the forerunner of Hume, who was the
forerunner of Immanuel Kant — things of intel
lectual and artistic consequence in the little harbor
town were cared for down to the Revolution by
various individuals, worthy successors to the phi
losopher and man of artistic appreciation. As
patrons of art and public improvements, there
were Henry Collins and Abraham Redwood ; as
architects, there were Richard Munday and Peter
Harrison ; as painters, there were John Smibert,
Robert Feke, Gilbert Stuart, Cosmo Alexander
(Stuart's teacher), and Samuel King ; as scholars
and theologians, there were Nathaniel Clap, James
Honyman, John Comer, John Callender, Isaac
Touro, Ezra Stiles, and Samuel Hopkins ; as print
ers and publishers, there were the Franklins and
Solomon Southwick ; as men of science, there were
Dr. Thomas Moffatt, Dr. Thomas Brett (Leyden
graduate), and Dr. William Hunter, distinguished
lecturer upon anatomy.
Upon the achievements of these men a glance
only may here be bestowed. Redwood in 1747 fur
nished the nucleus of a book fund. Collins the
same year donated a site for the construction of a
building to be called the Redwood Library ; and,
from the plans of Harrison, who had received his

136 RHODE ISLAND
training under Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of
Blenheim House, the structure was completed in
1750. Harrison, later, was to design the City HaU
and Jewish Synagogue. Already Munday had
wrought the elegant proportions of Trinity Church
and the dignified proportions of the Colony Cap
itol. Smibert, Feke, and King (portrait painters
in oils) are known from their works preserved in
many collections in New England ; whUe of Gil
bert Stuart as a painter it is in no wise necessary
to speak. Apropos of him (a snuff grinder's son,
born in Narragansett on December 3, 1755, in
a house remote, lonesome, and looking into the
depths of what not inaptly may be called the dark
tarn of Auber), one can but marvel at the sources
and haunts of genius.
Of exceptional interest are the theologians of
the Newport golden age. Gathered in one small
community — one at the best of not over nine
thousand souls — there were not merely Baptists,
Quakers, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians,
but Jews ; and (after 1758) Moravians.
In the case of the Jews, the position of huzan
or reader was filled by Isaac Touro, a refugee from
Portugal after the great earthquake. It was during
Touro's incumbency that the synagogue was ded
icated. December 2, 1763, was the date, and the
ceremony was stately and impressive. There now
were some seventy or eighty Jews resident in New
port, and the Books of the Law (three copies of the

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 137
Pentateuch executed on tanned calfskin, one a
copy from Amsterdam two centuries old) were car
ried by them in solemn procession to be deposited
(symbolically) in the Ark of the Covenant. Dr.
Ezra Stiles was present on the occasion, and he de
scribes the reading of Scripture by the huzan and
the intoning of the service by huzan and people as
profoundly impressive. The impressiveness in no
small degree was due to the synagogue itself, spa
cious, and with a deep gallery supported on Ionic
columns which in turn were surmounted by Corin
thian pillars sustaining the roof. Says Dr. Stiles :
" The order and decorurO, the harmony and solem
nity of the musick, together with a handsome as
sembly of people, in an edifice the most perfect of
the Temple kind perhaps in America, and splen
didly illuminated, could not but raise in the mind
a faint idea of the majesty and grandeur of the
ancient Jewish worship." Nor, in this connection,
should it be overlooked that to Abraham and
Judah Touro, sons of the huzan of 1763, Newport
stands indebted for its noble Jewish cemetery,
fenced from the street by granite and iron, and
kept ever beautiful with flowers, — a cemetery the
land for which was in part purchased in 1677.
Not a little strange must it have seemed to the
Rev. Dr. StUes and to the Rev. Dr. Hopkins —
Congregationalists of the strictest sect — to find
themselves in such religious company as obtained

138 RHODE ISLAND
in Newport. Episcopalianism even was less exotic
in Rhode Island than was Congregationalism.
Trinity Church had been founded since 1699 ; and
St. Paul's, Narragansett, since 1707 ; and it had
been an observation of Berkeley's that the Ana^
baptists and Quakers each agreed that the Church
of England was " the second best." Stiles and
Hopkins were in a highly undogmatic atmosphere ;
and though upon Hopkins (disciple of the relent
less Edwards) the effect was limited, upon StUes
it unquestionably was far-reaching.
The latter, indeed, despite the hrusquerie of his
memorable consignment to hell of the unregenerate
Ethan Allen of Vermont, was a man of astonish
ing breadth. He was broad enough to make a close
companion of Touro, and of a visiting Rabbi, Haym
Isaac Karigal. He was broad enough to seek out
Albertus Ludolphus Rusmeyer, the pastor of the
Moravians, and to make a companion of him. He
was broad enough to converse tolerantly with a vis
iting Romish priest, a knight of St. John. He was
broad enough to read the PhUosophical Dictionary
of Voltaire, and to finish it with the comment:
" He [Voltaire] has some instructive remarks."
He was broad enough (and perhaps this was a cru
cial test) to take an inteUigent interest in Roger
Williams and Samuel Gorton, making a pUgrimage
to the grave of the one, and seeking throughout
Warwick for incidents in the life of the other.-'^
^ Nowhere, possibly, is the catholicity of Stiles more clearly

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 139
Not only did Stiles have breadth, he possessed
(and in this no doubt lay much of the secret of his
breadth) a scholarship and an intellectual curiosity
that were splendidly varied. His interest ranged
easily from " Jeremiah " to comets. Little that
was human was alien to him. The result was
that instead of degenerating into a pedant, he be
came one of the most useful men in Newport. He
was librarian of the Redwood Library. When
George II died, he preached the commemorative
sermon. When Dr. Franklin's experiments in elec
tricity were published, he at once procured the
quarto. When, on June 3, 1769, there occurred
the transit of Venus, he was ready for it. For days
in advance he had been " taking equal altitudes ; "
"getting made an astronomical sextant ; " " regu
lating two clocks by the meridian," On the event
ful day itself the record stands thus : " Fine serene
day. . . . The transit of Venus will not happen
shown than in his lament (June 8, 1782) upon the death of his
friend Aaron Lopez, the Jewish Newport merchant. He writes :
" He was a Merchant of the first eminence ; for Honor & extent
of commerce probably surpassed by no Mercht iu America. . . .
Without a single enemy & the most universally beloved by an ex
tensive Acquaintance of any man 1 ever knew. . . . The amiable
and exceUent Characters of a Lopez, of a Manasseh Ben Israel,
of a Socrates, & a Gangenelli, would almost persuade us to hope
that their ExceUenoy was infused by Heaven, and that the virtu
ous & Good of all nations & religions, notwithstandg their Delu
sions, may be bro't together in Paradise on the Xtian System,
finding Grace with the all benevolent & adorable Emmanuel who
with his expiring breath & in his deepest agonies, prayed for those
who knew not what they did." — Literary Diary, vol. iii, p. 24,

140 RHODE ISLAND
again in above an hundred years at either node ;
and at this descending node again, not in 236 years
or before a, u. 2004, . . . There were three ob
servers at the same time looking at the sun. . . .
I was the first that espied Venus's entrance. . . ,
At sunset Venus had passed the middle of the
transit and sat in the Sun's disk," Among StUes's
assistants at the observation were William Vernon,
William EUery, and WiUiam Marchant — a mer
chant and two lawyers. In this fact there was
nothing strange in the Newport of 1769.
It would be interesting to emphasize the catho
licity of Stiles by noting the promptitude with
which everybody with anything on his mind or in
his heart sought him out ; from a French fencing-
master to the young daughter of Myer PoUock and
her Hebrew lover who wished to become Christians.
A better way, perhaps, will be by noting the ap
proach which the Newport pastor made to Berkeley
in power of prevision. Looking westward, before
1729, the dean had sung : —
" Westward the course of Empire takes its way,"
Looking westward in 1770, Ezra Stiles wrote:
" [When] English America is fully settled from
the Atlantic to the Mississippi, the English of the
present idiom may be spoken by one hundred mil
lion. . . . Probably the English will become tbe
vernacular tongue of more people than any one
tongue ever was on earth except the Chinese."

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 141
Toward one only of the great humanities was
Stiles in his catholicity indifferent, not to say hos
tile, and that was music. Herein he but reflected
contemporary Newport. Berkeley, on his return to
England, had sent an organ to Trinity Church ;
but none was admitted to any other Newport house
of worship, and in fact it was not until 1770 that
Providence so far became progressive as to tolerate
an instrument. In that year the First Congrega
tional Church of Providence erected an organ of
two hundred pipes. This departure King's Church
(the Episcopal body) imitated by importing an
instrument from Boston — one, as Dr. Stiles sar
castically records, from " Concert Hall where it has
been improved in promoting festivity, merriment,
effeminacy, luxury and midnight revellings." In
1739 the organist of the Berkeley gift had written :
" The Want of Instruments together with the Nig
gardliness of the People of this Place, and their
not having a Taste for Musick, render it impos
sible for any one of my Profession to get a com
petent maintenance here ; and their Feuds and
Animosities are so great concerning their Govern
ment, that a Man can take but little Satisfaction
in being among them,"
But while Newport in the middle eighteenth
century was to most things strikingly alive — alive
to letters, alive to art, and alive to science ^ — Bos-
^ "Is it truth, or am 1 blinded by partiality," wrote Dr, Ben-

142 RHODE ISLAND
ton at the same period was, intellectually con
sidered, in a state bordering on deadness. What
for Newport was a golden age, for Boston, and in
deed for Massachusetts at large, was an age little
short of glacial. In point of pure pedagogics,
Massachusetts was altogether in advance of Rhode
Island ; but until in Massachusetts history there is
reached the period just preceding the Revolution,
— the period of the Otises and. the Adamses, —
Massachusetts life, Boston life, was manacled and
numbed by theology.'
At a time when at Newport and in Narragansett
jamin Waterhouse to Thomas Jefferson on September 14, 1822,
" when 1 say that this small State of Rhode Island has been fer
tile in events, and hy no means destitute of distinguished charac
ters. ... It was the Redwood Library that rendered reading
fashionable throughont the little community of Rh. Island during
70, or 80 years, w" advantage was not then enjoyed in Mass*'- New
Hampshire or Connecticut. It diffused a knowledge of general
and particular history, geography, ethics & poetry & polite litera
ture. ... It sowed the seeds of that science and rendered the
inhabitants of Newport, if not a learned yet a better read, & [more]
inquisitive people than any other town in New England." — Pub.
R. I. Hist. Soe. vol, ii, pp, 175, 176.
1 "The Magnalia," says Mr. Charles Francis Adams, " stands
to-day the one single literary landmark in a century and a halt
of colonial and provincial life, — a geological relic of a glacial
period, — a period which in pure letters produced, so far as Massa
chusetts was concerned, absolutely nothing else, — not a poem,
nor an essay, nor » memoir, nor a work of fancy or fiction of
which the world has cared to take note." — Massachusetts : its
Historians arid its History, p. 67.
" The remarkable literary revival of Queen Anne's reign was
little observed or felt here [in Boston]." Delano A. Goddard,
Memorial History of Boston, vol. ii, p. 413.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 143
private libraries (as we are reminded by Mr. Wil
liam E. Foster) contained books such as the "Faerie
Queene," "Hudibras," "Samson Agonistes," the
plays of Ben Jonson, Pope's Homer, and the plays
of Moliere, none of these was to be found in the
library of Harvard College, the largest library in
the Bay colony. Nor did Harvard possess a line
of Addison, Steele, or Swift, writers with whom
(through Berkeley) Rhode Islanders were inti
mately acquainted, and whose works were among
those earliest secured for the Redwood collection.
Or, to put the matter otherwise, at a time when in
Rhode Island religious feeling was not permitted
to become tense, in Massachusetts the tension, reli
giously, was such that men, maddened by the
thought of impending perdition, not only carped
at Baptist, Quaker, and Episcopalian, but daily
groveled before their Maker as before a Moloch.
Hours upon their knees did the Mathers, the Sew-
aUs, and the Edwardses wrestle with Jehovah, as
wrestled Jacob of old ; imploring, beseeching, aye,
even demanding of God mercy as promised in his
Holy Word.i
And the culmination — what was it ? Instead
of an intellectual renaissance, it was an hysteria,
a mania, — the great religious awakening of 1740
1 On Christmas Day, 1696, Samuel SewaU, as he relates in his
interesting diary, made a solemn ceremonial visit to the family
tomb, where he rearranged the coffins and found the exercise " an
awful yet pleasing Treat." — Sth Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. v, p. 443.

144 RHODE ISLAND
under Edwards and Whitefield. In certain of the
American colonies, as for instance Virginia, the
Great Awakening wrought undoubted good. It set
man and God, hitherto far apart, face to face.
But in Massachusetts it produced excess. Still,
for us the noteworthy fact in connection with
it is that it failed to react with any power upon
Rhode Island. Here, as in North Carolina, the in
ward serenity of the Quaker, backed by the out
ward serenity of the churchman, gave it little
quarter, and it fell back substantially a broken
wave. The Newport golden age, — the age of the com
mercial, social, and intellectual preeminence of
Rhode Island, — the age which, beginning with
the Wantons in the realm of seamanship and trade
and with Berkeley in the realm of ideas, counts
upon the rosary of its years so many names that
are inspiring, passed away with the Revolution.
Since the Revolution, Massachusetts (largely under
the individualizing influence of Unitarianism) has
realized its golden age. To-day, perchance, it is the
dream of Massachusetts hardly less than of Rhode
Island that
" Time will run back and fetch the age of gold." '
1 In 1891 Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge contributed to the Century
Magazine for September a paper on the distribution of ahUity in
the United States. According to Mr. Lodge (whose basis of esti
mate was Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography), the
United States had produced 14,24.3 persons of more than average
talent. Of those Massachusetts was to be credited with 2686 and

THE GOLDEN AGE OF NEWPORT 145
Rhode Island with 291. In 1890, by the Federal Census, the pop
ulation of Massachusetts was 2,238,943, and that of Rhode Island
345,506. In Massachusetts, therefore, the men of ability (up to
1891) had been about one in eighty-four of the total population,
and in Rhode Island about one in one hundred and eighteen.

CHAPTER VII
OLD NARRAGANSETT
Huguenot Refugees — English Planters — The Torrey Lawsuit
— Dr, James MacSparran — Plantation Life,
The Narragansett country (caUed in 1665 the
King's Province and in 1686 Rochester) embraced
that part of Rhode Island lying west of Narragan
sett Bay and south of the Warwick line. In 1660
the southwestern corner of. this region had been
preempted by Rhode Island, as against Connecti
cut, under the name of Misquamicutt, — a name
changed in 1669 to Westerly ; and in 1677 the
northeastern corner had been preempted under the
name of East Greenwich.
The settlement of East Greenwich derives inter
est from the case of Dr. Pierre Ayrault and his
compatriots. In 1686 the Atherton Land Company, which,
under the mortgage to it in 1660 by the sachems,
assumed to control the unoccupied parts of Narra
gansett, sold to forty-five French families (driven
from home by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes) betweeen four and five thousand acres
within the limits of East Greenwich. These lands
were duly taken into possession and improved.

OLD NARRAGANSETT 147
Moreover, when in 1690 war broke out between
England and France, the settlers cheerfully bound
themselves to good behavior by an oath of alle
giance to the English sovereign. But as time
passed the English occupants of lands in the vicin
ity of the French — lands obtained under grants
from the colony of Rhode Island, and which, prior
to the coming of the refugees, had been platted
into lots and highways — began to assert them
selves by seeking to extend the highways through
the property of the newcomers. The outcome was
trouble to such a degree that in 1692 the entire
French settlement, save two famUies, removed to
New York or Boston.
Of the two families that remained. Dr. Ayrault's
was one. The doctor had built a substantial house,
planted an orchard and a vineyard, and, failing
altogether (through unf amiliarity with the English
tongue) to comprehend the question of title in
volved between the Atherton Company and Rhode
Island, saw no reason why he should abandon his
homestead. He not only did not abandon it, but
obstructed such of the highways as were sought
to be opened through it. At length, in July, 1700,
a warrant of arrest was issued against him by the
assistants of the town of Warwick sitting in East
Greenwich. He and his son Daniel were dragged
with cruel severity before these officials by an
excited mob, and forced to give bonds for their
appearance for trial. The trial resulted in an order

148 RHODE ISLAND
for the extension of the highways, but the outrages
perpetrated upon the Ayrault family were recorded
in affidavits, and formed not the least substantial
part of the plea against Rhode Island submitted
to the Lords of Trade by Dudley in 1705.^
Of the many things of interest in the history of
Narragansett the Huguenotic settlement and dis
persion constitute but one. Others are the rise of
a class of large landholders and the contemporane
ous rise and spread of Quakerism and Anglicanism.
The settlement of the Narragansett country was
effected by land companies, — especially by the
Pettiquamscutt Company of 1657 and the Atherton
Company of 1659. These companies, along with
the Misquamicutt settlers on the Pawcatuck River,
controlled between them that great strip, two to
four miles wide, which extends westwardly along
the bay and seacoast from Wickford, — a strip
remarkable for fertility in a region otherwise stony
and barren. And not only was the land controUed
by companies. The companies were composed of
few members, so individual estates were large.
Such estates, too, for many years were kept large.
They were favored by the English custom and law
^ A Huguenot prominent in Rhode Island and identified with
Newport, Narragansett, and Providence, was Gabriel Bemon.
He came from Boston, and, like the Huguenots from Massachu
setts to South Carolina, was a, stanch friend to the Church of
England. He was instrumental in founding Trinity Church, New
port (1699-1700), St. Paul's, Narragansett (1707), and St. John's,
Providence (1722).

OLD NARRAGANSETT 149
of primogeniture (not finally abrogated m Rhode
Island until 1770) and by a law prohibiting attach
ment for debt in the case of a resident landowner.
Neither Providence, Portsmouth, Warwick, nor
Newport was settled exactly as was Narragansett.
None of them was settled by a few men of large
means, although in this respect Newport more
closely resembled Narragansett than did Provi
dence, Portsmouth, or Warwick. The peculiarity
of large, not to say enormous, estates in the King's
Province was remarked upon in 1670 by Major
Mason of Connecticut, who described the holdings
as " five, six and ten miles square."
Of the Pettiquamscutt Company the members
originally were in part Episcopalian and in part
Congregationalist. John Hull, the Boston mem
ber, was clearly Congregationalist ; Wilhor, Mum
ford, and Brenton were probably Episcopalian;
Arnold, Wilson, and Porter were nondescript. In
1668 the company donated for ministerial support
in Pettiquamscutt three hundred acres, specifying
that the minister was to be " orthodox," but failing
to declare wherein orthodoxy consisted. In 1679
the three-hundred-acre grant for the support of a
minister was confirmed ; but so completely was it
stiU left in the dark as to what the principles of
the minister were to be that in 1692, when the
land was being platted, Jahleel Brenton (then a
member of the company) advised that no attempt
be made to settle the point, but that it be left open

150 RHODE ISLAND
to dispute. Accordingly a very pretty dispute was
waged between the Congregationalists under the
Rev. Joseph Torrey and the Episcopahans under
MacSparran until 1752. In that year the king in
council, moved by the fact that Brenton, Wilhor,
and Hull aU had at some time been members of
the First Church of Boston, rendered a decision
in favor of Congregationalism as the "orthodoxy"
meant to be subsidized in the grant of 1668.^
It was the Quakers and Episcopalians who in
Narragansett created the religious atmosphere.
At the same time it should be borne in mind that
in Westerly Quakers and Episcopalians alike were
outnumbered by the Seventh Day and other Bap
tists. The Seventh Day Society was an offshoot
from the early Seventh Day Church at Newport,
and was organized in 1708. Among the other
^ In 1695, 1696, and 1702, Samuel SewaU, who was a son-in-law
of John HuU, and who succeeded him as a proprietor in Petti
quamscutt, made gifts of laud there for school and ministerial
purposes as follows : five hundred acres (near Yagoo Pond) for a
local school, five hundred acres (adjoining) to Harvard CoUege,
and three hundred acres on Tower Hill for a meeting-house. The
lands for the support of a local school were sold in 1825, and
the income" from the proceeds (about $350 a year) is used to sup
port =. teacher. The Harvard CoUege land also has been sold,
and the income from the proceeds supports two scholarships
worth, each, two hundred dollars a year. The ministerial land
(of which SewaU was in reality but one of the proprietors) was
the tract over which there was waged the lawsuit Torrey vs.
Gardner. The proceeds of this land (which in 1878 amounted to
nearly $6000) are devoted to the support of a Congregational
minister in Narragansett. — Pub. R. I. Hist. Soe. vol. ii, p. 117.

OLD NARRAGANSETT 151
Baptists were the New Lights, a society which
came into existence about 1742 with the White-
field revival. It served as the medium for so much
of the Whitefield influence as found scope in
Rhode Island. As determined by conditions purely
economic, Narragansett life was favorable to the
Episcopalians. That life, too, had the fortune to
be blessed, during a considerable part of the eigh
teenth century, with the ministrations, religiously,
of a man who fitted into these conditions with re
markable nicety, — the Rev. James MacSparran.
The witty and genial personality of the doctor
may well serve as a centre about which to group
the life in question.
On arriving in Rhode Island in April, 1721,
MacSparran (a Scotch-Irish bachelor and mission
ary twenty-eight years old) found awaiting him a
tasteful church building (St. Paul's) and seven
or less communicants. As a first important step
the young missionary proceeded (May 22, 1722)
to get rid of his bachelorhood by marrying a
handsome lass of seventeen summers — Hannah
Gardiner. This step at once brought the husband
into the select circle of the Gardiners, the Hazards,
the Robinsons, and the Updikes ; withal it soon
increased the number of his communicants. Just
who the Gardiners, the Hazards, the Robinsons,
and the Updikes were it becomes for us of interest
to inquire.
Beginning with the Updikes, these families

152 RHODE ISLAND
were the present owners of the Wickford (Caw
camsqussick) aud Boston and Point Judith Neck
lands, and they had as landed neighbors the Cham-
plins, the Stantons, and the Babcocks. The lands
in question opened upon the old Pequod Path (Post
Road) and embraced, per owner, anywhere from
two to twelve thousand acres. The Smiths (to
whom the Updikes succeeded) were proprietors
at one period of a tract nine miles long by three
wide ; and Thomas Stanton lorded it over a tract
measuring four and one half by two mUes. Upon
such estates the dwelling-houses were large, -vnth
gambrel roofs, low beam-traversed ceilings, and
of course great fireplaces. Negro slaves were the
servants, and quarters for them were provided
in the spacious attics or else in a special wing
attached to the dwellings after the plan of a
Maryland manor. The primary products of a
Narragansett farm were sheep and cattle. From
these animals there were derived wool, butter, and
cheese — the latter a reproduction of the famous
Cheshire article, the recipe for which had been
brought from England by the wife of Richard
Smith. There were produced also horses, the
Narragansett pacer, an animal (whether Spanish
or native in origin) proverbially easy of gait and
so fieet that, according to MacSparran, it could
pace a mile in little more than two minutes.
The social customs to which the economic con
ditions in Narragansett gave rise were, despite the

OLD NARRAGANSETT 153
fact that there was produced no single staple like
tobacco, almost exactly those of Virginia. The
men were large-hearted, hospitable, and command
ing; the women dignified and courteous. As in
the Old Dominion, dwellings were widely sepa
rated and visiting was made an institution. Tav
erns hardly existed, for strangers were expected
to bring with them letters of introduction, which
would admit them to the family and neighborhood
circle. With strangers as guests, various were the
forms of entertainment resorted to. If the visitor
were fond of shooting, the innumerable coverts
abounded iu partridges and quail. If he were a
devotee of the chase, hounds and horns and hunt
ers were at his disposal, with if anything rather a
superfluity of walls and ditches to test the sureness
of his seat, Berkeley's "Alciphron," which reflects
closely the Rhode Island environment of the writer,
depicts in the fifth dialogue a fox hunt, with the
noise of the opening of hounds, the winding of
horns, and the clamoring of country gentry in
frocks, short wigs, and jockey boots. Or, if the
visiting stranger were a Virginian, as readily he
might be (for a similarity of tastes led to an
exchange of civilities between the two sections)
horse-racing for silver tankards was a favorite
pastime. Nor were the gentry of Narragansett indifferent
to the higher forms of pleasure. A good many
private libraries existed among them. Daniel Up-

154 RHODE ISLAND
dike, the Kingstown representative in the New
port Philosophical Society, owned Pope's Iliad, the
works of Hesiod, Virgil's poems, the " Colloquies
of Erasmus," dialogues from Moliere, and other
books ; while Smibert, fresh from the Madonna
del Granduca and the glories of all Tuscany,
found patrons in Pettiquamscutt as well as in
Newport. There were no schools, but the Virginia
plan of private tutors obtained, and both young
men and damsels were trained with care in polite
learning. Dr. MacSparran instructed young men.
Peter Simons, a Newport teacher of music and
helles lettres, instructed young women. Hannah
Robinson, the Narragansett beauty of her day,
fell madly in love with Simons, — so madly, and
withal unfortunately, that a mere historical pen
must despair of doing justice to the romance.
In the midst of the life described, James Mac
Sparran (made a Doctor of Sacred Theology by
Oxford University in 1737) moved ever, as at first,
a leading figure. Before he was forty he had grown
portly, — "a full-bodied fat fellow," he calls him
self ; and in his broad wig he not a little reminds
one (as the editor of his diary, Dr. Daniel Good
win, truly observes) of a clerical Dr. Samuel John
son. Scotch-Irishman that he was, his tongue was
sharp. He said of Rhode Island two memorable
things : one, that " liberty of conscience there was
carried to an irreligious extreme ; " and the other,
that " the Rhode Islanders [apropos of their paper

OLD NARRAGANSETT 155
money delusion] were perhaps the only people on
earth who had hit on the art of enriching them
selves by running in debt." His tartness, and, too,
a certain air of superiority which no doubt he car
ried, led the vigorous Ezra Stiles to brand him in
his diary as a "vainglorious, turbulent, haughty,
domineering priest." The MacSparran rectory was
located on the brow of the hill which to-day bears
the name MacSparran, and the outlook from it was
(and is) one of the most comprehensive in Rhode
Island. To the north and left was Pettiquamscutt
Pond, with the mill of Stuart the snuff grinder at
the head of it ; in front flowed the Pettiquamscutt
River; beyond (across the shores of Conanicut)
rose the Colony House and spire of Trinity Church,
Newport ; to the south and right stretched miles
of bay and sea line lost in the ultima thule of
Block Island.
Like every one about him, MacSparran was a
slaveholder, and he occasionaUy deemed it whole
some to administer the lash. In June, 1745, he
notes that he gave "Moroca one or two Lashes
for receiving presents from Mingo. I think it was
my duty to correct her," he says, and then adds :
"W'ever Passion passed between my wife and
me on y° occasion Good L'^ for give it." Hannah
MacSparran evidently was possessed of a mind
and temper of her own, for elsewhere the doctor
aUudes to her as " my poor passionate dear."
In subsequent years in Narragansett the tender-

156 RHODE ISLAND
ness of the rector's wife for the maid Moroca was
to be justified in the growth toward the negro
(under the fostering care of " CoUege Tom " Haz
ard) of a sentiment so compassionate that slave-
holding little by little was undermined. In 1745
small was the thought of such a thing. At that
period the very existence of local society seemed
to be, and probably was, dependent upon slavery.
In contrast with Newport, Narragansett had real
work for the negro to perform; and unless per
formed by him, it is difficult to see by whom it
would or could have been. The great farms needed
to be manned ; and white laborers found on the
sea a life too profitable and too f uU of freedom to
be abandoned for dairy tasks.
By 1750, Narragansett, in respect to the number
of its slaves and hence in respect to its material
prosperity, was at its zenith. It contained within
its limits about one thousand negroes — a propor
tion (in South Kingstown) of one negro to every
two or three white men. In Newport the negroes
were 1105. Together, therefore, the two localities
contained almost exactly two thirds of the negro
population of the colony.^
1 On April 14, 1751, Dr. MacSparran preached on Tower Hill
a sermon of high admonition before Thomas Carter of Newport
who had been condemned to death for the murder (near Petti
quamscutt Pond) of WUliam Jackson, a Virginia trader. Carter
was hanged on the 10th of May, and his execution was witnessed
by a great throng. So many came from Newport that, it is said,
fear was felt there lest the negro slaves, taking advantage of the

OLD NARRAGANSETT 157
The sports of the negro in the sometime King's
Province were in the main the dancing and frolics
of Virginia ; but com bushings took the place of
'coon and 'possum hunts, and one sport was thor
oughly unique — the negro election. It was held
on the third Saturday in June in each year, and
was conducted for the purpose of choosing a negro
town leader called the governor. Electioneering,
styled " parmenteering," was rife for weeks in ad
vance, and the result was determined by a count of
heads taken after the voters (resplendent in pow
dered queues and monster cocked-hats and swords)
had been drawn up in double rank under the su
pervision of a grand marshal.
It is now nearly one hundred and fifty years since
Old Narragansett began to fade and pass. To-day,
as the pedestrian wends his way by the home of
Gilbert Stuart, up MacSparran Hill, and back three
miles into the country to the site of St. Paul's
Church, he finds it hard to convince himself that
any life at all, save that of wild creatures, ever pul
sated in the solitude about him. Everywhere the
paths are invaded and overarched by thickets ; the
meadows and ponds darkened and made eerie by
surrounding woods ; the old-time mansions either
wholly gone or lapsed into melancholy ruin. St.
absence of their masters, should rise in insurrection, MacSparran 's
sermon, which covers eighteen pages of print, may he found in
the Narr. Hist. Reg. vol. i.

158 RHODE ISLAND
Paul's itself — under which in 1757 MacSparran
was tenderly laid to rest, and on the site of which
his monument'now stands — has bodUy disappeared
(object apparently of aerial witchery), and may
only be found by a visit to Wickford. Dr. Edward
Channing has suggestively remarked that Old Nar
ragansett even in its own day was anomalous in
Rhode Island. Based upon agriculture, the agricul
ture was not of the ordinary limiting and particu
laristic sort. It rather was part of that eighteenth
century cooperative and commercial movement of
which Newport (though less wealthy than South
Kingstown) was at once the inlet, the outlet, and
the heart.

CHAPTER VIII
GEOWTH OF PROVIDENCE : STEPHEN HOPKINS AND
MOSES BROWN
The Old Town — Brown University — Polly Glney — Limitation
of Slavery — Hopkins-Ward.
Providence in the eighteenth century is interest
ing in a special sense. It began the century as the
centre of the agricultural and separatist influences
of northern and northwestern Rhode Island. It
ended it (or rather the first three quarters of it) as
the commercial peer of Newport.
Inordinately slow was the town in taking the
first step. Down to 1740 or 1742 it was still, as in
the seventeenth century, but a long, straggling
street by the water front, where on summer even
ings the inhabitants sat in their doorways, smoked
their clay pipes, and fought the swarms of mosqui
toes that rose from the marsh opposite. The close
corporation of (now) one hundred and one propri
etors into which the astuteness of William Harris
and Thomas Olney had converted the free gift of
Roger Williams stood out resolutely against pro
gress as represented by the newer freemen. The
town was agricultural, and agricultural the pro
prietors were determined that it should remain.

160 RHODE ISLAND
As late as July, 1704, it was resolved in town meet
ing that no more " warehouse lots by the salt water
side " should be granted, as the space was needed
as a common for the landing of cattle on their
return from the Weybosset pastures.
Yet the fact that some lots for warehouses and
wharves had been granted (as to Pardon Tillinghast
in 1680) shows a commercial tendency ; and by
1711 Nathani&l Brown, a Plymouth shipwright
forced out of Massachusetts because of his Episco
palianism, began to ply his trade in Weybosset
Neck. There was a further sign of progress in the
fact that in 1731 the old town or district of Provi
dence Plantations (now with a population of 3916)
was divided into the four towns, — Providence,
Smithfield, Scituate, and Glocester.
Among the earliest Providence merchants were
the Crawfords, Gideon and WiUiam. Between 1685
and 1720 they traded largely to the West Indies
and were the means of affording the slow-going
burghers on the Mooshassuc a glimpse of the great
world through a display of wares including peri
wigs, looking-glasses, bird-cages, flutes, wine-glasses,
gold-headed canes, etc. What Providence had to
give in exchange for commodities of any sort was
chiefly lumber and horses, but its resources were
supplemented by those of western Massachusetts.
Privateering (after 1739) helped Providence much,
and the slave trade (in which the town never was
very ardent) helped it a little.

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 161
It was with the rise to manhood of the sons of
William Hopkins and James Brown that Provi
dence received its greatest impulse. William Hop
kins was descended from Thomas, who was at
Providence in 1638 ; and James Brown was the
great-grandson of Chad Brown, the associate of
Roger Williams. Of the several sons of William
Hopkins, one (William) became a celebrated mer
chant ; another (Esek) became commander of the
first American fleet ; and a third (Stephen) became
the greatest statesman of Rhode Island. Of the
sons of James Brown — Nicholas, Joseph, John, and
Moses — all gained eminence as merchants. By
1760 the family were operating no less than eighty-
four sloops, schooners, and brigantines. Each mem
ber, too, had severally an avocation — the public
service, science, or philanthropy.
Stephen Hopkins was born in the town of Prov
idence [Cranston] on March 7, 1707. He removed
to the " compact part of the town " in 1742. Here,
as his biographer, Mr. William E. Foster, has
pointed out, he won prominence as a man, master,
among other things, of the art of evoking public
improvements. Commerce, however, engaged his
principal thought, and as early as 1746 we hear of
"Stephen Hopkins & Co."
It perhaps was about 1757 that Moses Brown,
then just twenty years old, began to assume with
Stephen Hopkins, his senior by thirty-one years,
that place of intimate friend and trusted colleague

162 RHODE ISLAND
which he ever afterwards held. Brown as a boy had
been highly observing and alert. He had made it
a practice to haunt the wharves of Providence,
where casks of molasses were constantly being dis
charged, with the laudable design of catching the
drippings. " What casks are your best ? " asked a
would-be buyer of an importer on one occasion.
" I don't know," the latter replied. " Ask that
little molasses-faced Moses ; he will teU you."
By 1763 Moses was so far a judge of molasses that
he was taken into partnership by his brothers.
Soon we find him, in connection with Hopkins and
such other public-spirited men outside his own
family as Daniel Abbott, John Jenckes, Samuel
Nightingale, Nicholas Cooke, Darius Sessions, and
Jabez Bowen, striving to stir Providence to do
something for education.
With Stephen Hopkins knowledge had long
been an absorbing pursuit. In 1732 he had begun
making trips to Newport, where, gravitating to the
Berkeley group as iron to its lode, he had been ad
mitted (along with Daniel Updike of Narragansett
and Samuel Johnson of Connecticut) among the
out-of-town members of the Philosophical Society.
By 1750 he had got together books wilih which to
start in Providence a public library,: full sets of
Pope, Swift, and Addison ; together with sets of
Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon ; selections from
the Greek and Latin classics ; and the standard
works of the day on politics, law, and medicine.

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 163
By 1762 he with others had established the Provi
dence " Gazette," the early publishers of which
were WiUiam Goddard and John Carter.
But just now (1768) there was to be taken in
Rhode Island a step in the direction of light and
learning that for boldness was far to exceed any
thing of which, as yet, Moses Brown or Stephen
Hopkins could have dreamed. Rhode Island Col
lege (afterwards Brown University) was to be
founded. As early as 1761 a coUege after the model of
Yale, though less sectarian, had been projected by
Dr. Ezra Stiles. Little progress with it had been
made, when, in October, 1762, the Philadelphia
Baptist Association decided to establish a coUege
in Rhode Island — the point in America where the
Baptists wielded most power. Accordingly in
1763 James Manning — a College of New Jersey
(Princeton) graduate — set out for Newport. On
arriving, he summoned a meeting of Baptist leaders
and submitted to them a " rough draft " of a char
ter for "a seminary of polite literature." The
seminary was to be " subject to the government of
the Baptists," but was to admit to its boards of
control representatives of other religious bodies.
Manning went away, and Dr. Stiles as a man of
" learning and Catholicism " was asked to put the
"rough draft" in final form. He did it in such a
manner as to divide the control of the proposed

164 RHODE ISLAND
institution between the Baptists and Congregation
alists. To the latter he in fact gave a preponder
ance on the Board of FeUows. The charter, as
dra-wn, was introduced in the lower house of the
General Assembly, but on objection, foUowed by
loss of the instrument, failed of passage. In 1764
a new charter, so drawn as to give complete con
trol to the Baptists but allowing representation to
the Quakers, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians,
was introduced and passed. The Congregational
ists, because of their forwardness as displayed in
the Stiles charter were accorded one less represent
ative than either the Quakers or Episcopalians.^
The charter adopted was broad-minded to an
extraordinary degree. The college was denomi
nated " liberal and catholic." No religious tests
were ever to be admitted. All offices, except the
office of president (which must be fiUed by a Bap
tist), and all professorships were to be open to
the adherents of any Protestant communion. The
public teaching " was to respect the sciences,"
Sectarian views were not to be taught, but "all
rehgious controversies might be studied freely."
Upon this foundation, Stephen Hopkins, in 1764,
' As regards Dr. Stiles's own views in this connection, they are
set forth in a. draft of a letter by him dated August 26, 176S.
He says : " We had lately a cathoUc plan for a coUege in Rhode
Island but it turned out Supremacy & Monopoly in the hands of
the Baptists, whose Influence in our Assembly was such that they
obtained a most ample charter to their purpose." — Literary
Diary, vol. i, p. 22, ii. ; Rider, Book Notes, vol. vi, p. 153.

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 165
and James Manning, in 1765, were chosen respec
tively chancellor and president. In 1769, at War
ren, where Manning was conducting a grammar
school, the first college class (seven in number)
was graduated. Among the graduates was James
M. Varnum the defender, in 1786, of sound money
in Trevett vs. Weeden.
The young institution, it is hardly necessary to
say, was beset with financial difficulties. Dr. Mor
gan Edwards of Philadelphia (long remembered
as forecasting the day of his death and as surviv
ing that day to his own confusion) was early sent
to England to soUcit aid, but accomplished little.
At this time in Rhode Island, as for seventy-five
years thereafter, lotteries were the accepted mode
of liquidating hard debts. So President Manning,
whose own church had in 1767 been granted the
privilege of a lottery, broached to one of his Eng
lish correspondents a lottery project in aid of the
college. The reply which he received was remarka
ble for the day. " As to raising money by a lottery,"
runs the letter, " I dislike it from the bottom of my
heart. 'T is a scheme dishonorable to the supreme
head of all worlds and of every true church. We
have our fill of these cursed gambling lotteries in
London every year. They are big with ten thou
sand evils. Let the devil's children have them all
to themselves. Let us not touch or taste."
The next thing thought of was to make the
college (for which as yet no building had been

166 RHODE ISLAND
secured) an object of competition among the five
counties, into which, ere this, Rhode Island had
been divided. Between Providence and Newport
— the principal centres — .the contest was close
and sharp. At length, on February 7, 1770, a
decision (somewhat constructively reached) was
announced in favor of Providence. There, on the
old home lot of Chad Brown, the corner-stone of
the first building (University Hall) was laid, on
March 27, by John Brown, a lineal descendant of
the original lot owner. Strong claims had the
name " Brown " upon the new institution before
Nicholas Brown, Jr., made to it in 1804 a dona
tion of five thousand dollars. Especially strong
were these claims in view of the fact that it was no
less a person than Moses Brown who, as a member
of the General Assembly, first brought forward
Providence as a competitor for the college against
Newport. In 1761, when the college question was broached,
Stephen Hopkins was fifty-four years old and had
been twice married. Moses Brown, his friend, was
but twenty-three years old, and as yet had not been
married at all. Moses, consequently, was an eligible
bachelor ; and his connection with a Providence-
Boston romance of the day — a romance preserved
in old letters among the papers of the Rhode Island
Historical Society — will serve to admit us to a
glimpse of mid-eighteenth-century philandering.

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 167
Brown was a Free Mason. So also was one of his
friends — William Palfrey of Boston. Early in 1761
Palfrey visited in Providence, where he was cordiaUy
entertained by Brown, and where he met several dam
sels. Among them was Polly Olney, a daughter of the
wealthy innkeeper, Joseph Olney, in whose yard the
Providence " liberty tree " was soon to be dedicated. On
returning to Boston, Palfrey found that his heart had
been lost to Polly, and he concluded to make a clean
breast of the fact to his friend Brown, then, as ever,
a man notable for discretion. So, on March 26, he
wrote asking that his " compliments " be conveyed to
" the dear Polly," toward whom he felt altogether more
than he was able " to express."
By August 17 complications began to arise. Palfrey
had heard that Polly was " being courted " by others ;
especially by one other — Moses Brown himself. With
some spirit he laid the rumor before Brown, professing
" thankfulness " that he had " not as yet advanced so
far but that he could Retreat with Honour." At the same
time, he demanded " the true state of the case by the
Return of the Post without fail." It was now Brown's
turn to show spirit. He did so by giving a Roland for
an Oliver. Disclaiming on his part any designs upon
Polly, he plainly told Palfrey that rumor had it that he.
Palfrey, was paying his addresses " to a young Lady in
Boston," — a course of conduct by which (if it were
being practiced) he could but consider both Polly and
himself "Very Ungenteely Us'd." In reply Palfrey
explained that the young Boston lady in question was a
Miss Cazneau with whose brother he was acquainted.
The extent of his intimacy with her had been that (and

168 RHODE ISLAND
that only) impHed in sometimes taking a walk with her
and her sisters, or in occasionally " Carrying her and
her sisters with some other Ladies to a play."
There now ensued on the part of Palfrey a silence
long and ominous. In fact, he did not again write
to Brown until February 20, 1762. What pangs he
meanwhile had suffered are then disclosed in detail. He
went, it would seem, to Providence in August, 1761,
but found Polly gone from home. She was at New
port. In desperation he wrote to her making a full
avowal of his passion. He got no reply. He resolved on
another journey to Providence, whither he "sett out
with Mrs. Eustis who was gomg there to see the plays "
[evidently those noted in chapter v, which led to the
suppression of the theatre in Rhode Island], but Polly
was still at Newport. Thereupon the much disappointed
Palfrey himself went to Newport, where he found Polly,
but where " something or other," as he plaintively
records, " Continually happened which hindered our
being in private." PoUy then returned to Providence.
Palfrey attended her, but found himself " as bad off as
before," because of "the great number of Travellers
upon the Road." What was he to do ? He contrived, by
the aid of Polly's brother " Jo," a neat stratagem, A
certain Miss Paget was to invite PoUy and himself to her
home "in the Evening & take an oppor'y of Lea-ring
us together." " This scheme," he relates, " took." With
what result? With the result only that the ardent
and laborious Palfrey was coolly rejected by Polly,
with the approved admonition " to think no more of
her," So comes to an end the first chapter in this Provi-

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 169
dence-Boston love tale of a century and a half ago. The
second chapter transfers the characters to Boston.
Palfrey, rejected of Polly, bethought himself straight
way of Miss Cazneau. Toward ber now his attentions
became marked. At this critical juncture — just as
" Miss Cazneau " was quietly being substituted for the
once " dear Polly " — what should occur but that a
long-delayed, and hence unexpected, letter from Moses
Brown, dealing -with the PoUy affair, should fall into
the hands of the Boston damsel and be by her (" from
Curiosity Natural to her Sex," as Palfrey put it to
Brown) opened and read. The escape was narrow. It,
however, was an escape, for no harm followed. Soon
Palfrey was ready to inform Brown that " Miss Caz
neau was a fine young Lady & every way Calculated to
render the marriage State agreeable." PoUy meanwhile
(for of her we are not to lose sight) had taken a journey
to Boston,
On April 16, 1762, Palfrey wrote in some excite
ment to Brown : " Polly is this minute gone out of
the Store, having come in with another young Lady to
buy some Silks. . . . She did not seem to be quite so
much upon the Reserve as usual," On April 27, Palfrey
again wrote : " Polly told my friend Flagg Last Evening
that she thought it would have looked odd for a young
Lady to say Yes so soon and that if there was any mis
understanding between us she was very sorry for it,"
Alas, PoUy ! Palfrey, to his honor be it said, adhered
to his engagement to Miss Cazneau, merely remarking
to Brown his confidant : "I am sorry I was not ac
quainted with her [Polly's] temper and disposition be
fore, as it would have prevented aU that has happened."

170 RHODE ISLAND
The third chapter in our love tale consists of a single
item in the columns of the Providence " Gazette," On
August 25, 1764, there was published the foUowing :
" Tuesday evening last, Mr, Thomas Greene of Boston,
merchant, was married to Miss Polly Oluey of this
town, a young lady who has real merit, added to a
beautiful person, to grace the connubial state and per
petuate its felicity." After all it was not in vain that
Polly had journeyed to Boston.
The year 1764 — that of Polly's marriage — was
also tbe year of the marriage of Moses Brown. He
took to wife his cousin Anna. Thenceforth busi
ness claimed him until 1773, when he retired and
devoted himself to securing the abolition of slavery
in Rhode Island and the curtailment of tbe slave
trade. Anna Brown died in February, 1778, and
one day her husband, speaking of his bereavement
to a friend, said : " I saw my slaves with my spirit
ual eyes as plainly as I see thee now, and it was
given me as clearly to understand that the sacrifice
that was called for of my hand was to give them
their liberty." In December he manumitted ten
slaves. Next to Brown the individual chiefly concerned
in securing effective action against slavery in Rhode
Island-was Stephen Hopkins. In 1774 the General
Assembly passed an act prohibiting the importa
tion of slaves into Rhode Island. To this act
Hopkins dictated the preamble, which recited that
" those who are desirous of enjoying all the advan-

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 171
tages of liberty themselves should be willing to
extend personal liberty to others." Yet Hopkins,
despite his preamble, was a slave owner; one,
moreover, that had withstood admonition from
the Quakers, a society to which, since 1755, he had
himself belonged. Something led him to promote
the Act of 1774 ; what was it? Presumably it was
the course of the Pro-vidence town meeting. In May
the town had resolved that " it is unbecoming the
character of freemen to enslave . . . negroes."
The deputies of the town, of whom Hopkins was
one, had then been " directed to use their endeavors
to obtain an act prohibiting the importation of
negroes into this colony and providing that all
negroes born in the colony are to be free after
attaining a certain age."
The influences (interblending and cumulative)
to which the conversion of Moses Brown on the
slavery question is to be attributed, and to which
also is to he attributed the conversion (or rather
re-conversion) on the same question of the Provi
dence town meeting, were at least four : The let
ters and exhortations of the Quakers, the sermons
and pastoral ministrations of the Church of Eng
land ; the preaching of Dr. Samuel Hopkins ; and
the unprofitableness in Rhode Island (outside of
Narragansett) of slavery itself.
The earliest influence was exerted by the Quakers.
It was perceptible in 1729, and by 1748 (through
tbe efforts of John Woolman) was strongly felt.

172 RHODE ISLAND
It culminated in 1770 with the condemnation by
the Rhode Island Yearly Meeting of ownership of
any negro " of an age, capacity, and ability suit
able for freedom." Participation by the Church of
England in the local anti-slavery movement was
effective though indirect. Berkeley, Honyman,
MacSparran, and the Rev. John Usher of Bristol,
all, between 1730 and 1743, sought by catechetical
exercises to awaken the consciences of the slaves
and to lead them to baptism and communion.
These efforts were supplemented by the Rev. Mar
maduke Brown, — a successor to Honyman, — who
in 1763, at Newport, opened a school for the in
struction of negroes ; and by Mrs. Mary Brett, —
widow of Dr. John Brett, — who in the same town
opened a similar school ten years later.
If the anti-slavery efforts of the Episcopalians
were indirect, such were not tbe efforis of Samuel
Hopkins. The doctor, stanch Puritan that he was,
gathered headway slowly ; but when in full career
about 1770 he came little short of the mark set
later by the illustrious company of Massachu
setts abolitionists. His church contained many
slaveholders and slave traders, but the doctor spake
right on. He said : " Newport has been built up
and has flourished ... at the expense of the blood,
the liberty and happiness of the poor Africans,"
Nor did he labor altogether in vain. At length his
church was brought to resolve, that " the slave
trade and the slavery qf Africans, as it has existed

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 173
among us, is a gross violation of the righteousness
and benevolence wbich are so much inculcated in
the gospel, and therefore we will not tolerate it in
this church." ^
Indeed to such lengths did Hopkins go that in
1773 he tried to persuade Dr. Stiles to join with
him in sending back to Africa, as missionaries,
two of his colored communicants — Quamine and
Yamma. And here an amusing element enters.
Stiles began fearsomely to suspect that the real
object of his brother minister in seeking to send
out these men was the " Christianizing of the Afri
cans on Principles to his Mind " — on principles
not so much evangelical as Edwardsian and Hop-
kinsian. Nothing, unless it were an allegory on
tbe banks of the Nile, could be more ineffectively
headstrong than the Edwards-Hopkins theology on
the coast of Guinea, and that the broad-minded
Ezra Stiles failed to perceive it argues him as sadly
deficient in a sense of humor as was good John
Winthrop himself.
Of the four influences at work in Rhode Island
against slavery, the influence which most of all
^ In Mr. F. B. Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown of
Osawatomie, 1881, there is printed a statement made by Owen
Brown, fiither of John, as to what led him to embrace Abolition
ism. "The Rev. Samuel Hopkins of Newport, Rhode Island,"
said the father, " came to visit the Rev. Jeremiah HaUock, with
whom I lived, and I heard him talking with Mr. HaUock about
slavery in Rhode Island, which he denounced as a great sin.
From this time I was anti-slavery."

174 RHODE ISLAND
must be regarded as a determining one was the
unprofitableness of the institution. Of the truth of
this assertion the law of 1774 itself is proof. That
law forbade the importation of slaves into Rhode
Island, but it took noteworthy pains to protect and
even encourage slave importations by Rhode Island
ers into the West Indies, — the place chiefly where
a handsome profit upon such merchandise was yet
to be expected.
The course of the Narragansett Bay common
wealth in relation to negro slavery is not, upon the
whole, one that invites applause ; yet neither is it
one from which there should be withheld aU com
mendation. The General Assembly did not declare
for emancipation till 1784, nor against participation
in the foreign slave trade till 1787 ; but in 1788 it
was agitation by Rhode Island Quakers (an agita
tion reinforced by the action of the General Assem
bly) that led to legislation in Connecticut and Mas
sachusetts ; and of all the States that between 1787
and 1790 deliberated upon the Federal Constitu
tion, Rhode Island alone (by a majority of one in
its convention) proposed an amendment directing
Congress to " promote and establish such laws and
regulations as may effectually prevent the impor
tation of slaves of every description into the
United States." That the commonwealth did not
do more against African bondage than it did, and
that it did not do it earlier, is no small indication
of the extent to which the individualism of the

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 175
seventeenth century — an individualism capable of
originating the famous anti-slavery law of 1652 —
had been encroached upon by the commercialism
of the eighteenth.
But go back a little. .By 1750 Providence had
grown greatly in wealth and importance. Its pop
ulation now, after the separation from it of Smith-
field, Scituate, and Glocester, was nearly 3500.
It was become a standing challenge to the political
as well as the commercial supremacy of Newport.
Just where and when, had it not been for Stephen
Hopkins, this attitude of challenge would have
found a champion, it is impossible to teU. As it
was, the championship fell naturally, and at once,
to Hopkins himself. The latter, since his abandon
ment of rural life in 1742, had (up to 1751) fiUed
the positions of justice of the Providence Court of
Common Pleas, member of the eastern boundary
commission, speaker of the General Assembly,
commissioner to the Colonial Congress of 1746,
member of the northern boundary commission, ^
' By both the Massachusetts charters, that of 1628 and that
of 1691, the southern boundary of Massachusetts was fixed at
" three English nules on the south part of Charles River or of any
part thereof." In 1642 Massachusetts laid down the line but in
so doing placed it " seven mUes and fifty-six poles " south of the
Charles River. In 1719 Rhode Island, in ignorance of the error
in the Massachusetts survey, accepted the line as laid down. In
1769, upon petition of Moses Brown, correction was sought by
the Rhode Island Assembly, and Brown and Stephen Hopkins
were made members of a northern boundary commission. The

176 RHODE ISLAND
and justice and chief justice of the Superior Court.
StiU further was he to minister to the aspirations
of Providence by entering, in 1755, upon a success
ful contest for the governorship.
First, however, there met the famous Albany
Congress, — that of 1754,. — and to it Hopkins was
sent as a delegate. Beginning with 1684 there had
been held in English America nine several con
gresses anent the French and Indians, and Rhode
Island had kept aloof from most of them. We
have seen in chapter iii, how, in 1698, a certain
Albany Congress and its requirements were ingen
iously evaded ; and in 1722 the colony met a plea
from Massachusetts for help against the eastern
Indians by asking : " Who knows but that his
Majesty in his great wisdom may find out and pre
scribe ways to make these wild and inaccessible
subjects of his come in and tamely submit to his
government without the melancholy prospect we
now have of shedding much blood ? " When, there
fore, Hopkins not merely attended the Congress
of 1754, but, along with his coUeague, Martin
Howard, Jr., of Newport, voted in its sessions for
Franklin's plan of colonial union, with its Presi-
ident-General to be appointed by the crown and
its Grand Council of Representatives to be chosen
on tbe basis of pppulation, Rhode Island was a
good deal stirred.
matter was not then disposed of but recurred in 1791, and later.
In 1847-48 a "' conventional line " was established, and in 1883
this line was made the legal boundary.

GROWTH OF PROVIDENCE 177
It was in the face of no little detraction that in
May, 1755, Stephen Hopkins was duly elected gov
ernor in the stead of Greene. With the election
referred to, the spell of a practically uninterrupted
succession of Newport gubernatorial magistrates
was broken. In 1727 a Providence man, Joseph
Jenckes, had been chosen governor, but upon elec
tion he had found it advisable to remove to New
port. Greene himself, though from Warwick, was
one with Newport in interest and sympathy. Hop
kins was like neither Jenckes nor Greene. He
was the representative — the champion in fact — of
Providence in a long pending and now irrepressible
conflict between the new and the old. The case
was one not of country against town, as in the con
test over paper money, but rather (for still another
time) of upstart democratic Florence against staid
aristocratic Pisa ; and the bitterness engendered
(the bitterness of jealousy) was largely without
rational foundation.
Newport sent forth into the lists, as its represent
ative, Samuel Ward, — a young man of parts and
education, son of Governor Richard Ward, and
owner of a large estate at Westerly in the Narragan
sett country. In 1757 Samuel Ward aided in defeat
ing Governor Hopkins for reelection, and at the
same time subjected himself to a suit for libel.
Thenceforth, until 1768, Rhode Island politics were
little else than an annual propounding and answer
ing of one question : ShaU Stephen Hopkins or

178 RHODE ISLAND
Samuel Ward be governor of the colony ? in other
words, shaU Newport or Providence — the rising
North or the risen South — wield a preponderant
local influence ? In England it stiU was the day
politicaUy of Sir Robert Walpole, — the day of
bribery elevated into an art, — and neither Hopkins
nor Ward scrupled to pay to the example of the
dead premier the sincere tribute of imitation. A
large purchasable vote would seem to have been
found in King's County, for the efforts put forth
to carry that county have been described as com
mensurate relatively with those later put forth, in
a different field, " to carry Indiana." Of course
the animosity aroused by political warfare of the
kind described — like that of the tribal feud — was
implacable ; and when, in 1768, an arrangement
was at length concluded by which Hopkins and
Ward each yielded his pretensions to first place,
it was cause for hearty rejoicing. The ten years
of Hopkins against Ward may be taken to have
thoroughly demonstrated the weight and growing
importance of Pro-vidence. During the entire
period Ward — in every way a fit counterpoise to
Hopkins ^ — obtained the governorship but three
times. ^ " I weU knew Gov. Hopkins. He was a man of a penetrating
astntious Grenins, fuU of Subtlety, deep Cunning, intriguing and
enterprising. He read much esp^ in History & Government ;
& by read^ Conoversa &. Observa acquired a great Fund of
poHtical Knowledge. He was rather a Quaker, hav* a seat in
the meeting, but it has been said these thirty years by his most

GROWTH OP PROVIDENCE 179
intimate Acquainta that he was a Deist, and of this I made no
doubt from my own frequent Conversa with him. He was a man
of a noble fortitude & Resolution. He was a glorious Patriot I
— [but Jesus wUl say unto him I know you not]." — Stiles, Liter
ary Diary, vol, iii, p, 172,

CHAPTER IX
CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Soul Liberty — The Suffrage — The Function of Legislation —
Legislature-Judiciary,
In both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
the main feature of Rhode Island constitutional
development was distrust of delegated power. In
the seventeenth century distrust showed itself in
the political system. Local communities — the
towns — were independent to a great degree of the
central authority to which nominally they were
subordinate. In the eighteenth century — after
town subordination had been effected — distrust
was shown in the administrative system. Executive
and judicial departments were kept subject to the
immediate wiU of the freemen through an omnipo
tent legislature semiannually renewed.
But first a word apropos of Soul Liberty, the
suffrage, and the exercise of the function of legis
lation in eighteenth century Rhode Island.

At Newport, upon one occasion after 1700, the
'Jews were accorded illiberal treatment. In 1762
Aaron Lopez and Isaac Elizar applied for natu-

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 181
raUzation under the English statute the 18th of
George II, and were denied by the Superior Court
on two grounds : on the ground, first (divertingly
transparent), that the colony was already " so full
of people that many of his Majesty's good subjects,
born within the same, have removed and settled in
Nova Scotia; " ^ on the ground, second, that by the
charter " the propagating of the Christian reli
gion " was one of the chief ends of the founding of
Rhode Island, and that the General Assembly, in
1663, had enacted that " no person who does not
profess the Christian religion can be admitted free
of this colony." ^
It is with difficulty that one can be persuaded
that words such as these were ever uttered by
the highest judicial body in the commonwealth
1 The Nova Scotia movement is described in detaU by Mr. R, G.
Huling in the Narr. Hist. Reg. vol. vii. A good many were con
cerned in it — over one hundred persons. If the colony was
crowded (its total population in 1762 did not exceed 43,000
soids), the removal of the Nova Scotia contingent certainly made
room enough for a few families of Hebrews.
^ The statement that the colony in 1663 had passed a law re
stricting the freemanship or elective franchise to Christians was
presumably based upon the fact that the Charter of 1663 (after
tte style of royal charters of the day) abounded in expressions of
pious regard for the furtherance of the Christian religion. Such
expressions possibly may have been understood by some as carry
ing the force of legislation. Between the Patent of 1644 (which
was displaced by the Charter of 1663) and the charter itself, the
difference in respect to pious ascriptions and avowals is marked.
In the patent there is no allusion to Christ or Christianity, and
only a passing allusion to the Deity.

182 RHODE ISLAND
established by Roger WiUiams, — a commonwealth
where " a permission of the most Paganish, Jew
ish, Turkish, and Antichristian consciences and
worships " was, under no circumstances, to be
abridged. Is it, indeed (we are led to ask), true as averred
by the court that in 1663 Rhode Island passed an
act limiting the freemanship to Christians ? It is
not true that such an act was passed in 1668, or
that such an act ever was passed in the usual mode
and upon debate. It is true that in 1719 an act of
the year 1665 was so modified by the interpolation
of words, " professing Christianity," as to read :
" AU men professing Christianity, . . . though of
different judgments in religion, . . . shall be ad
mitted freemen," etc. The act as modified had its
origin with a revising committee of the General
Assembly. It appeared first in the digest of 1719,
— a digest that so far as known never was adopted
by the Assembly. By subsequent re-vising commit
tees it was permitted to pass into the digests of
1730, 1744, and 1767, which were adopted.
The court, therefore, iUiberal though it were in
denying freemanship to Lopez and Elizar, must be
allowed the benefit of the plea that it was -within
an act of the colony ; an act repugnant to the
statute of George II, but one which the court
nevertheless may not have felt itself at liberty to
disregard. There is yet a further phase to the act of 1665.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 183
Not only was it radically modified by the inter
polation of the words, " professing Christianity ; "
it was modified still more radically by the inter
polation of the words, " Roman Catholics only
excepted." In Rhode Island after 1730 not only
were none but Christians eligible by local law to the
freemanship, but of Christians themselves only a
certain sort were eligible, namely, such as were not
Roman Catholics. In the case of the Catholics,
however, if not in that of the Jews, the local law
was purely a dead letter. To furnish an example :
Stephen Decatur, a Catholic and a Genoese, — the
grandfather of the illustrious commodore of that
name, — was made a freeman in 1735.
It was not until 1783 that the altogether un-
Rhode Island-like statute in question was abro
gated. But despite this fact one thing may be said
of it. The feeling, that inspired it was confined to
so few that had the law not found its way into the
statute book in the covert way that it did, it prob
ably never would have found its way there at all.
A colony which had not hesitated to withstand as
contrary to its charter the command of the crown
to subject its militia to the control of Sir William
Phips ; a colony, moreover, which in 1735 had em
powered its Superior Court to restrain by injunc
tion his Majesty's Court of Admiralty ; such a
colony would in the first instance hardly have hesi
tated to reject as contrary to its charter a proposi
tion by which it was to be cut off, through the most

184 RHODE ISLAND
odious of tests (a religious one), from ever electing
to the smaUest office, or even permitting to cast a
single vote, a Jew like Lopez, a Catholic like De
catur, or any one of the Deistical thinkers in which
it abounded and had abounded from the days of
the English Commonwealth.^
Concerning the suffrage in Rhode Island, two
observations by distinguished Rhode Islanders of
the past (Mr. Henry C. Dorr and Mr. Samuel G.
Arnold) will furnish us with what probably is the
clue to it. Says Mr. Dorr : " Solvency has at all
times held the same place in Rhode Island which
1 WhUe neither Mr. S. G. Arnold nor Mr. S. S, Rider expresses
approval of the interpolation which burdened the laws of Rhode
Island with a religious test for the freemanship, both writers offer
a plea in extenuation. They say {Hist. R.'I. vol. ii, p. 494; Hist.
Tract (2d ser.) No. 1) : Neither Jews, CathoUcs, nor any other
communion had ever been guaranteed political privileges by
Rhode Island, so when denied such privileges there they could not
logicaUy complain. But in this plea there would seem to be lost
to view what the Rhode Island idea, as a working doctrine, reaUy
was. According to that idea no man, however much he might be
discriminated against for other causes, ought to be discriminated
against merely for cause of religion. Had the colony in the seven
teenth ceutury assumed ground different from this, it would have
puzzled seekers after Soul Liberty to distinguish between what
was offered thera in Rhode Island and what, for instance, was
offered them in the proprietary and royal province of North Cat-
olina, where Soul Liberty (including the privilege of voting) was
to be obtained for a price, for the yielding up of money in the
form of a tax. The circumstance -that in Rhode Island the anti-
Jewish and anti-Catholic statute was systematically ignored, shows
that instinctively the people realized the incompatibUity between
it and the Rhode Island idea.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 185
Puritan orthodoxy once held in Massachusetts ; "
therefore (to pass now to Mr. Arnold), "the col
ony was a close corporation and has ever remained
so." In other words : while Plymouth, Massachu
setts, Connecticut, and New Haven were each a
close corporation from religious motives, Rhode
Island was such from the highly secular motive of
acquisitiveness. To this conclusion ample support is lent by the
facts. Massachusetts throughout the entire period of its
first charter (1628-1684) kept religion foremost as
the touchstone for the freemanship or right to vote.
At the time of the adoption of the Cambridge Plat
form (1648), "orthodoxy in eighty-nine [two] dif
ferent articles " (according to Mr. John A. Doyle)
was needful for the franchise. Even upon the de
mand of the royal commissioners for a pure pro
perty qualification in 1664, the law was so contrived
that, as the commissioners said, " he that is a church-
member, though he be a servant and pay not two
pence, may be a freeman." It was not until the
conversion of Massachusetts into a royal province in
1691 that a pure property qualification — a freehold
worth £2 a year or personalty worth £40 — brought
with it the franchise. New Haven, too, never based
the freemanship on property ; while, as for Plym
outh and Connecticut, both (as Professor Herbert
L. Osgood has recently shown) made religion the
practical, if not uniformly the statutory, test.

186 RHODE ISLAND
In Rhode Island it was otherwise. There, at the
outset (under town rule), the freeman was the free-
bolder.^ It is true that in 1665, in connection with
the visit of the royal commissioners, an act was
passed providing for the admission of colony free
men upon proof of their being merely " of compe
tent estates ; " but this act was deemed by Rhode
Islanders at once too undiscriminating and too cen-
tralistic. In 1724 a law went into effect by which
the colony fixed the property qualification for col
ony freemen at £100 freehold (approximately
$134), or at £2 freehold income, yet gave back
into local hands (the towns) something of their
original power over the colony franchise. Persons
who had been made free of a town, even though

^ " Landholding was closely associated with the right to exer
cise the franchise. Providence, on May 15, 1658, ' Ordered yt
all those that injoy land in ye jurisdiction of this Towne are free
men.' " — George G. Wilson, " The Political Development of the
Towns," Field's R. I. at the End of the Century, vol. iii, chap. i.
See also H. K. Stokes, "The Finances and Administration of
Providence," J. H. U. Studies, extra vol. xxv, p. 33 and n.
" That rule [democracy] was perfectly consistent, at the foun
dation of the State, and long after, with a lauded qualification. It
was then in this State, as it is now in our newly settled western
States ; — he who did not own land owned 'nothing. . . . But the
condition of things has changed," etc. — Thomas W. Dorr, Address
to the People of Rhode Island, 18.34.
" There was no need [in 1665] of formally requiring the owner
ship of real estate as a qualification for the franchise, for at that
period nearly all the permanent inhabitants of Rhode Island were
freeholders." — Francis Bowen, " The Recent Contest in Rhode
Island," North Am. Rev. vol. Iviii.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 187
they had not been made free of the colony, were
permitted to vote for deputies to the General Assem
bly. At the same time, by an adaptation from the
waning custom of primogeniture, the eldest son of
a freeman was permitted to vote in right of the
freehold of his father.^
Upon these two acts — the act expressly attach
ing the suffrage to the freehold yet reserving the
selection of the particular suffragist to the local
unit or town, and the act enfranchising a free
man's eldest son (both of them the acts not only
of a close corporation but of one based upon Mr.
Dorr's principle of solvency or acquisition) — there
hung in Rhode Island, until late in the nineteenth
century, all of the law and the prophets in respect
to voting.
With regard now to the exercise of the legislative
function. By the Rhode Island charter the depu
ties or immediate representatives of the people
were, as will be remembered, a locally chosen body
composed of six from Newport, four from Provi
dence, Portsmouth, and Warwick, and two from
each town additional. The assistants, or council,
on the other hand, were an unvarying body of ten
chosen by general vote. In 1696 the deputies and
assistants became permanently separated into dis
tinct branches. In 1722 the town of Kingstown
' In England the heir apparent of a peer, or of a freeman, was
allowed to vote. — Statutes of Anne, chap, v ; 3d George II, chap.

188 RHODE ISLAND
was divided into the towns of North Kingstown
and South Kingstown, and to each there was
aUowed an assistant or member of the upper
branch of the Assembly. By this act, which made
the number of towns equal to the number of as
sistants (ten), there was established a precedent
for the practice of introducing a member into the
house of assistants for each new town organized,
and so virtually of converting the Rhode Island
upper house into what it is to-day — a body of
representatives more intensely local than the house
of deputies. II.
The dominance in Rhode Island of the legislar
ture over the executive and judiciary — a domi
nance at present as great as ever in the case of the
executive, and only in 1860 finally gotten rid of
in the case of the judiciary — was at its height in
the eighteenth century.
In none of the New England colonies was the
governor by and of himself a chief executive. This
function was reserved to the governor and assist
ants. When, therefore, in 1781 Governor Jenckes
raised the question of the right of veto as pertain
ing to his position, it was easy for the crown, by
a citation of the colonial charter, to answer him.
Only royal governors might veto ; not even a John
Winthrop or a John Endicott could do it, govern
ors as they were purely by grace of charter. So

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 189"
Rhode Island was not peculiar in that during its
nonage its governor was largely a figurehead. What
perhaps is peculiar is that Rhode Island as a State
should, along with Delaware, North Carolina, and
Ohio, have withheld from its governor the veto
power. The peculiarity, though, disappears when
it is remembered that by means of such power the
immediate will of the town freemen (as, for instance,
on a question like that of paper money) might be
given a check.
But while the governor as against the General
Assembly was (and still is) helpless, it was differ
ent with the judiciary. In Rhode Island, as in the
rest of New England, the principal early judicial
body was the Court of Assistants, or General
Court of Trials, consisting of the assistants them
selves (to the number of not less than six) rein
forced by the governor and deputy-governor. This
court under the Charter of 1663 exercised jurisdic
tion both appellate and original ; but its action was
subject to review by the General Assembly, called
also the General Court of the colony. The ground
of the right of review claimed and exercised by the
Assembly was set forth substantially under the
first charter. In 1647 it was enacted that " in case
a man sues for justice and he cannot be heard, or
is heard and cannot be righted by any Law extant
among us, then shall the partie grieved petition to
the Generall or Law making Assemblie, and shall
be relieved." What here the Assembly asserted

190 RHODE ISLAND
was not the competency of a court of law but a
general competency to do justice — a chancery
competency ; accordingly when in later days mat
ters were brought before it from the courts, they
were spoken of as brought to be " chancerized."
At first, too, the distinction was more or less re
garded, for in 1678 the Assembly expressed im
patience at an appeal which it was asked to enter
tain. By 1680, however, its appellate duty, as weU
as authority, was formaUy recognized.
Nor in all this did Rhode Island act very differ
ently from Massachusetts or Connecticut. In both
of these colonies the General Assembly entertained
appeals and served as a court of chancery ; though
in Massachusetts the practice ceased with the seven
teenth century, and in Connecticut with the second
decade of the nineteenth. The longer continuance
of the practice in Rhode Island, coupled -with the
bitter struggle waged there between legislature and
judiciary, makes e-vident the more intense distrust
of delegated power felt in the Roger WiUiams
colony. The four legislative acts to which were due the
existence of a Rhode Island judiciary separate and
distinct from the upper house of the legislature
were those of 1708, 1729, 1741, and 1747 ; and the
earliest and latest of them were attended by the
creation of counties, an indication of how purely a
contrivance for judicial purposes the Rhode Island
county is. The Act of 1703 divided the colony into

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 191
two counties — the county of Pro-vidence (the main
land) and that of Rhode Island (the islands), and
provided for two civil courts (inferior courts of
common pleas) in each. The Act of 1729 provided
for a criminal court (a court of general sessions of
the peace) in each county, and changed the name
of the Court of Trials to that of Superior Court
of Judicature. The Act of 1741 created an equity
court of five judges to hear appeals in lieu of the
General Assembly, but this act was repealed In
1748. In 1747 (when, in connection with tbe settle
ment of the eastern boundary with Massachusetts,
the county of Bristol was created) the courts of
common pleas were reorganized, and the Superior
Court was made to consist, with enlarged powers,
of one chief justice and four associates annually to
be chosen by the General Assembly. Complete
formal separation of judiciary from legislature had
thus by 1747 been secured. Still, in 1780, it was
found expedient to enact that no member of either
branch of the General Assembly should be eligible
to the office of justice of the Superior Court.
The extreme jealousy of judicial power felt by
Rhode Islanders before the final establishment
among them of the Superior Court of Judicature
was not soon modified. In 1708 an appellee, grieved
at the action of the General Assembly in a par
ticular case, had appealed to the crown, and the
queen in council had sustained the appeal, refus
ing to sanction the exercise of chancery power by a

192 RHODE ISLAND
legislative body. Upon this the wily assembly had
merely provided for a procedure before it by " pe
tition," and had continued to entertain appeals as
aforetime. Such appeals after 1747, despite the
enlarged jurisdiction of the Superior Court, the
Assembly still welcomed. It also seemingly encour
aged a practice by which three jury trials of the
same Issue might be obtained : one to secure a ver
dict ; another to secure a different verdict ; and a
third to secure a verdict In confirmation of one of
the other two ; all, moreover, as mayhap but pre
liminary to a prayer for legislative interposition.
In yet two other ways did Rhode Islanders of
the eighteenth century manifest their distrust of a
separate judiciary : by permitting the appointment
of very few lawyers to positions upon the bench
(albeit among tbe appointees are some iUustrious
names — Hopkins, Ward, EUery, HoweU) and by
arrogating to themselves, through the General
Assembly, the power not merely of commuting sen
tences but of entirely abrogating them. A striking
instance of abrogation is that in which the priva
teersman Simeon Potter, who had retired to Bristol
in 1750, was in 1761 cleared of a conviction and
heavy fine meted out to him for assaulting the Rev.
John Usher.
Slow was the development of Rhode Island judi
cial power, but development nevertheless there was.
In 1768 the Superior Court (in Randall vs. Bohin-
son} took sharp issue with the legislature, and in

\ CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 193
1786 (in Trevett vs. Weeden') it maintained reso-
lut6ly the responsibility of Its members to God
alone for their conscientious judgments.
From a point of view distinctively economic and
social, the eighteenth century iu Rhode Island was
a period of cooperation due to commerce. From a
point of view distinctively political and constitu
tional, it was, as the present chapter has shown,
a period marked by the old particularism. One
influence may be noted (constitutional as well as
economic) which made for cooperation, and that
was the influence arising from the incorporation
with the commonwealth in 1747 of the Plymouth-
Massachusetts towns. " When," says Mr. William
E. Foster, speaking of Cumberland, Warren, Bris
tol, Tiverton, and Little Compton, " the stress of
British hostilities, of [post-Revolutionary] paper
money madness, and of opposition to the constitu
tion, caUed for the best energies, and the best
inteUigence of Rhode Island men, no towns were
more steadfast In the defense of correct principles
than these."
Note by Dr. Frank 6. Bates on local government in Rhode
Island : —
The Rhode Island town to-day conforms externally to the New
England type, but is socially less firmly knitted than elsewhere
in New England.
The process of town formation, even at first, was scarcely or
ganic. No new centre was deliberately selected. There was no
village green, no common meeting-house or school, no dominant

194 RHODE ISLAND \
ecclesiastical bond, nothing about which society could orga nize.
When towns of large area were subdivided, there being no } cen
tres, it was done by a purely arbitrary process, more suggesfcive
in its somewhat rectangular product of New York or the MidqUe
West than of New England.
The result of such a course of development has been a lack of
common interests, of commou action, and of civic pride. In spite
of unfavorable environment instances have occurred where chance
centres have sought but failed to give expression by the formation
of a new town to an acquired sense of unity.
Though population has becom^e dense, town subdiv^ion is the
exception ; towns have long deferred becoming cities ; and no in
termediate form exists, save a rudimentary organization called a
" lire district." This institution of narrow powers recalls condi
tions in England before the recent reforms in local government.
From the beginning the town councils exercised probate juris
diction. A recent attempt to transfer this power to circuit judges
of probate chosen by the General Assembly has been defeated by
the rural vote, as an invasion of local privilege.

PART III
UNIFICATION AND MANUFACTURES
1764-1905

CHAPTER X
PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION
Causes of Resistance — AfEair of the Gaspee — Loyalism at New
port — Creation of a United States Navy.
By slow degrees two convictions have gained the
minds of writers of American history : one, that
the American Revolution was not the outcome of
causes suddenly arising at the close of the Seven
Years' War, — causes converting Into rebels a peo
ple hitherto fundamentally loyal and content ; tbe
other, that the causes of the Revolution, whatever
they were, varied considerably with the locality.
In the case of Massachusetts, the leading cause
of revolt was Puritanism itself with its inbred fear
of curtailment and even of ultimate suppression
at the hands of the established church. A strong
secondary cause was the renewal and enforcement,
in and after 1764, of the Sugar Act of 1733. In
the case of Virginia and South Carolina, aliena
tion matured step by step out of the assertion
and counter assertion, on the part alike of popular
assembly and royal governor, of many sorts of
" rights." But to say these things is to say naught else than
that the American colonies (both northern and

198 RHODE ISLAND
southern) had from the first resented almost every
kind of Interposition by the mother country, and,
finally, were brought to rebellion because of such
interposition. What form the Interposition took
mattered little. Orders and measures salutary and
constitutional — such as those suppressing piracy
and paper money and providing for appeals to the
king in council, or such as the Navigation Act
of the 14th of Charles II, which actually stimu
lated New England ship-building — were abhorred
equally with measures like the Sugar Act and the
Stamp Act, which, whether constitutional or not,
were blundering. As Adam Smith put the matter
with regard to the Acts of Trade: "These mear
sures (barring the Sugar Act), while not cramp
ing American industry, or restraining It from any
employment to which it would have gone of its own
accord, are impertinent badges of slavery." It was
the " impertinence " of unacceptable interposition
that led at length to hostilities.
But how had this interposition been shown to
ward Rhode Island ? What, there, had the English
government all along been doing, which, because
of its " impertinence " (real and so-caUed), gave
rise to the spirit of resistance ?
Down to the days of the quo warranto against its
charter (1686), Rhode Island had had no quarrel
with the crown, and for a threefold reason: be
cause, in Its long contest with Massachusetts and
Connecticut it had had only the crown to look to

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 199
for support ; because, having no state religion it
had put no affront upon Episcopalians, Baptists,
or Quakers; and because, having no royal gov
ernor its acts and temper had never much been
Inquired into. Indeed, so loyal and obedient to the
crown had the colony always proved to be, that,
upon the return of the king's commissioners In
1666, it had been especiaUy named and commended
by Charles II as an example to the rest of New
England. Nor did this loyalty and obedience suffer
diminution from the quo warranto itself. Upon
the issuing of the writ, the General Assembly at
once resolved " not to stand suit with his Majesty "
— a resolution happy in Its effect, for when Sir
Edmund Andros in the discharge of his duty found
it incumbent upon him to ask for the actual sur
render of the charter, he did so in words that
broached on regret.
Rhode Island's troubles began with the deter
mined efforts against piracy put forth under Bello
mont in 1699; were continued by the executive
and Parliamentary measures against paper money
taken between 1720 and 1751; were heightened
by the passage of the Sugar Act In 1733 ; were
still further heightened by an attempt of the crown
to control tbe naval office at Newport in 1748;
and were brought to a climax by the renewal of
the Sugar Act and proposal of a Stamp Act in
1764. These, In short, were the items of unaccept
able, and hence of "impertinent," interposition

200 RHODE ISLAND
which gave rise to tbe spirit of resistance in Rhode
Island. On October 11, 1768, the Lords of Trade wrote
to the governor of Rhode Island that it was his
Majesty's command that he " make the suppression
of the clandestine trade with foreign nations and
the improvement of the revenue the constant and
immediate object of his care." On October 22,
Admiral ColviU wrote from Halifax that he had
thought it necessary, " for the encouragement of
fair trade by the prevention of smuggUng, to sta
tion his Majesty's ship the Squirrel for the ap
proaching winter at Newport." Thus confronted,
it behooved the colony to take action promptly if
It meant to do so at all, and in January, 1764,
Governor Stephen Hopkins, responding to a reso
lution by the General Assembly, forwarded to
Joseph Sherwood, agent for Rhode Island in Lon
don since 1759 (the year of the death of faithful
Richard Partridge), a letter stoutly protesting
against the renewal of the Sugar Act on the ground
taken In 1788 by Partridge himself.
Hardly had this letter been dispatched when
(March, 1764) George GrenvIUe Introduced in
Parliament a resolution looking toward a stamp
tax to be levied in America. News was officially
furnished to Rhode Island in August, and in Octo
ber tbe General Assembly appointed a committee
of seven, headed by the governor, to prepare an
address to the king. In November the committee

PORTENTS OP REVOLUTION 201
reported an address and also a paper composed by
StephenHopklns, entitled " The Rights of Colonies
'^Examined." Both papers were ordered to be sent
to Sherwood : the first for presentation to his Ma
jesty, and the second to be put In print and so
made of use to all the colonies.
The pamphlet by Hopkins proved to be by no
means an ordinary performance. It was philosophi
cal but not too much so ; it was scholarly ; it was
strong ; it was dignified. In a word, it was quite
the utterance which a man ambitious of the best in
letters and bred in the traditions of Berkeley might
be expected to put forth. Its main point — one
suggested by the impending Stamp Act — was that
the direct taxation of an unconsenting people was
tyrannous and un-English, and hence unconstitu
tional. For the point there was, in a sense, old
Rhode Island authority. It will not have been for
gotten that in 1733 Richard Partridge had written
to Governor William Wanton: "The levying a
Subsidy upon a Free People without their know
ledge agst: their consent, who have the libertys
and Immunitys granted them of Natural Born Sub-
jects-i— a people who have no Representatives in the
State here — . . . Is as I apprehend a violation of
the Right of the Subject." This, too, was the point
on which stress had been laid In pamphlets which
James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher had published
in Massachusetts just prior to the preparation of
the Hopkins pamphlet.

202 RHODE ISLAND
The point, however, was one not free from diffi
culty. It was both strong and weak : historicaUy
strong ; dialectically weak. If it might be urged
(as by Hopkins) that through time and usage (the
basic elements of the English Constitution) self-di
rect taxation had become the only constitutional di
rect taxation for the colonies, it might also be urged
that In the eye of English statute law (which took
no note of time) the colonies were stUl, as they
had been at the start, mere corporations within the
realm. Nor did the weak phase escape remark in
Rhode Island. At Newport a pseudonymic pen
(that of " a Gentleman at Halifax," disclosed after
wards as Martin Howard, Jr.) took up the cud
gels for the British government in an argument
not only urbane but weU-nigh unanswerable.
MeanwhUe neither Rhode Island's protest against
the Sugar Act, nor its petition against a Stamp
Act, was producing any perceptible effect on the
crown, and between 1764 and 1766 events in the
colony moved toward revolution with rapid strides.
At Newport trouble with the revenue vessels and
(after the passage In March, 1765, of the stamp
law) with the stamp officials was incessant. The
schooner St. John, tender to the Squirrel, was
fired on by a mob at Fort George. A boat belong
ing to the Maidstone — a vessel engaged in impress
ing seamen — was seized by a mob and burned on
the parade. Augustus Johnson, attorney-general
and stamp distributer for the colony, and his friends

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 203
and abetters. Dr. Thomas Moffat and Martin
Howard, Jr., were hung In effigy and their houses
pillaged. These violent manifestations of feeling
were interspersed with others less discreditable.
On August 7, 1765, the Providence town meeting
under the lead of Stephen Hopkins passed the
famous resolutions which in May Patrick Henry
had introduced in the Virginia House of Burgesses ;
not excepting resolution five from which the Vir
ginia house had shrunk. Nor was this the end. In
September of the same year the Rhode Island
Assembly made the Virginia-Providence resolutions
its own ; stipulating to save harmless its officers
for not regarding the Stamp Act. Under the stip
ulation Samuel Ward, who had been chosen gov
ernor in May, alone of the entire corps of British
American governors refused to be sworn to exe
cute the measure.
In October there was held In New York the
Stamp Act Congress, but Rhode Island's partici
pation though cordial was not conspicuous, and
in 1766 the obnoxious stamp law was repealed.
The colony on Narragansett Bay went wild with
joy over the repeal, but two things remained still
a vexation. The crown refused to pay to Rhode
Island the war allotment for the year 1756 until
such time as the colony should reimburse Johnson,
Moffat, and Howard for their losses at Newport,
and the Sugar Act was being stringently enforced.
The sugar duty had been renewed at three pence

204 RHODE ISLAND
a gallon. It now was reduced to one penny ; but the
collection of the one penny involved interposition,
and it was interposition that was the real affront.
Matters waxed steadily more serious throughout
the period 1767-1770, a period signalized by the
tea tax ; by non-importation agreements ; by the
quartering of troops In Boston ; by the " Farmer's
Letters " of Dickinson ; by the ordering to Eng
land for trial, on the charge of treason, of Samuel
Adams and John Hancock ; by eloquent champion
ship of America in Parliament by Burke and
Barre ; by tbe scuttling at Newport of the revenue
sloop Liberty ; and, finally, by the " Boston Massa
cre." Between 1770 and 1772 there was again
quiet, but in the latter year this quiet, both for
Rhode Island and America at large, was dispeUed
by a grave occurrence In Narragansett Bay.
One day in March, 1772, his Majesty's schooner
Gaspee of eight guns, with her tender the Beaver,
took station in tbe bay and set about the enforce
ment of the Sugar Act by stopping and searching
all vessels, little and big, which came within reach.
By this course there was caused what is known in
American history as the affair of the Gaspee —
_the first bold, overt, organized stroke of Jbe_ResQ^
lution. The Gaspee affair, furthermore, is of inter
est "by reason of the connection with it of Joseph
Wanton, governor of Rhode Island since 1769 and
the last of a distinguished line to fill that position.

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 205
The commander of the Gaspee was Lieutenant
WiUiam Dudingston, and Dudlngston's commander
was Admiral John Montagu, stationed at Boston.
By the last ot March the lieutenant's searches,
which under Montagu's Instructions were conducted
upon the assumption that the Rhode Islanders were
"a set of lawless piratical people," had become
vexatious in the extreme, and Governor Wanton
deemed it Imperative to demand sight of his com
mission. The lieutenant did not produce it but
sent Wanton's letter to Admiral Montagu. This
seaman, to whom, as may be inferred, the ameni
ties of Intercourse were somewhat foreign, at once
addressed the governor, threatening to " hang as
pirates" any Newporters caught attempting to
" rescue any vessel from the King's schooner," and
denying the governor's right to Inspect Dudlng
ston's papers. Language of this kind awoke the
Wanton spirit. The admiral was reminded with
merited severity that the governor of Rhode Island
did not " receive instructions from the King's admi
ral stationed in America."
Wanton's rebuke to Montagu was administered
on May 8. On June 9, a sloop called the Han
nah, on her way from Newport to Providence,
was chased determinedly by the Gaspee until the
latter ran aground on Namqult (now Gaspee) Point,
near Pawtuxet. The Hannah on arriving at Prov
idence reported the predicament of the schooner,
and John Brown — a leading merchant (albeit one

206 RHODE ISLAND
not so scrupulous as his brother Moses) — resolved
to seize the opportunity thus unexpectedly afforded.
Brown summoned to his aid Abraham Whipple (a
seasoned privateersman of the French War) and
John B. Hopkins (a nephew of Stephen Hopkins),
and it was planned to surprise the Gaspee toward
midnight. A number of long-boats were collected,
the oars carefully muffled, and soon after ten
o'clock there was embarked a party of about fifty
men. The smaU flotilla pulled steadUy down the
bay until the Gaspee was seen, when, with a view
to avoiding her guns, the boats were so disposed as
to 'approach the schooner on the bows. The hail
of the single man on watch was answered with an
oath, the crews bent to their oars, and in a few sec
onds the boats were alongside.
By this time Dudingston himself was on deck
and had called all hands. Some pistols were fired
at the boats, and the lieutenant was in the act of
cutting with his hanger at one of the attacking
party clambering into the starboard forechains,
when he fell severely wounded by a musket-shot in
the groin. All forthwith was over, and the Gas-
pee's crew having been set on shore, the vessel was
burned to the water's edge.
Great was the excitement throughout Rhode
Island and America, and in crown circles in Eng
land, on the spread of the news of the destruction
of the Gaspee. Governor Wanton proclaimed a
reward of £100 for the discovery of the perpetrar

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 207
tors of the deed. Edward Thurlow, his Majesty's
attorney-general, pronounced the affair of " five
times the magnitude of the Stamp Act." The
Secretary for the Colonies, Lord Dartmouth, pro
claimed In the name of the crown a reward of jE500
for each common perpetrator, and of £1000 for
each captain or leader. The rewards, together with
a fuU pardon, were to be vouchsafed to any mem
ber of the perpetrating party who would betray the
rest. Had the party consisted of hirelings or des
perate characters, the unstinted offers no doubt
would have brought betrayal. But of such the
party did not consist. It was made up of substan
tial men, well-known citizens of Providence and
loyal subjects of the king ; of men who In making
the attack wore their ruffled shirts and their hair
neatly tied behind as usual, and who reposed per
fect confidence in each other. From only one quar
ter did danger impend. A negro, Aaron Briggs,
pretended to have been with the party, and he,
under duress from one of the king's officers, made
a so-caUed confession implicating John Brown.
His general veracity, however, proved to be abun
dantly capable of impeachment.
For the purpose of eliciting actionable testimony,
the king,' in September, 1772, appointed a royal
commission : Joseph Wanton, governor of Rhode
Island ; Daniel Horsmanden, chief justice of New
York; Frederick Smythe, chief justice of New
Jersey ; Peter Oliver, chief justice of Massachu-

208 RHODE ISLAND
setts ; and Robert Auchmuty, vice-admiralty judge
of Boston. The appointment of this commission
created a stir. It was learned through the pubh
cation of a private letter from the Earl of Dart
mouth to Governor Wanton that it was intended
to protect the sittings of the commissioners by
troops from Boston and to transport to England
for trial for high treason any persons arrested.
The moment these intentions became known all
chance of discovering the Gaspee culprits was at
an end. The commission began its sessions early
in January, 1773, and at about the same time the
General Assembly convened at East Greenwich.
Stephen Hopkins (now chief justice of the Supe
rior Court) made before the Assembly the solemn
declaration that for the purpose of transportation
for trial he would neither apprehend by his own
order, nor suffer apprehension to be made by any
executive officer of the colony. It was with these
words in their ears that the commissioners bent to
their task. They gathered what evidence they could
(which was little), submitted it to tbe Supreme
Court for such action as might be deemed warranted,
and in June adjourned. On June 10 Dr. Ezra
Stiles, who had watched closely every move by the
commission, thus wrote in bis diary : " I appre
hend something severe would have been done by
the present Commissioners had not the Commission
given an extensive Alarm to all the Assemblies
upon the Continent, and occasioned the Resolutions

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 209
and Measures proposed by the Virginia Assembly
in March last, which are now circulating, and will
undoubtedly become universal, viz, forming Assem
bly Committees of Correspondence and enjoyning
a particular Inquiry into the Powers of this Court
of Commissioners at Rh. Island. These Assembly
Committees will finaUy terminate In a General
Congress. ... A Congress had been sure if one
person had been seized & carried from Rh. Island."
But in addition to many patriots, Rhode Island
possessed among its people many loyalists.
The publication by Martin Howard, Jr., of
Newport, of a reply to Hopkins's "Rights of
Colonies Examined " made it plain that at New
port, at least, there were loyalists. Indeed, Newport
was the seat of the loyalists. Loyalism meant
simply conservatism, and conservative Newport
had always been. As founded by Coddington It
was a protest against the radicalism of Portsmouth
under Anne Hutchinson and Samuel Gorton.
Then in subsequent years Newport had amassed
wealth and acquired social prestige, and both wealth
and prestige are conservative forces. Newport
loyalism, too, was fostered In another way. The
town was filled with Quakers ; It contained a good
many Baptists and not a few Episcopalians. The
Episcopalians were natural loyalists, and the Quak
ers contributed to loyalism by their opposition to
war. As for the Baptists, tbey were not opposed
to war (nearly the whole of Cromwell's army had

210 RHODE ISLAND
been Baptists), but as against the Puritans of
Massachusetts they had received succor at the
hands of the English government. It is not to be
accounted strange if, in some instances, they were
imbued with a patriotism that was but lukewarm. ¦
Throughout 1774 events fairly crowded to an
issue. In May Providence (true to Its reputation
for initiative) passed resolutions proposing a Con
tinental Congress and instructing its deputies in
the General Assembly to strive for a " Union " of
the colonies. In June tbe Assembly adopted the
Providence, and by this time also the Virginia and
Massachusetts, idea, and named Stephen Hopkins
and Samuel Ward as congressional delegates. In
September Congress met In Philadelphia, passed a
Declaration of Rights and various addresses, and
signed an " Association " not to Import any British
manufactures or any East India Company tea
after December 1, unless prior to that date Amer
ican grievances should have been redressed. In
October, November, and December the Rhode
Island militia was reorganized and the British
frigate Rose took in Newport Harbor the place
left vacant by tbe Gaspee. Meanwhile, despite the
allowance of a certain amount by the General As
sembly upon the claims of Augustus Johnson,
Martin Howard, Jr., and Dr. Thomas Moffat, the
money due the colony from Great Britain was
firmly withheld.

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 211
The year 1775 opened with tbe battle of Lex
ington. Rhode Island was profoundly stirred by
the news, and several hundred men set forth from
Providence for the scene of action, but were turned
back by a message reporting the retreat of the
British. At Newport there was not only excite
ment but terror and confusion. On April 24
Samuel Ward wrote from Westerly, counseling
the " Messrs. Malbone ... to get their vessels to
sea or out of New England with all speed," and
on the 26th the Stiles diary records : " Two Ves
sels full of Passengers sailed this morn^ for Phila
delphia. The Town in great panic."
The same day a couple of flour ships bound for
Providence were stopped by the commander of the
Rose, Captain James WaUace ; and John Brown,
who owned the cargo, was detained and sent to
General Gage at Boston to answer for his sus
pected connection with the Gaspee affair. It was
no slight peril in which Brown was placed. His
guilt was real, and what Gage might decide to do
was doubly problematical since the day of Lexing
ton. But at this juncture John Brown's brother
Moses (from whom the fact of John's culpability
had been kept a fast secret) provided himself with
letters to Gage, Admiral Graves, and Chief Justice
Oliver, and set out for Boston. After some parley
ing with sentinels he was allowed to pass the
lines. He saw Oliver, was presented to Graves,
and in virtue of the fact that the late royal com-

212 RHODE ISLAND
mission had been unable to elicit anything action
able against the suspect, was accorded the latter's
release. The brothers returned to Providence
mounted on one horse, John in the saddle and
Moses en croupe, and were welcomed with joyful
demonstrations. The General Assembly, mean
while, had passed an act creating an army of ob
servation of fifteen hundred men, and had sus
pended from office Governor Joseph Wanton for
protesting against their course.
On May 10 Congress met (the second Con
tinental Congress) and in It Rhode Island quietly
but resolutely took an important part. Hopkins
and Ward once more were the delegates, and
Samuel and John Adams were delegates from
Massachusetts. In Stephen Hopkins Rhode Is
land possessed a man of the John Adams foresight
and courage. In 1757 Hopkins had asked, " What
have tbe King and Parliament to do with making
a law or laws to govern us by any more than the
Mohawks?" In 1772 Adams had said, "There
is no more justice left in Britain than there is in
hell." During the first Congress Hopkins had af
firmed to a circle of delegates, " The gun and
bayonet alone will finish the contest in which we
are engaged." During the second Congress Adams
was writing, " Powder and artiUery are the most
efficacious, sure, and infallible conciliatory mea
sures we can adopt." Nor were these words words
merely. On June 15 John Adams nominated

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 213
George Washington commander-in-chief of the
Continental forces. Already in May Rhode Island
had Installed as commander of Its forces Nathanael
Greene. In August Rhode Island was ready for a further
step. The General Assembly Instructed its dele
gates In Congress to " use their whole influence "
to secure the " building and equipping at the con
tinental expense of an American fleet." Supremely
fitting was it that the proposition for the founding
of a United States Navy should emanate from
Rhode Island. As declared by the Assembly to
King William in 1693, the colony was " a frontier
[to the rest of New England] by sea ; " and from
that time forth, through the wars of Queen Anne
and the Georges, under the leadership of the Wan
tons, of Daniel Fones, of John Dennis, and of
Abraham Whipple, Rhode Island had been for
Britain a nursery of seamen and of daring.
The naval proposition (after some persiflage on
the part of Congress at the audacity of it) was
seriously considered in October, 1775. By Feb
ruary, 1776, as a result of the labors of a " Ma
rine Committee," of which Stephen Hopkins was
a member, there were ready two ships, the Alfred
and Columbus, the first of twenty-four and the
second of thirty-six guns ; two brigs, the Andrea
Doria and Cabot, each of fourteen guns ; and four
sloops, the Providence, Fly, Hornet, and Wasp.
Of the fleet as a whole Esek Hopkins (a mariner

214 RHODE ISLAND

»

of experience) was made commander-in-chief. Of
the several vessels, Abraham Whipple was made
captain of the Columbus, and John B. Hopkins
captain of the Cabot. These officers were Rhode
Islanders all, and all, be it confessed, related either
by blood or marriage to Stephen Hopkins of the
Marine Committee. In March Commander-in-
chief Hopkins was Instructed to seek the enemy
along the coast. He went, however, on a cruise to
the Bahamas to capture such stores of needed
powder and guns as might there be found. The
expedition set sail from the Delaware capes on
February 17, 1776, with John Paul Jones as first
lieutenant of the Alfred. It made In due time a
descent upon the island of New Providence, and,
returning on April 8, brought some prisoners, a
little powder, and about one hundred cannon.
Ere this Rhode Island had discarded nearly
every badge of colonialism. It had Issued blUs of
credit for local defense ; had established a local
postal system ; had erected fortifications ; had con
fiscated the estates of wealthy loyalists of Newport
and Narragansett ; had even at length deposed
Governor Wanton and chosen Nicholas Cooke —
a Providence man — governor In his stead. Only
one thing remained to be done to make expUcit
the independence which by these acts had been
implied, and that was to pass a declaration for
maUy absolving the people of Rhode Island from
their allegiance to the British crown. Such a de-

PORTENTS OF REVOLUTION 215
claration was passed on May 4, just two months
before the signing of the great Declaration at
Philadelphia. Little by little, through acts of governmental
interposition — several of them justifiable, some
of them necessary, one of them (the Sugar Act)
conspicuously a mistake — it had been brought to
pass that the British American colony originally
perhaps the most loyal of all to the crown was
hopelessly alienated and estranged.

CHAPTER XI
RHODE ISLAND THE THEATRE OF WAR
Esek Hopkins — The British at Newport — Seizure of General
Prescott — Sullivan and D'Estaing — The P^ot Galley — Des
titution — Newport and the French.
When last we saw the American squadron under
Commander-in-chief Hopkins it had just returned
from the Bahamas with captured stores and ord
nance. But the return voyage was not quite the
triumphal progress that it might have been.
On the morning of the 6th of April, about one
o'clock, there was dimly descried off Point Judith
a ship which proved to be his Majesty's ship .Glas
gow, of twenty guns and one hundred and fifty men,
commanded by Captain Tyringham Howe. This
vessel, since the autumn of 1775, had been serving
as consort to the Rose off Newport. By half -past
two the Cabot had got near enough to hail, and an
interchange of amenities In the form of broadsides
took place. The result was that the Cabot was
badly damaged and cut up. She lost four men
killed and eight wounded ; among the latter, John
B. Hopkins her captain. Next, the Alfred came
into action. She lost her wheel-block and ropes,
was several times raked, suffered a shot through

Map Showing
Barton Expedition
July, 1777 
Sullivan Expeditlcn
August, 1778 , 
Talbot Espeditlon
October, 1778

3renton's Pt

ATLANTIC 0 C E A .N

THE THEATRE OF WAR 217
the mainmast, received several shot under water,
and lost four killed and seven wounded. With the
Columbus it fared better ; on board her there was
a loss of only one wounded. The Glasgow, mean
while, though considerably cut up aloft, had not
been materially damaged. She had lost but one
killed and three wounded, and had made good a
retreat into Newport Harbor.
In this combat. In which there were arrayed on
the side of the British not more than twenty guns
and one hundred and fifty men, and on the side of
the American sat least one hundred guns and seven
hundred men, the honors were decidedly with the
British. The Americans showed pluck, especially
the crew of the Cabot under John B. Hopkins, but
of the fleet as a whole there was no adequate dis
position or management.
The UI success which attended the first encounter
with the enemy on the part of Esek Hopkins pur
sued that officer ever afterwards. In August he
was ordered on a cruise off the coast of Newfound
land, but could not enlist seamen sufficient for the
undertaking ; and In October, for the same cause,
he was unable to carry out an order to proceed to
Cape Fear, North Carolina. Finally, in December,
a large British fleet appeared In Narragansett Bay,
and Hopkins found himself effectually blockaded
("bottled" the late General Ulysses S. Grant
would have termed it), and his usefulness as a
fleet commander at an end. Hopkins's own ac-

218 RHODE ISLAND
count of his predicament at this time is little short
of pitiful. He wrote : " We are now blocked up
by the enemy's fleet, the officers and men are
uneasy, however I shaU not desert the cause but I
wish with aU my heart the Hon. Marine Board could
and would get a man in my room that would do
the Country more good than it is in my power to
do." Hardly surprising is It that in August, 1776,
Congress should have censured Hopkins ; that in
March, 1777, it should have suspended him from
his command ; and that in January, 1778, it should
have dismissed him from the naval service alto
gether. He was described, in 1776, by Colonel
(afterwards General) Henry Knox, as "an anti
quated figure " — a sort of belated Admiral Van
Tromp. The description was meant to apply merely
to his dress and bearing, but it really went deeper.
The " commander-in-chief " (the American navy
has had but one) was a weU-meanIng man, unre-
sourcef ul and slack ; one of those upon whom mis
fortunes seem to descend by sheer force of natural
attraction. It is not to be gainsaid that in seeking to re-man
his ships, after his return from New Providence,
Hopkins met with genuine perplexity. He was
forced to compete for seamen with the owners and
captains of privateering craft, and at a distinct
disadvantage. The situation was as foUows: In
December, 1775, Congress, while hastily fitting out

THE THEATRE OF WAR 219
a squadron for Hopkins, ordered the construction
of thirteen vessels, — five of thirty-two guns, five
of twenty-eight, and three of twenty-four. Two of
the vessels — the Providence and Warren — were
to be built in Rhode Island. The work was placed
in the hands of a committee of the leading men of
Providence : Nicholas Cooke, Nicholas Brown,
Joseph Russell, Joseph Brown, John Brown, Daniel
Tillinghast, John Innes Clarke, Joseph Nightin
gale, Jabez Bowen, and Rufus Hopkins. But,
though the ships were to be finished by April,
1776, and though the committee having them in
charge was thoroughly competent, the work lagged.
Why? In March, 1776, Congress had passed an act au
thorizing the issuing of letters of marque against
English commerce. Soon afterwards the Rhode
Island General Assembly had passed an act pro
viding for the Issuing of such letters within its
jurisdiction, and creating an Admiralty Court for
the condemnation of prizes. The old Narrg-gan-
sett viking and individualistic spirit of the French
and Spanish wars was at once aroused. Every
thing else was neglected, and privateering be
came the business of the day. Providence had
been rebuking the unpatriotic covetousness of New
port as disclosed in a failure to observe the non
importation agreement. Now Providence itself,
even to its distinguished committee of Browns,
RusseUs, Clarkes, and Nightingales, was guilty of a

220 RHODE ISLAND
like self-seeking. In fact, to such lengths did the
committee carry its disregard of national interests,
that members of it (John Brown in particular)
were permitted to divert to their own use. In the
construction of privateers, labor and materials de
signed for the government work. Of this fact
Hopkins, who, weak though he may have been, was
thoroughly honest, complained bitterly to the Ma
rine Board, and the Providence committee In high
indignation resigned its powers.
Matters did not improve. The privateers, with
their roving commissions and chances for lucrative
gains, took all the seamen ; and when the sorely
beset commander-in-chief sought, through the leg
islature, to lay an embargo on enlistments untU his
own ships should be manned, the Browns, RusseUs,
and others were able to circumvent him. During
a period of less than five months in tbe year 1776
there were commissioned from Rhode Island six
ty-five privateers. On November 12, 1776, Dr.
Stiles records (probably with little exaggeration ;
at figures and calculations the doctor was un
wearied) : " It has been computed that this War
by prizes by building ships of War & the Navy
has already within a year and a half brought into
Providence near Three Hundred Thousand Ster
ling ; which Is double the Property of the whole
Town two years ago."
In the end — that is, by December, 1776 — an
embargo on enlistments by inerchantmen and pri-

THE THEATRE OF WAR 221
vateers fitting out in Narragansett Bay proved to
be unavoidable, and an act to that effect was ac
cordingly placed upon the Rhode Island statute
book. The departure from Boston, in June, 1776, of
the British force under General Sir William Howe
marked the close of the preliminary stage of the
Revolution. Down to this time the attitude of
Great Britain toward America had been that of a
mother country temporizing with rebellious de
pendencies ; particularly with that set of depend
encies (New England) where the spirit of rebeUion
was strongest. With the concentration of British
fleets and armies at New York — a concentration
which, between June and August, took place under
Admiral Lord Howe and General Howe — the Brit
ish attitude changed to that of a foreign power
seeking to cut In twain (along the main artery,
the Hudson River) a hostile territory. This effort
marked the crisis of the Revolution. For Rhode
Island It was characterized by tbe lodgment upon
its soil and In its waters of a force advantageously
placed either for cooperating by way of Long
Island Sound with the British force at New York,
or for penetrating into New England and subduing
that section after the task of separating it from
the middle colonies had been achieved.
In March, 1776, Samuel Ward had died of
small-pox at Philadelphia, and in September of the

222 RHODE ISLAND
same year Stephen Hopkins, grown quite Infirm,
had ceased to attend the sessions of the Conti
nental Congress. In the place of Ward, and as
coadjutors of Hopkins, there now were appointed
WiUiam EUery (^fiW) and Henry Marchant. Fear
that the British had planned a descent upon New
port began seriously to be felt In Rhode Island in
November, 1776 ; and on December 2 news was
received by way of Watch Hill in Westerly that
" eleven sail of square rigged vessels [under Sir
Peter Parker] were standing' in between Block
Island and Montauk Point." On December 7,
Parker's squadron (comprising seven ships of the
line and four frigates), together with a convoy of
seventy transports carrying six thousand troops,
anchored off MIddletown.
Precipitate was the withdrawal from the island
of Rhode Island of the single battalion by which it
was defended, and of a considerable part of the
inhabitants. The General Assembly met, and, In
pursuance of its measures, a convention of the New
England States was held at Providence on Decem
ber 26. By this body (under the presidency of
Stephen Hopkins) It was resolved to muster from
New England six thousand men, and place them
under the direction of the Continental general com
manding in Rhode Island. At about the same time
William EUery wrote from his place in Congress
urging an attack upon the British at Newport, and
stating that Washington had appointed Generals

THE THEATRE OF WAR 223
Benedict Arnold and Joseph Spencer to take com
mand in New England. It had been hoped to ob
tain for the post either Gates or Greene.
Neither Arnold nor Spencer effected anything
toward the reduction of the island. The British
force there was composed of five British regiments
— four of infantry and one of artillery, and four
Hessian regiments of infantry, one of which was
the celebrated Anspachers. The principal officers
.were General Sir Henry Clinton, Lieutenant Gen
eral Hugh Earl Percy, and Brigadier-General
Richard Prescott. Some of the Newport loyal
ists ere this time had suffered rustication to the
mainland, but that a goodly number had not is to
be inferred from the fact that an address of duty
and loyalty to George III was now signed by four
hundred and fifty-four freeholders of the town.
A hke address was signed by the freeholders and
inhabitants of Jamestown, and by the Newport
" society of those called Quakers."
In January, 1777, Sir Henry Clinton was re
called to England, and in May of the same year
he was followed by Earl Percy. The command at
Rhode Island, therefore, devolved upon General
Prescott. Not long afterwards (in July) the gen
eral was made the victim of a piece of Yankee
temerity which in its day caused a very great sen
sation indeed.
Prescott's headquarters at Newport were in the

224 RHODE ISLAND
Bannister house (stIU standing), but the general,
as something of a high liver and roue, was accus
tomed to frequent the house of a loyalist named
Overing, which was situated on the west side of
the Island near the Redwood viUa. At this time
there was stationed at Tiverton, as major of an
American regiment under Colonel Joseph Stanton,
a young man, the son of a hatter of Warren, Wil
Uam Barton. Barton was observing, reflective, fuU
of patriotism and daring, and when, from desert
ers, he learned of the practice on the part of Gen
eral Prescott of paying nocturnal visits to the
Overing house, the news stimulated him to attempt
tbe execution of a plan which he for some time
had been maturing. The plan was to seize and
make prisoner of Prescott by way of retaliation for
the seizure of General Charles Lee effected a few
months before by the British.
Barton confided his views to Colonel Stanton,
and by him was authorized to carry them out. From
a multitude eager for service he carefully selected
forty men, and with them, on July 5 and 6, pro
ceeded in five whale-boats to Bristol. The men
knew nothing as to the errand on which they were
embarked, but on reaching Bristol they were or
dered to row out to Hog Island, where, after being
sworn to secrecy, the errand was disclosed to
them. Thunder-storms were now almost a daily
occurrence, and it was not until the evening of
July 7 that the party got to Warwick Neck,

THE THEATRE OF WAR 225
whence the expedition was to start. It was not
until the night of the 9th that a start actuaUy was
made. The boats crept stealthily between the islands of
Patience and Prudence, stole as stealthily down
the west shore of Prudence past Hope (near which
riding at anchor was a part of the British fleet) ;
rounded the large island and swept rapidly across
to their destination. The men landed, marched a
mile to the Overing house and secured the single
sentinel on guard. They then forced the main door,
found Prescott, after some search, sitting bewil
dered in a lower chamber on the side of his bed,
and, permitting him to don merely his waistcoat,
breeches, and slippers, marched him off, along with
his aide. Major Barrington, and the sentinel, to the
boats. " You have made a damned bold push to
night," remarked Prescott as he was being hurried
along. After embarkation, as the lights of the fleet
opened to view, he said : " I did not think it pos
sible you could escape the vigilance of the water
guards." Prescott while a prisoner in Rhode Island was
quartered at Providence, and it adds not a little to
the picturesqueness of the episode of his capture
that on his arrival he (aged coxcomb that he was)
sent for Providence's learned barber, John How-
land (of whom in these pages more anon), to dress
his hair ; and that shortly there came from New
port a flag of truce bearing the general's entire

226 RHODE ISLAND
wardrobe — his purse, his hair powder, and a plen
tiful supply of perfumery.
To Barton and his men there was voted by the
Rhode Island General Assembly a sum of money,
and Barton himself was rewarded at the hands of
Congress by promotion and the gift of a sword.
In consonance with tbe British plan of separating-
New England from the rest of the American Union,
General John Burgoyne had, about June 1, 1777,
been dispatched from Canada with an army of
nearly eight thousand men on a peregrination south
ward by way of Lake Champlain to Albany. There
he was to be joined by Sir William Howe from New
York. Burgoyne's orders did not permit him to
digress with bis main column, but, learning that the
Americans had accumulated stores at Bennington
[Vermont], he deemed it expedient to detach Lieu
tenant-Colonel Baum with five hundred men (in
creased afterwards to a thousand) to destroy them.
Baum afterwards was to advance across the country
to Springfield, Massachusetts, a point at which he
was assured " he would be met by his Majesty's
forces from Rhode Island." The fight led by John
Stark at Bennington on August 16 put an end to
the advance of Baum, and the surrender to Gates
on October 17 by Burgoyne himself removed aU
fear of an Immediate severance of New England
from the West.
So far as Rhode Island itself was concerned, the

THE THEATRE OF WAR 227
British (in the expressive words of the General As
sembly) still were lodged In its very " bowels," and
an attack on Providence was apprehended. Gen
eral Spencer resigned his command in December,
1777, and in February, 1778, Washington, comply
ing with an order of Congress to name a successor,
promptly named General John Sullivan. Greene,
had It been felt b;v Washington that he then could
be spared from New York, would gladly have ac
cepted the place, and indeed had been urged by
EUery to apply for it.
It was in April that Sullivan took charge of his
new department. He found Sir Robert PIgot in
the stead of Prescott, and in May Pigot sent an
expedition against Warren and Bristol. It was Sul
livan's intention to attack the British at Newport
as soon as he should succeed in assembling a suffi
cient force. Celerity was Imparted to his movements
by news received In July that a French fleet under
Vice-Admiral Comte d'Estaing was upon the coast,
and that Rhode Island would be the fleet's destina
tion. Of the three American seaports held by the Brit
ish in June, 1778, — Philadelphia, New York, and
Newport, — Philadelphia had now been evacuated.
There therefore remained only New York and New
port for D'Estaing to choose between as objectives,
and, as New York proved impracticable of ap
proach by reason of the draught of the count's ves
sels, Newport became the objective from necessity.

228 RHODE ISLAND
On July 28 General Greene, with fine Imagina
tive realization of the historic significance of what
was about to take place, wrote to Sullivan from
White Plains : " You are the most happy man in
the world. . . . You are the first general that has
ever had an opportunity of cooperating with the
French forces belonging to the United States. The
character of the American soldiers, as weU as of
their officers, will be formed from the conduct of
the troops and the success of this expedition. . . .
I wish most ardently to be with you. . . . I charge
you to he victorious." In the same letter Greene
let his correspondent into the secret that Gates
(more exalted than ever since the surrender of Bur
goyne) had himself sought from Washington the
distinction of being the first American general to
cooperate with the French.
In the movement against Newport Washington
sent to Sullivan's aid (under the Marquis de
Lafayette) the Continental brigades, some two
thousand strong, of John Glover and James M.
Varnum. He gave to General Grreene and to
Colonel John Laurens (the dashing son of Henry
Laurens, President of Congress) leave to partici
pate, and by August 4 men and officers were
in the vicinity of Providence. As for the French
fleet, — composed of twelve ships of the line and
four frigates, — it had arrived off Newport on July
29. The position of the British on the Island of

THE THEATRE OF WAR 229
Rhode Island (a position held now by about six
thousand men) was exceedingly strong. It con
stituted a right angle of which Newport formed
the apex, the sea on either hand the sides, and of
which the mouth from side to side was completely
subtended by two lines of works, one a mile within
the other. As supplementary, moveover, to the
main position, there was Butts HIU at the north
end of the island. It commanded both Bristol and
Howland's ferries and had been carefully fortified.
So strong was the British position that successfully
to attack It by land alone was, for a force not
markedly superior to the garrison, difficult in the
extreme. Any column of moderate strength which
should leave Butts Hill in its rear would be likely
to have Its communications severed. Any such col
umn that should pause to capture the hlU was
likely to be taken in rear by a relieving force from
Newport. All these difficulties at once vanished If the at
tacking army held command of the sea. To com
mand the sea was to command the British rear,
and it was with a view to the advantages of a rear
as well as front attack that D'Estaing on July 29
(the day of his arrival) urged preparations for im
mediate action. But at this time the American
general had with him practically no troops at all.
Lafayette did not arrive with the Continental bri
gades until August 4, and the militia were muster
ing slowly. Had an attack been made forthwith.

230 RHODE ISLAND
it must have been made almost whoUy by the
French force of about twenty-eight hundred ma
rines, the inadequacy of which was obvious for
operations in rear alone.
In any event, the task first to be performed was
to clear the bay of British war- vessels. It proved
not difficult, for on the appearance of ships from
the French fleet in the west, middle, and east
passages, the British ships (ten in number) were
burned or blown up. Next it was decided that on
August 10 — a date satisfactory to SuUIvan —
there should be effected, simultaneously, a landing
by the French marines on the west side of the
Island of Rhode Island, and by tbe Americans on
the east side. The garrison on Butts HUl would
thus be cut off, and the way to Newport would be
cleared. On August 8 D'Estaing ran the batteries
at the entrance to Newport Harbor. But by the
morning of the 9th the Butts HUl garrison had
been withdrawn ; so SuUIvan at once transferred
his force — now by the infiux of the New England
militia raised to ten thousand men — to the island.
The same day D'Estaing began disembarking his
marines on Conanicut to move to SuUIvan's sup
port. The British were completely trapped. Their
front and flanks were menaced by the Americans
and the marines ; their rear was at the mercy of
the French fleet.
Before the disembarking of the marines was
completed, however, Admiral Lord Howe, with

THE THEATRE OF WAR 231
thirteen ships of the line and seven frigates, came
in sight off Point Judith. D'Estaing, in order
himself not to be trapped in turn, put to sea to
meet Howe. A storm of wind and rain arose, and
though upon the subsidence of the elements some
bloody ship duels took place, both fleets (on August
20) were forced into harbor : the British at New
York, and the French at Newport.
. SuUIvan, meanwhile, in daUy expectation of the
return of D'Estaing, had advanced his army down
the east side of the island, and from Honyman's
HiU was assalUng the British works with an effec
tive cannonade. He was thus engaged on the 20th
of the month when the French fleet, battered and
in part dismantled, reached port. What was his
astonishment to be told that D'Estaing, instead of
returning to give aid, had done so to announce his
determination to go to Boston to refit. Nothing
remained to be done save vehemently to protest at
the course of the French admiral (a proceeding in
which Lafayette would not join, and which it after
wards took no little diplomacy to smooth over),
and either to storm the British lines or retreat.
To storm, with the militia deserting in shoals as
now was the case, was manifestly out of the ques
tion. Retreat began on August 28, and the so-
caUed battle of Rhode Island, which occurred on
August 29 in the depression between Quaker and
Butts hiUs, was simply a spirited repulse by the
Americans of the pursuing British ; a repulse dur-

232 RHODE ISLAND
ing the infliction of which Lafayette, with fiery
zeal, was riding a-gaUop to Boston to make a last
vain appeal to D'Estaing for the return of the
fleet ; and at the end of which the American army,
under cover of night and without loss, was con
veyed over Howland's Ferry to the heights of
Tiverton.^ The departure of D'Estaing — by reason of the
loss of the command of the sea thereby entailed,
and so of access to the British rear — had brought
failure to the SulUvan expedition : an expedition
the first fruit of tbe Franco-American aUiance ;
one the success of which would have rivaled that
of the capture of Burgoyne ; one, therefore, that
might have led to an acknowledgment of American
independence. No wonder that Greene, In his July
letter to Sullivan, had said : " / charge you to he
victorious." To Rhode Islanders in general the withdrawal
from before Newport was a step full of dishearten-
ment. The discriminating refused to blame SuUI
van, but there were those that were not so con
siderate. Such an one was our acquaintance John
1 In Fehruary, 1778, the General Assembly passed an act per
mitting the enlistment in Rhode Island bf "negro, mulatto, or
Indian man slaves.'' Under this act two battalions of negroes
(slave and free together) were forthwith raised, and they partici
pated in the battle of Rhode Island. It has been customary to
ascribe prowess to these battalions, but the investigations of Mr.
S. S. Rider (Hist. Tract. No. 10) have proved that the negroes
acquitted themselves with little distinction. Indeed, in July, 1780,
the Assembly forbade any further enlistments of negroes.

THE THEATRE OF WAR 233
Brown — John Brown, author of the destruction of
the Gaspee, postponer of government to private
advantage, source of solicitude upon all occasions
to his brother Moses. And what, in his disgust at
still being forced to run his privateers past Brit
ish batteries, John Brown did, was to write a let
ter to General Greene, in which he pronounced the
late expedition " the worst concerted and the most
disgracefuUy executed of any during the war." It
is gratifying to know that Greene's reply, after a
careful review of events, was this : " I cannot help
feeling mortified that those that have been at home
making their fortune, and living In the lap of lux
ury, and enjoying all the pleasures of domestic
life, should be the first to sport with the feelings
of officers who have stood as a barrier between
them and ruin."
By far the most brilliant local naval exploit of
the year 1778 was the opening of the east passage
of Narragansett Bay through the capture, by Ma
jor Silas Talbot, of the PIgot galley.
In 1776 Talbot, a Bristol youth residing at
Providence, had performed on the Hudson River
the daring feat of piloting a fire-ship against the
Asia, a British sixty-four gun vessel. Ever since
that time Henry Marchant (to whom very likely
there was familiar also the thrilling story of the
fire-ships of Antwerp) had been a zealous advocate
of the use of such craft against the blockaders near

234 RHODE ISLAND
Newport. But while, in deference to Marchant, it
had been arranged in August, 1777, to send out
six large fire-vessels from Providence, Talbot in
October, 1778, conceived a surer plan.
With the consent of General SuUIvan, he fitted
out with two three-pounders and sixty men a coast
ing sloop (the Hawk) In which to make an attack
on the PIgot galley by night. In order to reach
the galley, it was necessary to pass two British
batteries : one on the south side of Bristol Ferry,
and the other on the west side of Fogland Ferrj^.
The first battery was passed without damage,
though not without discovery, and refuge was
taken In Taunton River. Here Talbot found him
self obliged to await a change of wind, and he im
proved the Interval by riding down the east coast
to a point in Little Compton opposite the gaUey,
where, with a glass, he was able to make a study
of that craft. She was a stout brig of two hundred
tons, from which the upper deck had been removed,
and upon the lower deck of which there had been
mounted eight twelve-pounders and ten swivels.
Furthermore, she was protected all around by a
boarding net of unusual height.
As a result of bis survey, Talbot asked for and
obtained a reinforcement of fifteen men under
Lieutenant John Helme. On the night of October
28 he slipped silently past the battery at Fogland
Ferry, and then made aU sail. Fearing after some
time that he might have missed the galley in the

THE THEATRE OF WAR 235
darkness, he anchored and sought the blockader
in a boat. She soon loomed up massively ahead,
and Talbot, carefully noting her position, returned
to the Hawk. The latter was then directed at
full speed against her antagonist. The oncoming
sloop was loudly hailed from the galley, and then
greeted with a volley of musketry ; but soon the
jib-boom of the Hawk, which had been armed
with a hedge anchor, tore a wide hole in the gal
ley's net, and Talbot and his men were enabled to
leap on board.
There was little or no struggle. The crew of the
Pigot all fled below. Only the young commander.
Lieutenant Dunlop, made a serious show of fight,
and he, like Dudingston of the Gaspee, was quickly
overpowered. When he found that he had been
vanquished by a sloop armed with three-pounders
and with but two of these, he threw himself in tears
upon the deck, lamenting the loss of his chances
of promotion, — an exhibition of natural feeling
with which Talbot was altogether too generous
not to sympathize.
Elation in Rhode Island over the capture of the
Pigot galley was quickly followed by most Intense
anxiety regarding the means of subsistence. Al
ready in July, 1777, at a convention of the New
England States held at Springfield, resolutions
had been passed on the money question, — the
resolutions referred to in chapter iii. Others were

236 RHODE ISLAND
passed against State embargoes on food stuffs,
and against the practice of " forestaUing " or
" cornering " the market. So far, however, as em
bargoes were concerned, the action taken had ac- .
complisbed little, and in January, 1779, WiUiam
Greene — governor in succession to Nicholas
Cooke and a son of the WiUiam Greene who had
served as governor in the days of the land banks
— found it Incumbent upon him to write a letter
of earnest appeal to Connecticut.
The winter was one of appaUing severity. More
than a thousand refugees from Newport were on
the mainland In a condition of almost complete
destitution. " Our situation," wrote Governor
Greene, " is perhaps somewhat sImUar to that 'of
the good old patriarch Jacob and his numerous
family (a little republic) when he sent into Egypt
to buy a supply of corn, saving in this that he found
no embargo to prevent his purpose." Connecticut
was then solemnly adjured to remember that
"whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor,
he also shall cry himself, but shaU not be heard."
Be It said at once that Connecticut did not prove
recreant. At an early session of Its General As
sembly it granted generous relief. Ajid not only
in this way was Rhode Island helped. In the fol
lowing summer General Gates, who had been
appointed to succeed Sullivan in the eastern de
partment, sent Talbot, in the sloop Argo, to clear
Long Island Sound of loyalist privateers, which in

THE THEATRE OF WAR 237
great numbers were hindering the importation of
grain, and never was task of the kind more effec
tively performed.
D'Estaing, after a long sojourn at Boston — a
sojourn enlivened by the unwearied hospitalities of
John Hancock — set sail in November, 1778, with
his fleet for the West Indies. In January, 1779,
Lafayette sailed for France. From the West Indies
D'Estaing went to Savannah, and thence home.
Never again did he behold America. In France he,
like others of the period, sought to secure reforms
while avoiding revolution, and his fate was what
might have been expected. He died by the guillo
tine in 1794. As for Lafayette, his heart and
mind were absorbed in the American cause, and
it was through him chiefly that the French gov
ernment was induced to send to America, In the
spring of 1780, an earnest of substantial succor in
the form of fifty-five hundred regular troops, com
manded by Lieutenant-General Comte de Rocham-
beau, and convoyed by six ships of the line under
Admiral Chevalier de Ternay.
Newport was evacuated by the British in Octo
ber, 1779. When, therefore, in July, 1780, De
Ternay 1 (whose orders, inspired by Lafayette,
were to land In Rhode Island) came to anchor off
' Admiral de Ternay died at Newport in December, 1780. His
monument lends to-day a contemplative interest to the interior of
Trinity Church.

238 RHODE ISLAND
Brenton's Point, there was no enemy to gainsay
him. It was a briUIant and distinguished group of
Frenchmen that for a year graced the social circle
of Newport. There was first of all Rochambeau
himself quartered In the stately William Vernon
house ; a man not striking of stature but keen-vis-
aged and able to discuss in creditable Latin with
Dr. Ezra Stiles (now President of Yale College)
tbe capture of Andr^. Next there were Rocham-
beau's three marechawxrde-camp, with quarters at
Mr. Joseph Wanton's, — the two Vlom^nlls, fair
haired and tall, and the Chevalier de Chastellux,
member of the Academy, and pronounced by those
with a taste for letters " the glory of tbe army."
Aides, too, and officers of varied rank (among
them the Due de Lauzun, famed for his amours)
were domiciled with the Levis, the Malbones, the
Redwoods, the Wards, the Hazards, the Free
bodys, the Riveras, and the Coggeshalls. And
what was more, these men (as William Channing
noted upon their arrival) were found to be not at
aU " the effeminate Beings we were heretofore
taught to believe them, but as large & as likely as
can be produced by any nation."
Nor, In turn, did the social resources of Newport
prove inadequate to tbe unusual demands thus
made upon them. The beauty and grace of the
women — always notable — more than ever were
notable now ; so much so, in fact, that the French

THE THEATRE OF WAR 239
gentlemen who met Polly Lawton the Quakeress,
or Margaret and Mary Champlin, or Mehetable
Redwood, or the Misses Hunter, o^ the Misses
EUery, were apt quite to forego words of soberness
in describing their impressions. A certain fashion
able Newport diversion, however, — that of copious
tea-drinking, — gave pause even to Gallic politeness.
Not only was the practice amiably satirized by
Abbe Robin, but the story was told how a French
officer, after heroically Imbibing what seemed to
him quarts of the insipid beverage, burst forth
to his hostess : " I shall veesh to send zat servante
to belle for breenging me so much hot vater to
dreenk." The pleasure of the French occupation of Rhode
Island was not confined to Newport. A share fell
to Providence. Many a gallant Gaul yielded hom
age in the old home of Polly Olney to the charms
of that coquettish damsel's worthy successors, — the
Misses Bowen, Miss Waity Arnold, and Miss SaUy
Church. The erudite Chastellux alone waxed cen
sorious. He wrote : " The hair of the feminine
American head is raised and supported upon cush
ions to an extravagant height, somewhat resem
bling the manner in which French ladies wore
their hair some years ago."
In March, 1781, Washington (not in the best
of humors, it Is said) came to Newport to confer
with Rochambeau, and the honors vouchsafed to
him by the French were of the most elaborate

240 RHODE ISLAND
kind — those, in a word, as Dr. Stiles observed at
the time, accorded only to a marshal of France.
The fleet thundered a salute ; the general, with
Rochambeau unbonneted on his left, walked from
Long Wharf between a double Une of soldiers to
the State House, and thence to the count's head
quarters in tbe Vernon house. In the evening
there was an iUumination of the town. Later a
great baU was given, and Washington, choosing for
a partner the radiant Margaret ChampUn, asked
her to select the dance. That lady, with a tact that
threw the French officers present into an ecstasy of
delight, selected " A Successful Campaign." And
a successful campaign It proved. Washington,
departing westward, ere long was foUowed by the
army of Rochambeau ; and, on October 14, 1781,
Yorktown (Into which the distinguished Rhode
Islander, Nathanael Greene, bad edged CornwaUis
from the Carolinas) was taken by assaiUt, with
Stephen Olney of Rhode Island commanding a
detachment at the head of the storming column.

CHAPTER XII
THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION
The Articles of Confederation — David Howell and the Impost
Measures — Ratification of the Great Instrument.
To the Articles of Confederation, submitted by
Congress to the States for ratification in Novem
ber, 1777, Rhode Island had acceded In February,
1778. Such promptitude in the adoption of a
scheme of joint political action on the part of a
commonwealth opposed traditionally to any scheme
of the kind was due to the necessities of war, but it
was due also to saving clauses of the articles In
question. Not only did the articles expressly re
serve to each State Its " sovereignty, freedom, and
independence ; " they made the reservation effec
tive by inhibiting Congress from regulating the
commerce of a State with other States or with for
eign countries, and from levying upon a State or
its people either direct or indirect taxation. How
completely the Articles of Confederation (which
could be amended only with the consent of aU the
States) marked the extreme limit of willing ap
proach by Rhode Island to a system of Federal
control was to be strikingly demonstrated in the
period embraced between the years 1781 and 1791.

242 RHODE ISLAND
On February 8, 1781, while the French stiU
were in occupation of Newport, Congress advised
the States that It was absolutely indispensable, to
the end of meeting the public obligations, that it
be vested with power to Impose a duty of five per
cent ad valorem on all goods (with enumerated
exceptions) to be imported into the United States
after the first of May. Robert Morris was then
chosen Superintendent of Finance, and the course
of events anxiously awaited. Among the congres
sional delegates from Rhode Island was James M.
Varnum. Born in Massachusetts, he was so little
of a Rhode Islander in spirit that, writing to Gov
ernor Greene in April, 1781, he conceived it no
impropriety to suggest that a national "conven
tion " ought to be called " to revise and reform
the Articles of Confederation, to define the aggre
gate powers of the United States in Congress as
sembled, to fix the executive departments and
ascertain their authorities." Indeed, so little of
a Rhode Islander was he that, writing again in
August, he said : " We are at a loss to conjecture
the rumors which have induced the State of Rhode
Island to delay complying with the requisition of
Congress, respecting the five per cent duty."
At the close of 1781, when Varnum returned
home, his perplexity over the " delay " by Rhode
Island in authorizing the five per cent duty was
removed. In January, 1782, the pen of " Dixit
Senex " declared in the columns of the Providence

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 243
" Gazette " that while " Congress may call on us
for money, it cannot prescribe to us methods of
raising it." In this statement there was condensed
the whole Rhode Island doctrine. The Narragan
sett Bay commonwealth had withheld its approval
of the proposed tariff" for the reason that it per
ceived in it a limitation upon its autonomy. Even
iu colonial days — tho days of its nonage — Rhode
Island had been the most restive of all the colonies
under the regulations of British commercial policy.
Why, therefore, after it had just freed itself from
the plague of outside tariffs and outside collectors,
should it, through an authorization to Congi-ess of
a five per cent duty, re-subject itself to tyranny ? So
argued " Dixit Sonex."
To " Senex " Varnum replied forcibly, but with
the result of calling into tho field of debate the
keenest and best equipped champion of the pe
culiar political ideas of Rhode Island which that
commonwoalth has ever possessed — David HoweU.
Both Varnum and HoweU have come within our
ken as they stood a few years later — the one a
powerful advocate at the bar, and the other a
courageous and discriminating judge upon the
bench;, but at the moment Howell was a young
lawyer of Providence unknown to fame. Upon
his graduation from Princeton in 1766 he had
come to town at the earnest request of James
Manning, and liad since filled the chair of natural
philosophy in Brown University. Ilis literary style

244 RHODE ISLAND
was fluent, flexible, and trenchant, and at the end
of his controversy with Varnum he became widely
enough known to be elected to Congress.
The conditions wbich confronted him in that
body were not encouraging. Eleven States had
signified their more or less cordial approval of the
projected tariff or Impost. Only Georgia and
Rhode Island were holding back, and of these
Georgia was not fixed in resolution. In order to
bring matters to a head. Congress appointed a com
mittee to Inquire of the two States why they had
not pursued the course of the other States. At the
sessions of this committee Robert Morris attended
and HoweU appeared for Rhod^ Island. The ob
jections by HoweU to the impost were four in num
ber : (1) that the revenue raised by it would go
to the United States, whereas in the case of Rhode
Island (a maritime community) any such revenue
ought to go to tbe State alone ; (2) that the war
had so wasted the shores of Narragansett Bay that
it was needful for Rhode Island to conserve every
source of Income ; (3) that a sovereign State should
itself collect aU taxes levied within Its borders ;
and (4) that the duration of the proposed impost
was indefinite and might be made perpetual. In
modification of the measure as It stood, HoweU
suggested clauses providing for the deduction of the
proceeds of the Impost from the annual quota of
Continental requisitions upon a State and for coUec-
tion by officers locally chosen.

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 245
A careful reply to Howell was submitted by
Robert Morris to Governor William Greene on
August 2, but without result ; and In October
Congress, under the leadership of Alexander Ham
ilton and James Madison, passed a resolution de
manding from both Georgia and Rhode Island an
explicit avowal as to whether they would or would
not approve the impost.
The crisis drew from Howell one of his most
telling appeals to his constituency. It bore date
October 15 and began thus : " The object of a
seven years' war has been to preserve the liberties
of this country. ... It has been on our part a
contest for freedom — not for power ! . . . We
know your early, continued, and persevering zeal
in your country's cause. We cannot doubt your
firmness. To quicken your memory, awaken your
feelings, and to fix your attention, is the object of
this letter." The abiding argumentsof particularism
against authority were then lucidly rehearsed, and
the State was abjured not to take the irrevocable
step of sanctioning the impost if it had " a single
remaining doubt." With Howell's plea before it,
the Rhode Island General Assembly met at East
Greenwich on the last Monday in October, 1782,
and on November 1 voted unanimously against the
impost plan.
The struggle between Rhode Island and Con
gress over the Impost was now given a turn not a
little dramatic. Howell had been in the practice

246 RHODE ISLAND
of writing to John Carter, publisher of the Provi
dence " Gazette," upon the proceedings of Congress.
From one of his letters a paragraph stating that
the credit of the United States abroad was such
that " of late they had f aUed in no application for
loans " had appeared in print on November 2.
Indignant at the course of HoweU (who was held
responsible for tbe course of Rhode Island), Ham-
Uton and Madison were stirred to the quick by this
statement concerning the public credit — a state
ment designed to belittle the need of an impost —
and proceedings were set on foot to discredit
HoweU in his own State.
On December 18 the Rhode Island delegate
introduced in Congress a resolution avowing and
justifying the " Gazette " paragraph and challen
ging criticism of himself. On December 20 Hamil
ton and Madison, as members of a committee of
inquiry which had been appointed, recommended
that HoweU's resolution "be transmitted by the
Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the Executive of
the State of Rhode Island with an authentic copy
of the several applications for foreign loans, and
the result thereof." Over the recommendation a
sharp struggle ensued. It was short as weU as
sharp, for at nearly every turn the vote of Rhode
Island was left unsupported.
In undertaking, however, to influence Rhode Is
land by discrediting its chief delegate, it soon be
came apparent that Congress had erred profoundly.

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 247
In February, 1783, the General Assembly of the
State passed resolutions indorsing unreservedly
HoweU's entire conduct. Nor did the indorsement
prove to be less hearty in view of the circumstance
that for six weeks the celebrated Thomas Paine,
with headquarters at Providence, had been plead
ing eloquently the cause of Congress in the Rhode
Island press.
Interest in the congressional debate of 1782 over
the impost attaches In a peculiar degree to the
individuals concerned. That a professor of natural
philosophy should so brilliantly have withstood the
embittered opposition of the superb Hamilton and
astute Madison can but excite admiration. Hamil
ton and Madison supported each other and were
both supported by Congress. Howell, save for the
countenanceof his colleague Jonathan Arnold, faced
argument and enmity alone. The position of the
Rhode Islander at this time was almost exactly that
of John C. Calhoun (his inteUectual compeer) in
1833, when, unsustalned save by South Carolina, '
Calhoun threatened nullification and incurred the
wrath of Andrew Jackson.
Howell was returned to Congress In 1783 and
also in 1784. In the latter year, as in 1782,
Rhode Island was made the object of attentions
the reverse of flattering. Congress in 1783 had
again proposed a five per cent duty. It was to
be collected by locally appointed officers and to

248 RHODE ISLAND
continue only twenty-five years. But the haste of
Rhode Island to sanction the new proposal proved
to be no greater than It had been to sanction the
old one. Howell opposed sanction in his letters,
and what was more, some of the States formerly
receptive to the Idea of an impost now (influenced
by Rhode Island's example) were of a contrary
mind. Irritated by the situation, certain of the
" young men In Congress " raised in 1784 a question
upon the technical sufficiency of the credentials of
Howell and his colleagues. After a heated debate,
Mercer of Virginia and Spaight of North Carolina
both challenged the Rhode Islander to a duel.
David Howell — man of commanding physique,
aquiline nose, and defiant chin — replied that he
meant " to chastise any insults that he might re
ceive," and laid the communications before Con
gress. In 1784 Annapolis, Maryland (a town said
to have been without a single house of worship),
was the temporary seat of Continental government.
Social life there was of the gayest — a life of card-
playing, the theatre, " balls, concerts, routs, hops,
fandangoes, and fox hunting." Upon it all Howell,
as a man with New England conscience, turned
disdainfully his back.
But the uncompromising hostility of Rhode
Island to an Impost was beginning to give way.
The cause was commerce. Hitherto when asked :
" How are the United States to meet their debts ? "
Rhode Island's reply had regularly been : " By the

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 249
proceeds of the public lands." Now conditions were
a good deal changed. In July, 1783, Great Britain
had put in operation a plan of discrimination
against the extensive trade of New England with
the British West Indies. English manufactured
goods, too, were flooding the New England market.
A tariff of some kind was demanded for self-preser
vation. What was to be done ? Clearly one thing
only, and that was to Invest Congress with power
to regulate commerce — in other words, to establish
a uniform impost. This power Rhode Island with
many qualms, but screwing Its courage to the stick
ing point, granted in February, 1786.
There can be little doubt that the exaltation of
particularism between 1782 and 1785 by David
Howell laid the foundation for some of Rhode
Island's extreme distrust of the Federal Constitu
tion of 1787. The Instrument would have been
distrusted by Rhode Island In any event, but How
ell supplied an arsenal of controversial weapons
against it.
Hostility to the Constitution, though, came from
a source different from that whence had come hos
tility to the impost. The enemies of the impost
had been the merchants. They had feared its
effect on trade. Toward the Constitution — an In
strument largely designed to protect trade — an
instrument the outcome in fact of the recommenda
tion of a convention called in 1786, at the instance

250 RHODE ISLAND
of Virginia, to deliberate upon trade — the mer
chants were hospitably Inclined.'
1 Pkovidencb, May 11th, 1787.
Gentlemen, Since the Legislature of this State have finally declined sending
Delegates to meet you in Convention for the purposes mentioned
in the Resolve of Congress of the 21st February, 1787, — the
Merchants, Tradesmen, and Others of this Place, deeply Affected
with the evils of the present unhappy times, have thought proper
to communicate in writing their approbation of your Meeting,
And their regret that it will fall short of a Compleat represen
tation of the Federal Union. —
The failure of this State was owing to the nonconcuiTence of
the Upper House of Assembly with a Vote passed in the Lower
House, for Appointilig Delegates to attend the said Convention, at
their Session Holden at Newport, on the first Wednesday of the
present Month. —
It is the General Opinion here, and we believe of the well in
formed throughout this State, that full power for the regulation
of the Commerce of the United States, both foreign and Domes-
tick, ought to be vested in the National Council. And that
Effectual Arrangements should also be made for giving operation
to the present powers of Congress in their Requisitions upon the
States for National purposes. —
As the object of this Letter is chiefly to prevent any impressions
unfavourable to i^e Commercial Interest of this State, from take-
ing place in our Sister States, from the Circumstance of our being
unrepresented in the present National Convention, we shall not
presume to enter into any detail of the objects we hope your delib
erations will embrace and provide for, being Convinced they will
be such as have a Tendency to strengthen the Union, promote
Commerce, increase the power, and Establish the Credit of the
United States.
The result of your deliberations, tending to these desirable pur
poses, we still hope may finally be approved & adopted by this
State ; for which we pledge our Infiuence & best exertions. —
This will be delivered you by the Honourable James M. Var
num, Esquire, who will communicate (with your permission) in

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 251
It was on February 21, 1787, that Congress
resolved for a convention of delegates to be held on
the second Monday in May, at Philadelphia, to so
modify the Articles of Confederation as to render
them " adequate to the exigencies of government
and the preservation of the Union." In this con
vention by the end of June Rhode Island alone
among the States was unrepresented. To Rhode
Island itself the fact gave little concern. The State
was under the control of the traditional separatists,
the agriculturaUsts, and their indifference to Fed
eral affairs had been evinced the year previous in
the case of James Manning, President of Brown
University, whom they had sent to Congress and
then left (as Roger Williams had once been left in
England) without money wherewith to hire even a
barber or to keep from a debtor's prison.
But on all sides a storm of criticism was beffln- o
person, more particularly our Sentiments on the Subject matter of
our Address.
In behalf of the Merchants, Tradesmen, &c.
We have the Honour to be, with perfect Consideration And
Respect, Tour most Obedient and
Most Humble Servants,
John Brown, Jabez Bowen
Jos. NlGHTINGAIiE, NiCHOS. BrOWN
Levi Hall John Jenckes
Phillip Allen, Welcome Arnold i /~iq^__„
Paul Allen William Rus,sell ¦
Jeremiah Olney
William Barton
Thos. Llotd Halset
Pub. B. L Hist. Soe. vol. ii, p. 169.

252 RHODE ISLAND
ningto descend. Massachusetts (true to the policy
of Winthrop) was for " appropriating Rhode Island
to the different States that surround her." Wash
ington stigmatized " her public councils " as " scan
dalous." Madison spoke of the " wickedness and
folly that reigned." Even Varnum denounced those
responsible for tbe local apathy and obstinacy as
" destitute of education and void of principle." At
last. In September, 1787, after the General Assem
bly had thrice refused to appoint delegates and two
days before the great convention at Philadelphia
adjourned, the State dispatched a letter to the
President of Congress In explanation of its course.
Allusion was made to " our being diffident of power."
But the main excuse was the shifty one that the
freemen and not tbe General Assembly were the
only body by which delegates might be appointed.
Before the month of September expired the
Constitution was submitted to the several States
for ratification, and Rhode Island found itself con
fronted by the most serious crisis in its history
since the days of " boundaries." The new instru
ment was to go into effect upon ratification hy nine
States, and any State that chose not to ratify must
face the prospect of an existence uncommiserated
without the pale. The step first taken was to refer
the instrument to the towns, and with the reference
there began discussion. On January 28, 1788,
a writer in the Newport " Mercury " gave warn
ing : " If you adopt the proposed Constitution, you

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 253
will subject yourselves to a government where you
will be totally unprotected by a blU of rights. . . .
Your Federal Senate is to be in place for six
years, and senators, by reason of their importance
and of their participation in executive power, may
make themselves in effect absolute." The commu
nication (one marked by undeniable foresight)
concluded with a statement that under the Con
stitution the Federal Supreme Court might Issue
execution against a State in a case where a State
was a party.
To these strictures a contributor signing himself
" A Rhode Island Man " replied on February 25.
As for the exercise of absolute power by the new
government, what, he asked, could exceed for ab
soluteness the power habitually exercised by the
Rhode Island General Assembly ? The Constitu
tion, indeed, was like a new house built to be ten
anted by a large family. Each member found
some fault with It : it was not large enough ; the
windows were upside down ; the doors were so con
trived [an allusion to the purely secular character
of the Instrument] that a Turk might go In and
out as freely as a Christian ; or it should have been
round, three-sided, or twelve-sided, — one side to
ward every State except Rhode Island. Servants,
too [representatives and senators], must be hired
for two and six years, — long periods. A better
plan would have admitted of their being hired
afresh every morning. Worse than all else, the

254 RHODE ISLAND
inmates would be obliged to furnish their own pro
visions. It ought to have been so devised that they
might be supported " by manna or by quails."
The result of the reference of the Constitution
to the towns (a result intensified by abstention
from voting on the part of many) was rejection
by a great majority. Agitation then (March, 1788)
was begun for the holding of a constitutional con
vention. The General Assembly thrice refused to
call a convention, and by July 26 New York had
ratified and the Constitution was in effect- beyond
all controversy. Where now was Rhode Island?
Along with North Carolina (the Rhode Island of
the South) It was upon its own by no means su-
perabounding resources. In November, 1789, its
isolation was made still more pronounced by ratifi
cation by North Carolina. Meanwhile the State
had four times niore refused to call a convention,
and had dared even to hint at a foreign alliance.
What at length, in 1790, turned the current in
the little but resolute commonwealth In favor of
the Constitution was what in 1786 had turned the
current there In favor of a Federal Impost, namely,
commerce. On the accession to the Union of New
Hampshire, the ninth State, Providence (now rather
than Newport the commercial centre) had rung its
bells, fired its cannon, and held a barbecue ; and
on the accession of New York It again had indulged
in jubUation. When, therefore, in July, 1789, the
national House of Representatives passed a tariff

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 265
act which made no exemption in favor of Rhode
Island, Providence was in a position to point to the
hurtful consequences. In September the General
Assembly indited a letter to tho two houses of Con
gress expressing the hope that " we shall not be
altogether considered as foreigners "... and that
" trade aud commerce, upon which the prosperity
of this State much depends, will be preserved as
free and open between this and the United States
as our different situations at present can possibly
admit." The olive branch was taken. To Rhode
Island there was granted exemption from revenue
restrictions until January, 1790.
On the 17th of January the General Assembly
by a close vote ordered the calling of a conven
tion. The convention met on March 1 in South
Kingstown. Jabez Bowen of Providence and Henry
Marchant of Newport led the Federalists, while
the Anti-Federalists were led by John Collins and
the astute Jonathan J. Hazard of South Kings
town. The principal topic of debate would seem
to have been the Constitution and slavery. Nathan
MiUer of Warren asserted that he had the Word
of God in his house, and that it contained nothing
against slavery. On the other hand. Colonel Wil
liam Barton of Providence (he of the Prescott
seizure) declared that slavery was contrary to the
New Testament. A bill of rights, containing among
other things a section condemning the slave trade
as " disgraceful to liberty and humanity," was se-

256 RHODE ISLAND
cured by the Anti-Federalists, and at the same time
an adjournment was taken to May 24, at Newport.
When the convention reassembled, it did so in
the face of yet stronger pressure for ratification.
Congress, hampered by the absence of Rhode Island
representatives In Its consideration of such ques
tions as the location of the Federal capital and the
assumption of the State debts, had hinted covertly
at coercion. The Senate had even gone so far as to
pass a resolution In favor of a bill for severing
relations between the United States and Rhode
Island, and for demanding of the latter a payment
of money on account with the United States. Nor
was it Congress alone that exerted pressure. Prov
idence, boldly reverting to ideas current in the
age of Roger Williams, threatened, under sanction
from Congress, to secede from its connection with
the agricultural section and to set up for itself.
Wrought upon by tbe combined influences de
scribed, but more than by any other influence by
that of fear of commercial isolation, Rhode Island
on May 29 ratified the Constitution by the suffi
cient yet significant majority of two votes.
In his admirable monograph, " Rhode Island and
the Formation of the Union," Dr. Frank G. Bates
deplores the lack at this time in his native State of
competent popular leaders devoted to Federalism.
South Carolina had its Pinckneys and Rutledges ;
Massachusetts its Ameses and Kings ; Virginia its
Madisons and Marshalls ; New York its Alexander

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 257
Hamilton. Rhode Island had no one. Invaluable
would have been the leadership of a Stephen Hop
kins. The Nestor himself — friend of organic union
in America since 1764 — had only in 1785 passed
away, but no successor was at hand. James Varnum
had in 1788 removed to the Northwest Territory.
As for David Howell, he (had he come forward)
presumably must have done so against the Union.
But he did not come forward. His course in 1786
in Trevett vs. Weeden had alienated from him the
agriculturalists, and henceforth his time and thought
were devoted wholly to jurisprudence.
The stability which Rhode Island had gained
under the restraints of the Revolution was aug
mented under the milder restraints of the Federal
bond, and soon the towns began to turn their
glances backward to commerce and forward to
manufactures. \

CHAPTER XIII
DECLINE OF COMMERCE AND ESTABLISHMENT OF
MANUFACTURES
Slave Trade and Commerce at Newport and Bristol — Moses
Brown and the Cotton Industry at Providence — John Brown
and the East India Trade — The Barbary Corsairs — War of
1812 — Samuel Slater — Political Conditions — Visits of Talley
rand and Lafayette .
It was Providence that directed Its glances both
forward and backward. Newport looked only back
ward. In 1779, when the British evacuated Newport,
they left it a shadow of Its former self. Pigot,
withdrawing within his Unes before the advance
of SuUIvan, had burned houses and hewn down
groves. The compact part of tbe town, too, had
suffered. On May 31, 1780, Dr. Stiles wrote:
" About three hundred dwelling house I judge have
been destroyed. The Town is in Ruins. But with
Nehemiah I could prefer the very dust of Zion to
the Gardens of Persia, and the broken waUs of
Jerusalem to the Palaces of Sushan. I rode over
the Isle and found the beautiful Rows of Trees
which lined the Roads, with sundry coppices or
groves & Orchards down aud laid waste ; but the

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 259
natural Beauties of the Place still remain. And I
doubt not the place will be rebuilt & exceed its
former splendor." ^
A final and Irreparable piece of mischief was
worked by the departing loyalists. They carried
away with them to New York the town records.
These through the wrecking at Hell Gate of the
transporting vessel were submerged for a time in
salt water. Upon the request of Washington, they
were recovered by Sir Guy Carleton and restored ;
but they were almost undecipherable, and long
remained a reddened mass ready to crumble at
the touch.
At the close of the Revolution Newport cast
^ " I have seen not a little of other countries, but I never saw
any Island that unites finer views, rendered pleasant by vari
ety of hill & vale, rooks, reefs, beaches, Islands & perennial ponds
than this. . . . Before the discovery of our mineral springs, Rh.
Island was in one view the Bath of the American world. . . . This
and the Redwood Library gave it both a literary & a genteel
air ; and rendered it the best bred society in N. England. But
— alas! — how changed ! The British destroyed, for fuel, about
900 [?] buildings, of [to] be sure the poorer sort ; yet it has never
recovered the dilapidation. The town of Providence has risen
to riches & elegance from the ruins of this once beautiful spot ;
while Newport resembles an old battered shield — its scars &
bruises are deep and indelible. Commerce, & all the Jews are fled.
The wharves are deserted & the lamp in the synagogue is ex
tinct; and the people are now so poor, that there are not more
than ten, or a dozen people who would have the courage to in
vite a stranger to his table." — Benjamin Waterhouse, Letter to
Thomas Jefferson, September 14, 1822. Pub. R. I. Hist. Soe.
vol. ii. See also Brissot de Warville, Pictures of B. I. in the Past,
edited by Gertrude S. Kimball.

260 RHODE ISLAND
back a longing glance in particular upon the slave
trade. It was In this trade that the town had
grown rich, and to this trade that it was most at
tached. Difficulties, however, were accumulating
in the way of it. The Rhode Island law of 1774
prohibiting the Importation of slaves gave little
concern. So did the law of ten years later pro
viding for local emancipation. But In 1787 par
ticipation by Rhode Islanders in tbe foreign slave
trade was forbidden ; and in 1794, 1800, and 1803
the Federal Congress passed laws amounting, when
taken together, to a prohibition of the foreign slave
trade to all American citizens, and also of the do
mestic trade wherever forbidden by local law.
Under these conditions embarrassment for the
slave traders was relieved by the action of South
Carolina. That State in 1788 had forbidden slave
importations. The law had failed of enforcement,
so in 1803 it was repealed. Straightway Rhode
Island began sending to Charleston great numbers
of slave ships. Between 1804 and 1807 Great Brit
ain, France, Sweden, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina aU availed
themselves of tbe open slave port of Charleston ;
but none of them (Great Britain and South Caro
lina excepted) to the same extent as did Rhode
Island. Of the 202 vessels entered at Charleston
during the years indicated, three were from France,
one was from Sweden, one from Massachusetts, and
one from Connecticut ; four were from Maryland,

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 261
and two from Virginia. On the other hand, seventy
were from Great Britain, sixty-one from South
Carolina, and fifty-nine from Rhode Island.
The zeal of Newport in the post-Revolutionary
slave trade and at the same time the comparative
indifference of Providence to that trade come out
clearly in tbe correspondence of the day. On Au
gust, 17, 1789, Samuel Hopkins wrote from New
port to Moses Brown : " The combined opposition
to a suppression of the trade in slaves is so great
and strong here that I think no anti-slavery com
mittee formed in this town would be able to do
much." And in 1791 (December 5) WiUiam
EUery, himself a Newporter, wrote : " An Ethi
opian could as soon change his skin as a Newport
merchant could be induced to change so lucrative
a trade as that in slaves for the slow profits of any
manufactory." It is true that in 1807 Congress, availing itself
of a provision of the Federal Constitution, passed
an act forbidding absolutely and for the whole
country any further Importation of slaves. But
before the act went into effect (to say nothing of
what took place afterwards) ^ the example of slave-
1 Bristol, August 20th, 1816.
Mr. Obadiah Brown
My Esteemed Eriend, — The impunity with which prohib
ited traffic is carried on from this Place, has for some time
rendered it the occasional resort of many violators of commercial
law from other Places, as weU as the constant residence of others.
The African slave-trade is the one of this description now most

262 RHODE ISLAND
trading Newport had been followed by the ener
getic town of Bristol.
In 1744, when Simeon Potter was making his
successfully and extensively prosecuted. Such is the number, &
more especially the character of those concerned in it, that I
should consider myself as incurring some personal hazard if I did
not know that you heartily abominate the odious trade, and would
make no disclosure to the injury of one who would oidy wish its
complete prevention. I do not know that it is possible to effect
this, but the facts in relation to this subject can be considered by
those capable of determining.
Cargoes suited to the American market are prociired here &
taken on board vessels suited to the business and cleared for Ha
vana [sic]. The Master there effects a nominal sale of vessels &
cargo to a Spaniard, takes on board a Spanish nominal Master
& proceeds to Africa. A power of Attorney to effect the sale is
always prepared here before sailing. When the vessel has made
one voyage she can proceed on another without returning to the
U. S. A cargo is usually sent out to her to Havana. There are
several now out that have performed several voyages since they
first sailed from here. There is one now laying here ready for sea
called " The General Peace of Providence," lately owned wholly
by Joseph Sanders of that Place, Thomas H. Russell of this Town,
Master & Attorney to effect the pretended sale. I wrote his
Power of Attorney. BiUs of sale of parts of the vessel have been
given here : But the whole is to be covered under a Spanish name.
The [sic] even speak familiarly of their destination, & one against
whom I had a demand boldly told me I must wait till he could go
& catch some black-birds.
By such stratagems as these, hundreds of that untappy race
are now annually torn from their homes and doomed with all
their posterity to West India Slavery. Can the Friends of hu
manity do nothing to prevent so outrageous an evil ?
In the number of those concerned iu this business are some of
my personal Friends, and many from [sic] 1 derive a portion
of my business & support. My feelings revolt from the idea of
inflicting the vengeance of the law on the first, and policy (which

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 263
cruise along the Spanish Main to the distress of
gentle Father Fauque of Oyapoc, there was with
him as supercargo Mark Anthony DeWolf, a young
man of Guadeloupe. De Wolf married Potter's
sister, settled at Bristol, and became the father of
a famous seafaring progeny — James, Charles, and
John De Wolf. James, who was born in 1764,
achieved in the early years of the nineteenth cen
tury great wealth in the slave trade, and in 1820
became a United States senator. Ten of the fifty-
nine slavers employed by Rhode Island between
1804 and 1807 were owned, ship and cargo, by
James De Wolf. Indeed, as between Newport and
Bristol during this interval, honors in respect to the
slave traffic were almost evenly divided. Seven
thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight negroes were
carried to Charleston in Rhode Island vessels. Of
circumstances oblige me to consult) ought to restrain me from an
open participation in the punishment of the others. I think if
you at Providence were to write and talk more on the subject, to
advertise a determination to prosecute, & thus at least evince
your knowledge of the existence of facts, you might do some
good. Humane laws, used in the spirit of humanity, ought not in
their execution to bring disgrace on any but their violators, but
such is the depraved judgment of the multitude, that to tell of
crimes is almost as odious as to commit them, & I request you
not to disclose that any of the facts herein stated come from me.
I am Sir —
Your Frd. &c. [Signature cut out].
N. B. — Edward Mason of your Town is concerned with
Sanders. Pub. R. L Hist. Soe. vol. vi, p. 226.

264 RHODE ISLAND
these nearly 3500 were carried in vessels from
Newport, and about 3900 In vessels from Bristol.
Providence vessels carried just 556.
Newport looked back with longing upon the slave
trade. It also looked back with longing, though in
less degree, upon the vanished Mediterranean and
Levantine trade of the Hebrew merchant Abraham
Rodriguez Rivera. This trade, or rather trade of a
kind akin to it, was now to be undertaken by men
who were not only residents of Newport but natives
of America — Mr. George Gibbs and Mr. Walter
Channing, constituting the firm of Gibbs & Chan
ning, and Mr. Christopher ChampUn and Mr.
George Champlin, constituting the firm of Cham
plin & Champlin. Between 1790 and 1812 both
houses dealt largely to Sweden and St. Petersburg
for iron ; to Java for coffee ; to Canton for teas,
nankeens, and silks ; and to Antwerp, Malaga, Bar
celona, and Leghorn for miscellaneous commodities.
In 1810 the tonnage of Newport was 12,517, only
3347 less than that of Providence. At this period,
too, the trades of ship-building and whale-catch
ing had been much revived. A leading position
with regard to both was taken by the town of
Warren. For the commercial decline of Newport, as also
for that of Bristol and Warren, there may be as
signed four general causes : foreign Interference
(after 1793) with American ships ; the American
Embargo Acts of the years 1807 and 1809; the

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 265
War of 1812 ; and the introduction of railroads.
Providence felt the operation of the same causes,
but was able to betake itself to manufactures. To
Newport no such course was open. There was on
the island of Rhode Island no brawling Blackstone
nor swift Pawtuxet — in a word, no water-power ;
and when the sea as a field of activity failed the
islanders, naught was left them but to quit for
ever the spot of their affections, or, putting their
savings at interest, to live in the memory of the
stirring past.
Newport had early been the resort of wealthy
English planters of the West Indies and Carolinas
— the Redwoods, the Pinckneys, the Rutledges,
and the Haynes. After 1840 It became increasingly
the resort of the people of Charleston. Its attrac
tions were its salubrious climate, the wide ocean
prospect from its cliffs, and its extensive bathing
beaches. Then, too, there was about it a delightful
historic afterglow. Nobody there was very busy
now. The shipping — huge East Indiaman and
small trim slaver — had disappeared. The wharves
and slave-pens were falling to decay. No Red
Rover lay mysterious in the outer harbor. But
local circles were charged with anecdotes of many
a slaver and many a rover ; and the local spinster,
proud of the claims of long descent, was proud
also to produce for the benefit of those sufficiently
accredited the heirloom London gown, the heir
loom invitation to the Washington-Rochambeau

266 RHODE ISLAND
ball, or the heirloom set of priceless " china " from
Canton. Nor yet in other ways did latter-day Newport
fail in suggestiveness. The gentle and flower-like
genius of Edward G. Malbone — a natural son of
John Malbone the merchant magnate — served to
re-create a Berkeleyan atmosphere in art. Born in
1777, Malbone painted miniature portraits un
matched for loveliness, and died at the age of
thirty. But in no son of Newport, perhaps —
whether of a latter day or a former — was the
Berkeleyan or Idealistic element fundamental in
Rhode Island character brought to such perfection
as in William EUery Channing. On the 9th of
May, 1773, Dr. Ezra Stiles made entry in his
diary : " In the eveng I married Mr. WilUam
Channing and Miss Lucy EUery." William EUery
Channing was a fruit of this union. He opposed
slavery and forecast Transcendentalism. His death
occurred in 1842. After 1840 — the era of rail
roads — Newport, and with it Rhode Island at
large in so far as the latter depended upon the sea,
became an American Venice. It could only look
forth helpless upon that element which erstwhUe it
had been Its mission to subdue.
It has been said that Providence at the close of the
Revolution glanced forward as well as backward.
Its first vigorous glance was unmistakably forward.
On December 2, 1789, nearly six months before

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 267
Rhode Island ratified the Federal Constitution,
Samuel Slater, a young Englishman of Derbyshire
who had been attracted to America by a prospect
of advancement in connection with the manufac
ture of cotton yarn, wrote thus to Moses Brown :
" A few days ago I was informed that you -wanted
a manager of cotton spinning, &c., in which busi
ness I flatter myself that I can give the greatest
satisfaction, in making machinery, making good
yarn, either for stockings or twist, as any that is
made in England ; as I have had opportunity and
an oversight, of Sir Richard Arkwright's works
and In Mr. Strutt's mill upwards of eight years."
When this letter was received. Brown (tbe finan
cial stay of the firm of Ahny & Brown) had for
some time been struggling at Pawtucket with im
perfect imitations of the Arkwright patents; " If
thou thought," he at once replied to Slater, " thou
couldst perfect the machines and conduct them to
profit, if thou wilt come and do it, thou shalt have
all the profits made of them over and above the
interest of the money they cost and the wear and
tear of them." Slater came, and his triumph will
ere long engage our attention. Meanwhile a word
regarding that upon which Providence in common
with Newport was casting backward glance — com
merce. In this domain it Is our acquaintance John Brown
— the brother of Moses — that bespeaks attention.
No whit less restive now was John than when we

268 RHODE ISLAND
beheld him upbraiding Sullivan (through Greene)
for the failure of tbe Franco-American movement
against the British under Pigot. One of the few
Providence merchants to reenter the slave trade, he
was a member of the General Assembly in March,
1784, when the emancipation bill was passed ; and
although instructed by the Providence town meet
ing to support the measure, he made over it a very
wry face indeed. A " shaUer policy," he stigmatized
it, to prohibit slave holding or to interfere with the
lucrative business of slave trading. His course on
slavery, like his course In relation to the Continen
tal frigates and In denunciation of Sullivan, was
but a variation at considerable moral cost upon
the precept, " Put money in thy purse." It is true
that in 1787 we find him (under the spur of a
desire to enlist In a commercial venture the capital
of his brother Moses) actuaUy proposing to quit
the " Giney " trade, and urging Moses to enter
the General Assembly, where he could work for the
suppression of slavery. But in 1797 he became
the object of a legal prosecution at the hands of
Caleb Greene of Newport for participation In this
very trade to Guinea. The same year he wrote to
Greene begging him to desist from the suit for the
reason that " he had done with the trade now ; "
yet in 1799, as a member of the lower house of
Congress, be did not scruple to proclaim from his
seat that all the existing legislation against slavery
should be repealed ; "for why," be asked, "should

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 269
we see Great Britain getting all the slave trade to
themselves ? "
The commercial venture of 1787 in which John
Brown endeavored to enlist the support of Moses
Brown was a voyage to the East Indies. The idea
was a bold one. It was only since 1783 that the
mariners of Salem, Massachusetts, following a lure
which had enthralled Marco Polo, Columbus, and
Da Gama, had adventured to the Orient; but
Brown, as the affair of the Gaspee had shown, was
nothing if not bold. Besides (and this perhaps was
the main consideration) the slave trade was now so
obstructed by local penal legislation, and the West
India trade by British restrictions, that a depar
ture in commerce had become almost a necessity.
As far back as 1782 the historic house of Nicho
las Brown & Company had been dissolved, and in
its stead there had arisen under Nicholas Brown
the house of Brown & Benson, and under John
Brown the house of Brown & Francis. Between
1787 and 1807 the latter house, which owned its
own docks and yards and built its own ships, em
ployed in tbe East India trade four vessels, — the
General Washington, the Warren, the President
Washington, and the George Washington. Of
these the largest was the President Washington
(950 tons), and all were uniformly successful in
their voyages. Outward bound, they made the
ports of Madeira, Calcutta, Madras, Batavia, Pon-
dicherry, and Canton. Returning, they touched

270 RHODE ISLAND
at St. Helena, St. Ascension, and St. Eustatia.
Their cargoes of anchors, cordage, cannon and
shot, bar iron, Narragansett cheese, spermaceti
candles, wine, brandy, spirits, and rum were ex
changed for tea, sUks, "china," cotton goods,
lacquered ware, cloves, and flannels, and the pro
fits earned cast those even of slave-trading into
the background.
In 1794 Brown & Benson (now Brown, Benson
& Ives), stimulated by the success of Brown &
Francis, determined likewise to adventure In the
East. They sent out (respectively in 1794 and
1798) two notable ships, the John Jay and the
Ann and Hope. Both made successful voyages,
but both alike (in strong contrast to the vessels
of Brown & Francis) led checkered careers end
ing in disaster. The John Jay on her first voyage
(to Bombay and Canton) was caught In a mon
soon and lost nearly aU her masts and aU her
sails and spars. She furthermore was scourged by
smaU-pox and narrowly escaped seizure by pirates
In the China seas. When finaUy, In 1796, she got
home she brought with her, besides 560,000 pounds
of tea, such articles of interest as silks (13 boxes
and 14 pieces), umbreUas (2 boxes and 64 single
umbrellas), china-ware (138 boxes), fans (8 boxes),
quicksUver (2 tubs), sugar candy (2 tubs), pre
served fruits (4 tubs), ostrich feathers (610), rat
tans and canes (1800), one bundle of window
screens, one backgammon board, and what not.

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 271
The John Jay in 1806 was captured by a British
sloop-of-war, and in order to effect her release it
became necessary to appeal to the High Court of
Admiralty. In 1807 she struck a reef off Pigeon
Island (near Java) and went to pieces.
As for the Ann and Hope, her career was varied
in the extreme. She was a fast ship, and carried
a good armament. In 1798 she sailed for Canton.
She stopped at Sydney, Australia, and afterwards
at the uninhabited island of Tinian. Here there
was discovered, wildly pacing the sands, a Lascar
(East India sailor) who had been cast away in
a brig manned by whites and East Indians. The
whites had been rescued by a passing vessel, but
the Lascars had been left to their fate. At length
a Spanish slave ship had touched at the Island.
By this craft the Lascars (all save the narrator)
had been carried away In Irons. The narrator had
escaped by concealing himself In the woods. Sub
sisting on oranges, cherries, plums, and cocoanuts,
— products of the spot, — he had passed his time
In solitude and tears, watching for a sail. A man
not without parts was this Robinson Crusoe of
the Orient, for he spoke English, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Malay. He was taken to Macao,
whence he could ship readily for Bengal. On the
same voyage the Ann and Hope fell in with a
French privateer, which gave her chase and fired
three shots at her. These were returned with em
phasis, and the privateer drew off. In 1806, on a

272 RHODE ISLAND
return voyage from the East, the vessel, together
with her cargo, was lost on Block Island.
Commodities imported from the East Indies
into Providence in 1795 were valued at i811,910 ;
in 1800 at $726,924 ; in 1804 at $887,000 ; in
1806 (the year of the loss of the Ann and Hope)
at $662,200. The trade lasted untU 1841, but Its
heyday was over by 1807.^
The trade of Rhode Island with the East was
free from the peculiar embarrassments that beset
the slave trade and the West India trade, but
it suffered from others common at the time to
American trade everywhere. John Brown died in
1803, and before his death the embarrassments
spoken of had become serious. Among them after
1 The registered tonnage of the United States calculated on an
average of ten years, 1800-1809, was held in the following ratio
compared to population : —
New Hampshire 0.09 tons to tlie inhabitant.
Vermont .001 tons to the inhabitant.
Massachusetts .37 tons to the inhabitant.
Rhode Island .19 tons to the inhabitant.
Connecticut .10 tons to the inhabitant.
New York .13 tons to the inhabitant.
New Jersey .01 tons to the inhabitant.
PennsylTania .10 tons to the inhabitant.
Delaware .02 tons to the inhabitant.
Maryland .17 tons to the inhabitant.
Virginia .03 tons to the inhahitaDt.
North Carolina .03 tons to the inhabitant.
South Carolina .09 tons to the inhabitant.
Georgia .03 tons to the inhabitant. Seybert, p. 308.
Quoted by Dr. WUliam Jones in his Transition of Providence
from a Commercial to a Manufacturing Community.

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 273
1793 was (as has been said) interference by for
eign powers. Interference was of two kinds —
depredations by Barbary pirates and seizures by
the British and French (then at war) under the
orders and decrees of their respective governments
with regard to neutrals.
The Barbary pirates were the same marauding
race that in 1680 had taken captive WiUiam Har
ris, the antagonist of Roger WiUiams. European
States had long been paying them tribute, and
since 1785 tribute had been accumulating against
the United States. It had not sooner been col
lected, because hitherto the Algerians and Timi-
sians had been confined by Portugal within the
Straits of Gibraltar and so had been unable to
lay hands upon American ships. In 1793, through
British contrivance, the Portuguese blockade was
suspended for a twelvemonth and the pirates
flocked out into the Atlantic. In one cruise they
captured ten American merchantmen and enslaved
one hundred and five citizens.
The news when received at Providence caused
the greatest concern. Theodore Foster, one of the
United States senators from Rhode Island, was
beset with requests to make known what Congress
would do. " We can't send out a ship," wrote
Welcome Arnold in January, 1794, " without stip
ulating to redeem the seamen from the Algerines.
Will Congress set about building a navy imme
diately ? ... If Congress must buy peace it can

274 RHODE ISLAND
do it cheaper with a navy building." On the 4th
of February the town of Warren, with commend
able forethought, wrote asking to be given a chance
to build some of the ships for the projected navy.
On February 13 George Benson, of the house of
Brown & Benson, inquired anxiously : " Why is
there no decision on the proposal to equip a smaU
fleet ? The season for cutting ship-timber Is fast
closing, and we learn by an arrival from South
Carolina 'that a vessel from Gibraltar brings au
thoritative Information that the Algerine fleet Is
refitting and actually means to cruise on our coast
next summer." Letters like the foregoing were
productive of results. On March 27, 1794, Con
gress ordered six frigates to be buUt — among
them the ever famous Constitution. Despite the
plea of the town of Warren, none was ordered
to be built In Rhode Island, yet the State was not
permitted to go unrecognized. In June, 1794,
Silas Talbot, the hero of the capture of the Pigot
galley, was appointed one of six new naval cap
tains. Rhode Island built neither the Constitution, the
President, the United States, the Chesapeake,
the Congress, nor the Constellation ; in 1798,
however, the Federal government purchased from
John Brown the Indiaman George Washington.
In 1800 (fact humiliating and strange) this vessel
under Captain Bainbrldge was sent to Algiers
as bearer of tribute to the Dey. The story how

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 275
the George Washington, as the ship of a tributary
nation, was compelled to carry a party of two hun
dred Algerine envoys to Constantinople that they
in turn might render tribute to the Sublime Porte,
is interesting, but cannot here be repeated. Suf
fice it to say, that soon after the return of the ship
to the United States, there came an end to tribute
— an end which Stephen Decatur, son and grand
son of a Decatur of Newport, did not a little to
bring about.
Toward the War of 1812 — a contest for com
mercial rights forced upon America by the Anglo-
French wars which had begun in 1793 — the atti
tude of Rhode Island was peculiar. Its seamen
ever and anon were Impressed,^ and between 1804
and 1807 its ships suffered from the British orders-
in-council. But the Jeffersonlan embargo. Imposed
in 1807, proved more destructive to its interests
than impressment and orders-in-council combined.
The measure gave a foretaste of absolute cessation
1 In May, 1794, the British man-of-war Nautilus put into New
port Harbor for supplies. It became known that there were on
board the vessel a number of impressed American seamen. The
General Assembly thereupon detained the captain (Boynton) and
his first lieutenant until a search could be made. As a result of
the search, six men were found who claimed to be American citi
zens : one from Martha's Vineyard ; one from Charleston ; one
from Boston ; one from Georgetown, S. C. ; one from Portsmouth,
Va. ; and one from New York. All were liberated. This prob
ably is the earliest case of resistance by an American govern
ment to the British claim of right of impressment. S. S. Rider,
Book Notes, vol. i.

276 RHODE ISLAND
of trade with Great Britain. When, therefore, in
1812 war with Great Britain was declared, Rhode
Island was emphatic in protest. The General As
sembly denounced a resort to arms ; the town of
Providence tolled its bells and lowered its fiags
to half-mast ; Napoleon Bonaparte was denomi
nated an " atrocious murderer and incendiary," and
Great Britain was lauded as an " oppressed nation
gloriously struggling for the preservation of its
liberties." These utterances were supplemented
by others more specific. In 1813 Governor Wil
liam Jones denied the right of the president to
summon the militia out of the State, and In 1814
the same official gave warning that " notwithstand
ing our respect for the law and our strong attach
ment to the union of the States, there may be evils
greater than can be apprehended from a refusal
to submit to unconstitutional laws." After such
an assertion of particularism as this the State was
ready for the Hartford Convention, the initial step
toward which it took, and the sessions of which it
honored with four delegates.
Rhode Island, although refusing to sanction the
War of 1812, furnished in the person of Oliver
Hazard Perry of South Kingstown the most pictur
esque naval hero of the conflict. In 1775 James
Wallace, captain of the British frigate Rose, had
written to Abraham Whipple: "You, Abraham
Whipple, on the 10th June, 1772, burned his Majes
ty's vessel, the Gaspee, and I will hang you at the

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 277
yard-arm," whereupon Whipple had replied : " Sir,
always catch a man before you hang him." Perry
thus had before him a model of the epigrammatic
in a naval dispatch, when, on September 10, 1813,
he wrote : " We have met the enemy and they are
ours." Another Rhode Island figure of interest in
connection with the War of 1812 was James De
Wolf the slave trader of Bristol. In 1812 De
Wolf put in commission the privateer Yankee.
The vessel in three and one half years made six
cruises, captured in all forty prizes, destroyed
British property to the value of five millions of dol
lars, and sent into Bristol a miUion dollars' worth
of goods. On the fifth cruise alone the profits were
so great that the two negro cabin waiters, Cuffee
Cockroach and Jack Jibsheet, received respectively
eleven hundred and twenty-one dollars and eighty-
eight cents, and seven hundred and thirty-eight
dollars and nineteen cents.
It remains for us to follow the fortunes of Sam
uel Slater. On reaching Pawtucket Slater did three
things: he secured lodgings at the house of the
Quaker machinist, Oziel Wilkinson ; he fell deeply
in love with Wilkinson's daughter, the laughing-
eyed Hannah ; and he inspected carefully the spin
ning appliances of the factory operated by Almy
& Brown. The appliances he pronounced worth
less, and he at once set to work to replace them by
a fuU set of machines constructed after the Ark-

278 RHODE ISLAND
Wright designs. Models he had none, nor even
drawings, for the exportation of these things from
England was forbidden under heavy penalties.
But he was able to make drawings from memory,
and by the aid of them models were constructed.
On December 20, 1790, the Almy & Brown fac
tory was newly equipped and ready to start.
By reason of Improved machinery, masterly su
perintendence, and ample capital, the firm of
Almy & Brown was successful In producing cot
ton yarn. As late, however, as 1803 It was the
only successful cotton firm in New England. In
aU the country besides there was but one other
cotton firm and that soon failed. What was needed
to establish the industry of cotton manufacturing
in America was protection against English goods,
and this came unbidden and unwelcome with the
embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812. The dis
turbances which were wrecking commerce — carry
ing Newport down to commercial death and sadly
injuring commercial Providence — disturbances
which a Providence town meeting on January 28,
1809, denounced as subversive of the natural right
of navigating the ocean — these disturbances, un
known to Rhode Island, were preparing the way
for Its greatest prosperity.
Within thirty miles of Providence in 1805 there
were five small cotton factories operating 4000
spindles. In 1815, within the same radius, there
were 171 factories employing 26,000 workmen.

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 279
operating 134,588 spindles, and consuming annu
ally 29,000 bales of cotton in the production of
27,840,000 yards of cloth. The cessation of the
war brought with it the removal of barriers to
foreign trade and an influx of EngUsh and India
cotton goods with a lowering of prices. There
upon Rhode Island cast In its lot definitely with
those demanding a national protective system and
supported the tariff of 1816.
To provide the capital for the operating of fac
tories, banks early became Indispensable. Between
1817 and 1819 such Institutions increased from
seventeen to thirty. To connect the numerous
small mill viUages with Providence — their cn^
trepbt and their depiM — good roads early were
required. Between 1803 and 1842 thirty-six turn
pike companies were incorporated. Mill employees
were growing in number, and the problem of
education arose. It was met in part In 1796 by
Samuel Slater. He established at Pawtucket a
Sunday-school at which there were taught the
rudiments of knowledge. His efforts were supple
mented by those of John Howland at Providence,
who as a barber was a member of the Association
of Mechanics and Manufactures, a society organ
ized in 1789. By the energy of Howland the Gen
eral Assembly in 1800 was led to pass an act
creating free schools. The act was repealed in
1803, and -no other was passed until 1828.
In iUustration of the transition in Rhode Island

280 RHODE ISLAND
from commerce to manufactures there may be
cited the case of the g^eat commercial house of
Brown & Ives, formerly Brown, Benson & Ives.
As late as 1828 this house was commercial, al
though manufactures largely concerned it. To
guard Its commercial Interests it joined in a peti
tion to Congress against the tariff of 1828, a mea
sure which bore heavily on hemp, saU-cloth, Iron,
and molasses. But in 1834 Edward Carrington,
Wilbur KeUey, Nicholas Brown, Thomas P. Ives,
Moses Brown Ives, John Carter Brown, and Rob
ert H. Ives formed the Lonsdale Cotton Company,
and soon afterwards the house which had sent forth
the John Jay and the Ann and Hope sold Its last
ship and ceased to tempt fortune on the sea.
Commerce in Rhode Island having been sup
planted, tbe fact was not long in pointedly disclosing
itself. The magnate now was no Wanton (Wil
liam or John) or Godfrey Malbone eking out privBr
teering with mercantile adventuring. The magnate
of this order had been swept as ruthlessly Into the
realm of anecdote as earlier had been swept into
the same realm the WUUam Harrises, the WiUiam
Coddingtons, and the WiUiam Brentons of the
order of agriculture. Now the magnate was a less
picturesque but more ample and utilitarian figure
— the cotton-mUl owner. Such was WiUiam
Sprague the son of the founder of the famUy of
Sprague, and such was WUliam Sprague the grand
son. Under tbe firm name of " A. & W. Sprague,"

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 281
the Spragues junior owned and administered pos
sessions princely in extent and magnitude in the
valley of the Pawtuxet. William, the son of the
founder, became governor of Rhode Island in 1888
and United States senator in 1842. William,
nephew to the latter, became governor in 1860 and
United States senator in 1868.
The period of fifty years dealt with in the pre
sent chapter is noteworthy In Rhode Island history
for the gubernatorial administrations of Arthur
and James_F.eniieE,_father and son. Arthur held
office continuously from 1790 to 1805, and James
continuously from 1807 to 1811 ; an interval as a
whole comparable with that daring which Samuel
Cranston held the same office a century earlier,
or with that during which the office was held by
various members of the Wanton family. The Fen
ner administrations were coincident largely with"
the administrations of Washington,^ Adams, Jef-
^ The topics of national politics which were of special interest
to Rhode Islanders at this time were the location of the national
capital and the assumption of the State debts. Of almost equal
interest was the matter of appointments to Federal office. Wash
ington, who in the other States ignored party considerations, in
Rhode Island (because of the obstinacy of that commonwealth in
withstanding the Union) paid attention to them. Arthur Fenner,
Jabez Bowen, Henry Marchant, William EUery, John Collins,
William Channing, John Carter, and many others were appli
cants for favors. — J. F. Jameson, "The Adjustment of Rhode
Island into the Union in 1790," Pub. R. I. Hist. Soe. vol. viii ;
Gaillard Hunt, " Office Seeking during Washington's Adminis
tration," Am. Hist. Rev. vol. i.

282 RHODE ISLAND
ferson, and Madison. Under Washington and
Adams Rhode Island was Federalist. The treaty
of Jay with England and the resistance to French
spoliations were favorable to the interests of the
State as a commercial community. Under Jeffer
son the Republicans gained control, but under
Madison they lost it because of their advocacy of
the War of 1812. After the rise and development
of the protective tariff issue the State became
Whig. But not thus alone is our period one of note. In
1790 the Providence Society for Promoting the
Abolition of Slavery was chartered. In 1799 reso
lutions were passed by the General Assembly con
demning tbe Virginia and Kentucky Nullification
Resolutions. In 1822 the Rhode Island Historical
Society was founded. Between 1831 and 1837
there took place an anti-Masonic ag;itatIon, and
In 1835 the Boston and Providence Railroad was
opened. The Abolition Society of 1790 owed its existence
to Moses Brown and " CoUege Tom " Hazard of
South Kingstown ; but associated with these lead
ers were David HoweU, Arthur Fenner, and
Samuel Hopkins ; and Jonathan Edwards was
associated by correspondence. Over tbe anti-Nul
lification resolutions of 1799 one pauses amazed at
the irony of Time in his revenges. In 1798 Vir
ginia bad declared : " In case of a deliberate, palpable
and dangerous exercise of . . . powers not granted

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES 283
[to the Federal government] , the States . . . have
the right and are in duty bound to interpose for
arresting the progress of the evil." In 1815 Rhode
Island, through Its governor (William Jones),
indorsed the report of the Hartford Convention,
a report which said : " In cases of deliberate, dan
gerous, and palpable Infractions of the Constitution,
affecting the sovereignty of a State and the liber
ties of the people, it is not only the right but the
duty of such State to interpose its authority. . . .
When emergencies occur which are either beyond
the reach of the judicial tribunals, or too pressing
to admit of the delay Incident to their forms.
States which have no common umpire must be
their own judges and execute their own decisions."
With the mention of some interesting names the
present chapter may be dismissed. Between 1787
and 1824 Rhode Island was visited by the travelers
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, J. P. Brissot de
Warville, and the Due de La Rochef oucauld-LIan-
court; and by the statesmen Talleyrand and the
Marquis de Lafayette. Talleyrand came in 1794,
and he alighted at Newport. He tarried several
weeks, received no letters, asked no questions, paid
his reckoning and went his way. Why had he come ?
Mr. George Champlin Mason, writing In 1884, con
jectured that Talleyrand's " Memoirs " when printed
might solve the little mystery. The " Memoirs " at
length have been printed. Is the mystery solved ?
As for the Marquis de Lafayette, his coming.

284 RHODE ISLAND
which made memorable the year 1824, was to renew
associations of the time of D'Estaing. Nor are the
names here to be mentioned exclusively foreign.
They include Elisha Potter and Benjamin Hazard,
members of the General Assembly, and Tristam
Burges, the " bald eagle " of the national House of
Representatives. Pitted In many a contest against
John Randolph of Roanoke, Burges proved himself
a doughty defender of Rhode Island's bulwark, the
protective tariff system.
Yet of all the names of our period those which
chiefly are of interest are John and Moses Brown.
John established trade with the Orient. Moses
established the spinning of cotton yarn.

CHAPTER XIV
THE DORK REBELLION
Suffrage and Representation — Thomas W. Dorr — Rival Conven
tions and Governments — Dorr the Fanatic — Luther vs. Borden
— National Party Politics.
Originally in the four Rhode Island towns the
suffrage was coupled with the freehold. The ad
justment was agricultural, and so long as the towns
remained agricultural it was natural. When, how
ever, Rhode Island life expanded, when to agri
culture there was added commerce, and when to
commerce there were added manufactures, a read
justment was required ; one that would admit to a
share of power the newer element in the body
politic — the artisan class as distinguished from
the class that was land-owning. Readjustment the
freeholders (powerholders) for over fifty years
refused to grant. Their close corporation based
upon property they guarded from profanation as
jealously as had the Puritans their close corpora
tion based upon religion. In Massachusetts it took
a revocation of charter to get rid of religious ex
clusiveness. In Rhode Island it took a rebellion —
a rebeUion of the unifying present against the
separatist past — the rebellion headed by Thomas

286 RHODE ISLAND
W. Dorr — to get rid of the exclusiveness of pro-
prietaryism. The movement which culminated In the Dorr
revolt was directed principaUy against the restric
tion on the suffrage, but it also was directed against
inequality of town representation in the General
Assembly. Both grievances were grounded in the
actual constitution of the State : the suffrage griev
ance in the rule of freehold qualification expressed
In the statute of 1724, and the grievance as to re
presentation In the apportionment provision of the
Charter of 1663.
Of the two grievances that in respect to repre
sentation was the earlier felt. Providence by the
close of the Revolution had so gained In population
as to be entitled to tbe same representation as
Newport. As a matter of fact, it was represented
by four assemblymen or deputies, and Newport by
six. In 1791 a commencement orator of Brown
University alluded to Rhode Island as possessing
no constitution or political compact entered Into by
the people, and described the charter as an old
musty document from Charles Stuart. The an
tiquity of tbe charter would have weighed little
at this time had not the feature of Inequality of
representation been joined to the feature of age.
It was In relation to State taxation that the ine
quality feature was most complained of. In 1796,
therefore. Providence issued a summons for a
convention of towns to take into consideration

THE DORR REBELLION 287
the question of forming a " written " State consti
tution. Eight northern towns responded, and in
October the General Assembly appealed to the
towns as a body for Instructions regarding a con
stitutional convention ; further than this no result
was attained.
Providence, nevertheless, was In earnest. In
1797, one of its citizens. Colonel George R. Bur-
rill, delivered a Fourth of July oration. In it the
declaration was made that " equal representation
is involved in the very Idea of free government."
But bow was such representation to be obtained
in Rhode Island ? To petition the legislature for
it would, the speaker said, be to " require the
powerholders to surrender their power, — a re
quisition which it is not in human nature to
grant." The only course left was to ignore tbe legis
lature and to form a constitution without its aid.
Thomas W. Dorr had not been born when the
Burrill oration was delivered, but what forty-four
years afterwards he did was in full consonance
with it. The legislature was Ignored and the peo
ple in their primary capacity were invoked to
act. Between 1797 and 1829 at least one attempt
(1811) was made to secure through the legis
lature an enlarged suffrage, and at least five
attempts were made (1799, 1817, 1821, 1822, and
1824) to secure through a new constitution a

,288 RHODE ISLAND
more just legislative apportionment. None of the
attempts were crowned with success. The Gen
eral Assembly indefinitely postponed tbe mea
sures of 1811 and 1817, and those of 1821 and
1822 (which, together with the measure of 1817,
were resolutions that a constitutional convention
be called) were defeated at the polls. The attempt
of 1824 brought about the submission, of a con
stitution for acceptance or rejection, but rejection
was the fate encountered. Under the Instrument re
jected Newport would have lost one assemblyman
and Providence (now far larger than Newport)
and other northern towns would have gained one.
The scheme had been devised to please all the
towns ; it pleased none.
With 1829 the movement for constitutional re
form in Rhode Island became distinctly a move
ment for enlarged suffrage. Providence had risen
in population from 11,745 souls In 1820 to 15,941
in 1825, and of these a large fraction were me
chanics and cotton-mill operatives, — men who
were not owners of land and who could not vote,
yet who regarded exclusion from the franchise as
more or less of an Injustice. Petitions in relation
to the suffrage were presented in the lower house
of the General Assembly on behalf of the unen
franchised in the towns of Providence, North
Providence, Bristol, and Warren. The petitions
were referred to a. committee of which Benjamin
Hazard was chairman, and by that committee were

THE DORR REBELIJON 289
somewhat contemptuously dismissed.^ At this time
Thomas W. Dorr was twenty-four years old. He
was the son of Sullivan Dorr, a successful Provi
dence manufacturer, and as such had received a
careful education. From Phillips Exeter Academy
he had gone to Harvard College. There he had been
graduated in 1823. Afterwards he had studied
law with Chancellor Kent of New York, and now
was a respected and rising man practicing his pro
fession in his native town. Just how much of a
Tiberius Gracchus, revolving in his ardent mind
the lot of the downtrodden in Rhode Island, Dorr
may have been prior to 1838 (the year of his election
to the General Assembly), we do not know. That
by nature he was a reformer, an idealist, we are led
to surmise. Among his early legislative acts were
a bill (which became law) in favor of poor debt
ors, and a protest against interference with the
Abolitionists. His first unequivocal revelation of
himself, however, was in an address to the people
of Rhode Island Issued In 1884. In that year a
convention of northern towns was held at Provi-
' " The committee have not thought it necessary to inquire
particularly how many of the signers are native citizens of the
State, but they are sufficiently informed to be satisfied that a
very great proportion are not so, and it is ill calculated to pro
duce a favorable opinion of their qualification . . . that persons
who have adventured, and are every day adventuring among us
from other States or countries, to better their condition; who
enjoy, in common with ourselves, all the protection and benefits
of our equal laws, and upon whose departure there is no restraint ;
should still be restless and dissatisfied," etc.

290 RHODE ISLAND
dence " to promote the establishment of a state
constitution," and Dorr was selected to voice to
the world the convention's purpose.
What constitutionally was the condition of
Rhode Island in 1834? The suffrage was re
stricted to such as were owners of land, or were
tbe eldest sons of owners of land, of the value of
one hundred and thirty -four dollars : that we know.
Representation in the General Assembly was alto
gether unequal: that also we know. But there
was a further anachronism. The General Assem
bly persisted in arrogating to itself judicial func
tions — a proceeding rendered easier by tbe usage
under the charter of an annual election of judi
cial officers.
In point of ability Dorr's address was worthy
of his Harvard training. It was perspicuous and
temperate and it dealt with each of the several ele
ments of injustice in the Rhode Island system :
with the narrow suffrage, the unequal apportion
ment, and the dependent judiciary. Tbe author's
conclusion — in the light of the provision of the
Federal Constitution guaranteeing to each State
a republican form of government — was that in
Rhode Island tbe form of government was not
republican and should be changed. But in reach
ing his conclusion he, as an idealist, advanced one
radical, one revolutionary, doctrine : namely, that
the suffrage was in no sense a political privilege
but a native and natural right. It is Important

THE DORR REBELLION 291
that Dorr's advocacy of this doctrine be borne
in mind, for upon it in a short time his personal
fortunes and those of his supporters were wrecked.
The plea of Dorr for a constitution was produc
tive of no considerable effect. Time sped and there
was reached the year 1840. By that year Provi
dence had Increased in population until it num
bered 23,172 souls. Warwick, Smithfield, Cum
berland, North Providence, and Bristol had also
increased heavily in population. The newcomers,
both American and foreign, sympathized with the
ideas of the Dorrites or Constitutionalists in favor
of an enlarged suffrage, and through their Interest
and support agitation was renewed. In January,
1840, an " Address to the Citizens of Rhode Is
land," printed in New York, was widely distributed ;
in March " The Rhode Island Suffrage Associa
tion " was formed ; and in November there ap
peared in Providence a suffrage newspaper, the
"New Age."
" Our first appeal," the Suffrage Association de
clared, " is to heaven for the justice of our cause.
Next to the whole people of Rhode Island . . .
through the medium of the ballot-box. Next to
the General Assembly of the State. These f aiUng,
our final resort shall be to the Congress of the
United States . . . and if need be to the Supreme
Judicial Power to test the force and meaning of
that provision in the Constitution, which guaran
tees to every State in the Union a republican form

292 RHODE ISLAND
of government." Neither by Dorr nor any other
suffragist in 1840 would It seem seriously to have
been contemplated that, in seeking to set up a gov
ernment opposed to that of the charter, force might
have to be employed, and that in a conflict between
a government dejure and the government de facto,
tbe de facto government would have on Its side
the Immense advantage of organization, regularity,
and law, to the ultimate sanctions of imprisonment
and death.
In January, 1841, the General Assembly again
was appealed to by the suffragists to call a conven
tion to adopt a constitution. The Assembly merely
repeated its time-worn tactics. The suffrage ques
tion it passed over, and the question of apportion
ment It resolved to submit for consideration to a
constitutional convention to be composed of dele
gates in tbe number of members of the General
Assembly, and, like them, chosen by the freemen
under the existing law. Disgusted with tbe As
sembly's disingenuousness, the suffragists called a
mass meeting to be held at Providence on April
17. The meeting was a success. Three thousand
men formed themselves in civic procession to
march to the State House. Each participant wore
a badge stamped with the words, " I am an Amer
ican Citizen ; " and banners were carried displaying
the mottoes : " Worth makes the Man, but Sand
and Gravel make the Voter ; " " Virtue, Patriot
ism and Intelligence versus $184 worth of Dirt."

THE DORR REBELLION 293
At the State House a collation was served and
speeches were made by ex-Congressman Dutee J.
Pierce and Samuel Y. Atwell — men who as suf
fragist leaders stood next In prominence to Dorr
himself. On May 5 a mass meeting was held at New
port, and on July 5 such a meeting for a second
time was held at Providence. At the Providence
meeting resolutions were passed demanding a con
stitutional convention and affirming : " We will
sustain and carry Into effect [the proposed] con
stitution by all necessary means." On July 20
it was announced that a convention would be held
at Providence on October 4. To this convention
delegates were to be chosen by the votes (delivered
on August 28) of " every American male citizen,
of twenty-one years of age and upwards, who has
resided in this State one year preceding the election
of delegates."
Promptly on the day appointed the suffragist,
or, as It now had come to be caUed, the People's
Convention, met. On November 15, after an ad
journment. It met again ; and by the 18th its work
was completed. The constitution which it framed
sought to correct the three evils emphasized by
Dorr in his address. It extended the suffrage to
each white male citizen of the United States, of the
age of twenty-one years, who should have resided
one year in tbe State and six months in the town or
ward where his vote should be offered. It remedied

294 RHODE ISLIND
the inequitable apportionment, and it removed from
the General Assembly the judicial power and the
power of pardon. The Instrument provided that
the vote upon adoption should be taken on Decem
ber 27, 28, and 29. On these days, accordingly,
the vote was taken, and it was large. Thirteen
thousand nine hundred and forty-four ballots were
cast. Each voter had been instructed to Indorse
his ballot with the statement that he was a free
man or a non-freeman, as the case might be, and
the Indorsements disclosed a vote of 4960 free
men and of 8984 non-freemen. On January 12,
1842, the People's Convention reconvened and the
returns were canvassed by a duly authorized com
mittee. Estimating the adult males of the State
qualified to vote under the People's Constitution at
23,142 (an estimate not gainsaid), the Instrument
had been adopted by a decisive popular majority.
The claim was made that it also had been adopted
by a majority of the actual freemen of the State.
The final act of tbe convention was to proclaim the
constitution in force and to send a copy of it to
the governor to be communicated to tbe General
Assembly. Meanwhile, what concerning the convention
which in January, 1841, had been decided upon
by the General Assembly itself ? It met on No
vember 1, remained in session two weeks, and
adjourned until February, 1842. Tbe truth Is that
the convention was in sore distress. It did not

THE DORR REBELLION 296
know what to do regarding the suffrage. When it
reconvened It found the situation to be this : The
General Assembly had refused to recognize the
People's Constitution, but it had resolved that
those whom the Freemen's Constitution might by
its terms enfranchise should be permitted to vote
upon the question of adoption. Grateful for the
cue, the convention on February 19 submitted a
constitution abolishing the freehold qualification
in the case of citizens of Rhode Island who were
native Americans, and rectifying in some degree
the unequal representative apportionment. Upon
this constitution a vote was taken on March 21,
22, and 23, with the result that it was defeated by
the narrow majority of 676.
Driven step by step by the agitation and acts of
the suffragists from an attitude of uncompromis
ing opposition to an extension of the suffrage, the
General Assembly and its constitutional convention
had at length granted substantially what the suf
fragists demanded. Why, then, was the Freemen's
Constitution not adopted ? Because, under the ad
vice of Dorr, the suffragists voted against it. Feel
ing toward the anti-suffragists was bitter, and,
moreover, the belief was still cherished that the
People's Constitution itself could be put legaUy,
and hence peaceably, into effect.
From a legal standpoint the outlook for the
suffragists was not reassuring. Early in March
the State Supreme Court unofficially, but none the

296 RHODE ISLAND
less emphatically, let It be known that In their
judgment the People's Constitution was whoUy
iUegal, and that any attempt to proceed under
it would be treason against the State. A little
later (March 25) the chief justice (Job Durfee),
instructing the grand jury at Bristol, asserted
that the only sovereign people anywhere were the
corporate people, that no change of government
could anywhere legaUy be effected save through
and by the act of the corporate people, and that
if the existence of a new constitution in Rhode Is
land were affirmed to the Supreme Court of the
United States, the question to be answered would
not be who voted for it, nor how many, but what
right anybody had to vote for it at aU. Then, late
in March, the General Assembly enacted a law
(caUed because of its rutblessness the " Algerine
Law ") which declared all meetings for the election
of State officers, other than in accordance with ex
isting statutes, iUegal and void. Penalties of fine
and imprisonment were prescribed against any and
aU persons who should assist at such meetings or
should accept from them nominations to office.
Finally, about the middle of April, a letter from
President John Tyler to Governor Samuel W.
King of Rhode Island was published, which stated
that in case of violence it would be the duty of the
president " to respect the requisitions of that gov
ernment which had been recognized as the existing
government of the State through aU time past.

THE DORR REBELLION 297
until he was advised in regular manner that it had
been altered and abolished and another substituted
in Its place by legal and peaceable proceedings
adopted and pursued by the authorities and people
of the State."
So far as the views of the State Supreme Court
were concerned. Dorr had sought to neutralize the
effect of them by circulating in reply a legal opin
ion signed by nine lawyers of Providence (of whom
he was one), asserting "that the People's Con
stitution Is a republican form of government as
required- by the Constitution of the United States,
and that the people of this State, In forming
and in voting for the same, proceeded without
any defect of law, and without violation of any
law." Under the People's Constitution there was held,
on April 18, an election of State officers and of
both branches of the General Assembly. Dorr him
self was chosen governor, and on May 3 he was
inducted into office by a great concourse, civic
and military. On the same day the legislature-
elect convened in a foundry building and Dutee J.
Pierce was chosen temporary speaiker of the house.
In the presence of the house and senate Dorr
delivered his inaugural address. The legislature
remained in session two days. It requested the
governor to make known to the president of the
United States, to Congress, and to the various
State governors, the fact of the adoption of a re-

298 RHODE ISLAND
publican constitution in Rhode Island, and passed
an act repealing the Algerine Law. Two things of
obvious importance the legislature failed to do.
One was to take possession of the State House
with its records, and the other was to InstaU a new
judiciary. On May 4 the regular General Assembly under
the charter met at Newport and Samuel W. King,
who had been reelected governor, was Inaugurated.
The Assembly then dispatched an appeal for help
to President Tyler. A letter to the president was
dispatched also by the Dorr government ; but not
content with a mere letter. Dorr personally set
forth for Washington to see the president. On the
theory of the People's governor respecting a Fed
eral guaranty of republicanism to tbe States, the
Federal government of course could not do other
wise than recognize tbe validity of the People's
Constitution. StUl the president, and likewise
the Senate, beset as they were by communications
from the charter government, might be misled ;
hence the journey of Dorr. In Washington no
thing was accomplished. The president adhered
to the position assumed in his letter to Governor
King, and the Senate laid the Dorr papers upon
the table. On May 12 Dorr, on his way back
from his fruitless mission, was In New York. His
view of the suffrage as a natural right, a right so
obvious and of such magnitude as to be guaranteed
to every American State by the Constitution of the

THE DORR REBELLION 299
United States, had in practice utterly collapsed.
The People's governor was discouraged, and so
frankly avowed himself. He could, he said, do no
more ; he must hope for an act of amnesty.
Thomas W. Dorr went to Washington a pro
nounced reformer — a reformer dominated by an
idea (as reformers are wont to be) — but not an
unrecking fanatic. He returned to Providence a
fanatic, not only unrecking but vehement. After
May 16 there was manifest in bim the rigor and
relentlessness of those whose souls, disdainful of
prudence, go fiercely marching on.
From his fit of depression in New York the Peo
ple's governor had been roused by an unexpected
and timely proffer of help. Tammany Hall had
rallied to his support. Under Tammany guidance
he had attended the Bowery Theatre. Under Tam
many auspices he had been given a public reception.
By Tammany braves and henchmen he had been
escorted to the New York pier, whence he was to
embark for Stonlngton. The demonstration last
named may be found described in the New York
" New Era " as " a vast civic procession which num
bered thousands of our most worthy. Industrious,
and respectable citizens." In the New York " Amer
ican " the description to be found runs thus : " We
never In our lives saw a worse looking set than the
^governor's escort — the Five Points could not have
beaten it at election. The governor sat bareheaded.

300 RHODE ISLAND
looking as grave as an owl. He is a man of nerve
and no mistake — any but such a person would
have broken down In a fit of laughter at the ab
surdity of the thing."
On the whole, something more substantial than
the memory of a theatre party, a reception, and a
procession was carried back by Governor Dorr
from New York to Rhode Island. He bore with
him a written request from the colonel of the Thir
teenth Regiment of New York Artillery and the
lieutenant-colonel of tbe Two Hundred and Thirty-
Sixth Regiment of New York Infantry to be
permitted to attend him with their respective com
mands. In Providence three thousand people gath
ered to welcome him home, and from a carriage
he delivered to them an impassioned speech. He
declared that in New York he had been promised
five thousand men for use against any troops that
the government of the United States might send
into tbe State, and by way of emphasizing the
point he drew a sword and flourished it. During
the absence of Dorr a number of participants in
the People's government (Dutee J. Pierce among
them) had been arrested by the charter authorities.
A warrant had been issued for tbe arrest of Dorr,
but as yet there had arisen no moment favorable
for serving it.
Such was the situation when, on the afternoon
of May 17, Dorr's followers by command of their-
leader seized some pieces of artillery. On the 17th,

THE DORR REBELLION 301
about midnight, these same followers — a force of
perhaps two hundred and thirty-four men with two
cannon — set forth under the governor to take
possession of the town arsenal on Cranston Street.
The structure, a stone building, was held by a
guard which refused a summons to surrender, and
Dorr at once unflinchingly gave orders to discharge
the cannon. They had been tampered with and
merely flashed twice without result. It was a foggy
night ; there was great confusion ; alarm bells were
ringing ; all over the city the militia and citizens
were turning out ; nobody knew what to expect ;
nobody knew who was friend or who was foe. Suf
fice it to say that when day broke Dorr (who in
any event was possessed of no military capacity)
stood revealed a revolutionary leader abandoned
by all save a handful of friends. At eight o'clock
a letter was handed to him announcing the resig
nation of substantially his entire government, and
before nine o'clock the People's governor was in
flight for Connecticut.
The remainder of May and tbe greater part of
June passed without incident. By June 25 a small
force of suffragists had assembled at the village of
Chepaohet in the Rhode Island town of Glocester,
which borders upon the Connecticut line. The spot
had been chosen as a safe rendezvous for such sym
pathizers with the fugitive leader as were willing
to fight for him, but only a few had come. Dorr
himself, after an inspection of the men, their

302 RHODE ISLAND
poor munitions, scant subsistence, and haphazard
fortifications on Acote's Hill, disbanded them and
sought again his Connecticut refuge.
Martial law in Rhode Island was proclaimed by
Governor King on June 26. Arrests were freely,
even indiscriminately, made. The prisons were
filled. For the People's governor a reward of five
thousand dollars was offered. Nobody came for
ward to claim It, and requisitions for the fugitive
upon the governors of Connecticut and New Hamp
shire were not complied with. In Providence the
occasion was not permitted to go unimproved by
the pulpit. On May 22, the Sunday after the at
tack on the arsenal. Dr. Francis Wayland, presi
dent of Brown University, preached an impressive
sermon ; and on July 21 tbe Rev. Mark Tucker
(Congregationalist) foUowed Wayland's example.
A parallel has been suggested between Dorr
with bis youth, good birth, unusual education, and
superior social position, and Tiberius Gracchus.
No such parallel was sanctioned by the Rev. Mark
Tucker. In his eyes young Dorr was a young Cati
line, talented and mad; or, to make use of the
clergyman's own iUustration, " a William Lloyd
Garrison propagating errors of the worst charac
ter, assailing all government, the Holy Sabbath,
and the Christian Ministry."
For more than a year Dorr kept aloof from
Rhode Island. At length, on October 31, 1843,
he came to Providence. He was immediately ar-

THE DORR REBELLION 303
rested under an indictment for high treason, and
on April 26, 1844, was brought to trial before the
State Supreme Court with Chief Justice Durfee
presiding. The trial was held at Newport — a place
other than that where the crime was alleged to
have been committed — before a jury who to a man
were, as has well been said, "Algerines and Whigs."
Samuel Y. Atwell was the principal attorney for
the prisoner, but at the time of the trial he was ill,
and Dorr, although assisted by other counsel, con
ducted in the main his own case. His chief reli
ance was upon the contention that treason could not
be committed against an individual State of the
Union. The point in 1844 was more novel than it
is to-day. It had not been Illustrated by tbe acts
of John Brown in Virginia. The ruling of the
Rhode Island court, nevertheless, was that treason
against a State was an offense altogether possible,
and, under instructions which left nothing to the
discretion of the jury. Dorr was convicted. Sum
ming up — with allusion to the capital failure of
the suffragist legislature to seize the opportunity
open to it in May, 1842 — his own unfortunate
career, the prisoner recited the familiar lines : —
" There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries."
Governor Dorr was sentenced by the court to

304 RHODE ISLAND
imprisonment for the term of his natural life, at
hard labor, and In separate confinement. A reac
tion of sentiment soon set in, and in January, 1845,
he was offered his freedom on condition of sub
scribing to an oath of allegiance to the state of
Rhode Island. This offer he proudly declined to
accept. In June, 1845, he was unconditionally
liberated by act of the General Assembly, and in
May, 1851, his civil and political rights were re
stored to him. On December 27, 1854, he died at
the age of forty-nine years.
To tbe cause of enlarged suffrage, and hence to
the cause of human freedom. Dorr made sacrifice
of professional and political advancement, of fam
ily and social sympathy, and ultimately of life
Itself. The conclusion is hard to escape that much
of this sacrifice was unnecessary. Success he
achieved twlc,e, — once when unable to realize that
he had done so. The Freemen's Constitution was
his work and his triumph. Wrung piecemeal from
a reluctant legislature and equally reluctant con
vention, it was granted at all because of the agita
tion which he had instigated. In November, 1842,
during his absence from the State, practically the
same constitution (the one to-day in force) was
resubmitted to the people and adopted. Resubmis
sion should not have been required. Had Dorr not
been primarily an Idealist and doctrinaire, and
secondarily a lawyer and statesman, it would not
have been required. Tbe reformer in him was his

THE DORR REBELLION 305
paradox, bis irony. It led him to victory, but so
blinded him in the moment of it as to rob his
career of symmetry and spoil it by anti-climax.
Divers are the queries to which the Dorr Rebel
lion gives rise. What, for example, was its rela
tion to Federal law? What was its relation to
national party politics ?
The first query was propounded in the judicial
action, Luther vs. Borden, a cause which grew
out of the assertion and exercise of martial law by
Governor King. Martin Luther, a shoemaker of
the town of Warren, had acted as moderator of a
town meeting held under the People's Constitution.
For this crime (by the Algerine Law it was a
crime) the charter government sought to arrest
him. The government failed, owing to the fact
that Luther had fled to Fall River, Massachusetts,
but In searching for him a squad of militia broke
open his house and maltreated his family. As a
citizen of Massachusetts (which he now claimed
to be) Luther, in November, 1842, brought suit
in the Federal court against the trespassers, and
in January, 1848, the case was heard on appeal
before the United States Supreme Court. Whether,
as so pertinaciously maintained by Dorr, political
power under the Constitution of the United States
be vested in the people as a congeries of adult
males, or whether it be vested in such of tbe people
only as hold it by preexisting law, is a point which

306 RHODE ISLAND
in this case was ably dealt with by Daniel Webster,
who, with John Whipple, was counsel for the ap
pellees. "Is It not obvious enough," asked Webster,
" that men cannot get together and count them
selves, and say they are so many hundreds and so
many thousands, and judge of their own qualifica
tions, and call themselves the people and set up a
government ? Why, another set of men forty miles
off, on the same day, with the same propriety, with
as good qualifications, and in as large numbers,
may meet and set up another government; one
may meet at Newport and another at Chepachet,
and both may caU themselves the people. What is
this but anarchy? What liberty is there here but
a tumultuary, tempestuous, violent, stormy liberty
— a sort of South American liberty, without power
except in spasms — a liberty supported by arms
to-day, crushed by arms to-morrow. Is that our
liberty ? "
As for the Dorr Rebellion and national party
politics, there is a sense in which at first there was
no connection between them. The suffragists were
composed of Whigs and Democrats alike. Outside
of Rhode Island the movement was given a politi
cal bearing through the action of Tammany Hall ;
action which enlisted for Dorr the lively sympathy
of Democrats such as William CuUen Bryant and
Samuel J. Tilden. Within the State, Dorrites and
Democrats, Algerines and Whigs, became respec-

THE DORR REBELLION 307
tively identified after the adoption of the Consti
tution of 1842. It was by Whigs (chiefly) that
Dorr was brought to trial and prison ; and it was
by Democrats (after a hotly contested guberna
torial campaign) that the People's governor was
liberated. Moreover, it was by the Rhode Island
Democracy that, in 1844, the national House of
Representatives (then Democratic) was led to
make an investigation of the " rebeUion " in an
attempt to discredit the course of President Tyler.
But in a deeper sense the suffrage agitation in
Rhode Island owed its Inception to national party
politics. At this period the Whigs — Daniel
Webster, Joseph Story, Chancellor Kent — stood
for property as tbe basis of the suffrage and of the
State. The Democrats, on the other hand, — the
followers of Andrew Jackson, the man of the fron
tier, — stood for manhood as the basis. A struggle
between these ideas took place in most of the older
commonwealths. In Rhode Island the abrogation
of the Charter of 1668 and of the Freehold Act
of 1724 was a triumph fundamentally of the Jack-
sonlan Democracy. The triumph here, though, was
marked by a feature peculiarly its own. In 1854
the General Assembly (still omnipotent) passed
an act reversing and annuUing the judgment of
the Supreme Court rendered against Thomas W.
Dorr.

CHAPTER XV
THE CrVrL WAR AND AFTER
From Charter to Constitution — Survivals — Manufactures and
Slavery — A Fighting Commonwealth — The Franchise — Cor
rupt Politics — Reform — Providence and Newport-
The transfer of government in Rhode Island from
officers elected under the Charter of 1663 to of
ficers elected under the Constitution of 1842 was
a work of extreme simphcity. On May 1, 1843,
the last charter Assembly convened at the State
House In Newport. On the foUowing day the first
constitutional Assembly convened In the same
place, effected an organization, and adjourned.
Straightway the charter Assembly reconvened, re
ceived a report of the organization of the constitu
tional Assembly, and adjourned sine die.
On May 3' instaUation of government under
the constitution was made the occasion of a cele
bration by tbe citizens of Newport. A procession,
composed of the incoming and outgoing State
officers and assemblymen, the president and mem
bers of the State Historical Society, the presi
dent and officers of Brown University, and other
dignitaries, formed in front of the State House and
marched to the North Baptist Church. Here Cap-

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 309
tain David M. CoggeshaU of Newport (a descend
ant of John CoggeshaU, the first president of Provi
dence Plantations) brought forth the identical box
in which the Charter of 1663 had been conveyed
across the Atlantic by " Captyne George Baxter,"
and for the last time the venerated Instrument was
"held up on hygh and presented to the perfect
view of the people." The principal feature of the
exercises at the church was an oration by WiUiam
G. Goddard. The orator — something of a reaction
ary — extolled the days of charter rule. " Then,"
proudly declared he, " the men who governed the
State owned the State." " Can we pass, my fellow
citizens," he asked, "without emotions allied to
filial sorrow, from under the beneficent dominion
of the old charter — the oldest constitutional
charter in the world ? — the charter under which
" Hopkins and EUery afhxed their signatures to
the immortal Declaration of American Independ
ence ; " under which " the Rhode Island line
stood foremost in fighting the battles of liberty ; "
under which " this State joined the Confederacy
established by the glorious old thirteen ; " under
which " Rhode Island by the adoption of the
American Constitution added the last link to that
chain of more perfect union which binds these
States together? "
In getting rid (even by help of a Dorr) of a frame
of polity sanctioned by observance during one bun-

310 RHODE ISLAND
dred and eighty years. It was weU-nigh inevitable
that some of the separatism of the age of Roger
WiUiams (when the charter originated) should be
carried Into the era of the new regime — the era
of unification and manufactures. In part what
was carried was separatism modified ; in part it
was separatism intensified. In the continued itin
erancy of the General Assembly, In the yet narrow
suffrage. In the yet unequal representation, and in
the yet anomalous position of the judiciary, there
was separatism ; but It was separatism of an ame
liorated kind. Not for many years had the Assem
bly been wont to meet at Portsmouth and War
wick, but down to 1843 it had met regularly at
some point in each of tbe five counties of Newport,
Providence, Washington, Bristol, and Kent. Now
(1854) its meeting places were restricted to New
port and Providence. Hitherto the suffrage had
been perquisite to tbe ownership of a freehold or
to the relationship of first born son to one distin
guished by such ownership. Now It was open to
adult males who were native Americans, with the
saving limitation that only the possessors of one
hundred and thirty-four doUars' worth of land
might vote on questions of taxation. Hitherto
representation in the lower house had been the ar
bitrary device, j— six from Newport ; four from
Providence, Portsmouth, and Warwick ; and two
from each of the other towns. Now representation
was based on population ; but membership of the

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 311
house might never exceed a total of seventy-two,
and to no single town was there to be accorded
membership In excess of one sixth of the total.
The judiciary hitherto had been slavishly depend
ent upon the legislature. Now the members at
least held office during good behavior and at a
fixed minimum remuneration.
Where, under the new regime, an intensification
of separatism was to be remarked was in the form
of the senate and In the rule for amending the con
stitution. Under the charter, the upper house had
been composed of ten members chosen by general
ticket — ten members at large. Under the constitu
tion, senators — after the precedent set in tbe case
of the Federal system — were alloted one to each
political unit [town].^ Under the charter (subse
quent to the Revolution) amendment had been ob
tainable by vote of a simple majority of the quali
fied people. Under the constitution (In view of
' The organization of the Rhode Island senate has found its
strongest justification in the. argument that in Rhode Island (a
diminutive State) it is essential to keep political power in the
hands of the rural districts as an offset to the economic power of
the growing municipality of Providence (W. P. Sheffield, The
Mode of Altering the Constitution of Rhode Island, pp. 40-41).
One thing, however, this argument overlooks, and that is that in
human affairs power of whatever kind should be conceded a due
share of political responsibility. The principle, it is true, is not
recognized in the organization of the senate of the United States,
but the question arises whether a senate for a continental area is
a fit archetype for one for an area strictly limited and local. It is
not without suggestiveness that even a continental area has its
corrupt burroughs — its Nevadas and Delawares.

312 RHODE ISLAND
the results wrought by simple majorities through
Thomas W. Dorr) amendment was only to be ob
tained by vote of the qualified people in a majority
of three fifths.
Survivals — the survivals recounted above — con
stitute the most significant fact In the later history
of Rhode Island. It is In the light of them that the
politics of the State, both legitimate and debased,
are to be understood. One after another they have
yielded to the power of the uncongenial age into
which they have been brought ; but they have
yielded slowly and in no case without a struggle.
The first to yield was legislative surveillance of the
judiciary. Athwart the face of the judgment recorded
against Thomas W. Dorr the General Assembly
in 1854 ordered to be written, " Reversed and an
nuUed." The succeeding Assembly asked of the
Supreme Court its opinion of the constitutionaUty
of this act, and received in reply, through Chief
Justice Richard W. Greene, the statement that the
particular act was unconstitutional, but that the
long-continued exercise by the Assembly of judi
cial functions derived a kind of sanction through
acquiescence. Once again had the Rhode Island
judiciary receded from before the legislature. It,
however, was for the last time. In 1856 there came
up for determination the case of Taylor vs. Place,
a case in which an appeal to tbe General Assembly

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 313
had been entertained. The chief justice now was
Samuel Ames, a man of wide legal learning, of
marked judicial talent, and of a personal presence
not unlike that of Salmon P. Chase. In the opinion
which he proceeded to render he set forth fully the
nature of judicial power, pointed out that the Con
stitution of 1842 vested such power in " one "
Supreme Court with appropriate inferior courts,
and voiced the irresistible conclusion that it was the
whole and not a part of judicial power wbich thus
had been conferred. It remained for the legisla
ture to confess the correctness of Ames's position.
The confession was not made at once. Not until
1860, in the case of Hazard vs. Ives, did the legis
lature after an elaborate debate tacitly and, as it
were, sullenly lay down a power which it had exer
cised from tbe earliest days, and In defense of
which It had ventured to antagonize both the Earl
of Bellomont and Queen Anne.
Two other matters of importance claimed the at
tention of Rhode Islanders at this period : manu
factures and the question of African slavery. By
1840 (owing to a tariff, to steam, and to the power
loom) the cotton manufacture had become thor
oughly established. After that year cotton was con
fronted by a rival industry in woolens — a manufac
ture identified in origin with the energetic Hazards
of Peacedale, and with the ingenious and versatile
Zachariah Allen. Implements and machinery, now.

314 RHODE ISLAND
too, were notable local industries. In the time of
the Revolution, Pawtucket, Providence, and other
towns had been centres for the production of can
non and small arms. By 1794 Elijah Ormsbee
and David Wilkinson, the latter a brother of the
wife of Samuel Slater (she of the laughing eyes),
had Invented a steamboat which would run, and by
1849 George H. Corliss of Providence had invented
the Corliss engine. The cotton and woolen indus
tries, the manufacture of tools and Implements, and
the fabrication of jewelry (an Industry which from
1810 to 1857 had steadily augmented in importance)
made Rhode Island, and especiaUy Providence with
its 50,000 souls, a point of exceeding Interest by
1860. Toward the question of slavery in the South, tTie
attitude of Rhode Island was neither more nor less
advanced than that of New England In general.
After 1820, when the slave trade was declared
piracy, Newport and Bristol by degrees declined its
fascinations, and the sentiment of the State — dic
tated by the industrialism of Providence — became
a sentiment increasingly for freedom. The Mexican
War was not liked, but the temptation to rejoice
over the victories of General Zachary Taylor at
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma proved too great
to be resisted. Atonement was sought to be made
by legislative resolutions condemnatory of the war
and of President Polk for inaugurating It. Tbe
electoral vote of the State, which in 1852 had been

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 315
cast for Franklin Pierce, was given in 1856 to
John C. Fremont. In 1854 State officers were for
bidden to lend aid in the rendition of fugitive slaves,
and in 1859 the people were profoundly stirred by
the raid of John Brown.
Not long after the raid in question, Abraham
Lincoln (February 28, 1860) delivered a political
speech in Providence ; and not long after the Lin
coln speech Stephen A. Douglas (August 2, 1860)
was given an ovation and a " clam bake " at Rocky
Point. Lincoln's thesis was the memorable one,
" This government cannot permanently endure half
slave and half free." " He abounds in good humor
and pleasant satire," was tbe comment of the Prov
idence " Journal," " and often gives a witty thrust
that cuts like a Damascus blade." At the Douglas
ovation, the little giant took occasion to observe
that one of his ancestors on the maternal side [an
Arnold] had been an associate of Roger Williams,
and that the latter was really the first American
" squatter sovereign."
In spite of Its Quakers, Rhode Island may ac
curately be described as a fighting commonwealth.
It preferred at first to fight upon the sea, but as
far back as the Canadian and Cuban expeditions
of the early eighteenth century It fought with con
spicuous bravery on land. In the war of the Revo
lution the doughtiness of the Rhode Island line at
Monmouth, Long Island, Red Bank, Princeton,

316 RHODE ISLAND
and Trenton, under leaders such as Christopher
Lippitt, Israel Angell, and Christopher C. Greene,
was proverbial, and the war for the Union showed
that in martial spirit there had been no decUne.
William Sprague was elected governor in 1860,
and before the Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
he offered to President Buchanan the use of the
Rhode Island militia for the defense of the na
tional capital and for the maintenance of the Con
stitution and laws. After Lincoln's inauguration
and the outbreak of actual war, the military efforts
of the State were unceasing until the restoration
of peace In 1865. During this interval there were
sent Into the field 28,457 men, — a force comprising
eight regiments of infantry,^ three of cavalry, three
of heavy artiUery, and one regiment of light artil
lery. The force was in excess of the quota of the
State ; it was greater in proportion to population
than that sent into the field by any other State
save perhaps one, and its cost was §6,500,772. No
part of it was raised by conscription. To conscrip
tion the individualism of the people was unalter
ably opposed.
1 As in the Revolution, so in the war for the Union Rhode Is
land raised a regiment of colored troops. An attempt to form
such a regiment was made in 1861, but only a few enlistments
were secured. In 1863 a second attempt was made which resulted
in the formation of the Fourteenth Rhode Island, a regiment of
heavy artillery. The regiment cost nearly a million of dollars
In bounties, showed little physical endurance, and was made the
object of systematic frauds.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 317
Unlike the war of the Revolution, the Civil
War was fought at points wholly beyond the juris
diction of the Narragansett Bay commonwealth.
None of the operations, therefore, caU for detailed
consideration. Rhode Island troops were with
Grant before VIcksburg, and helped contest the
bloody actions of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettys
burg, and those of the Wilderness Campaign. The
most prominent officer whom the State gave to the
conflict was General Ambrose E. Burnside. He
fought as a colonel at Bull Run ; led in 1862 the
" Burnside Expedition " against North Carolina ;
commanded, the same year, the Ninth Army Corps,
and the Army of the Potomac before Fredericks
burg ; and in 1863, in Ohio, promulgated the
orders which resulted In the arrest of Clement L.
Vallandigham. His subsequent service- was with
the Ninth Corps under Generals Meade and Grant.
Burnside was a native of Indiana, but his wife
was from Providence, and to Rhode Island, bis
adopted State, he devoted his life and talents as
warrior, governor, and United States senator.
Rhode Island, It has been said, preferred origi
nally to fight upon the sea. It so preferred until
after the War of 1812. With the decline, first, of
privateering, then of the slave trade, and finally
of legitimate commerce Itself, there supervened
(along with the rise of manufactures) a compara
tive indifference to the sea. Owing to this indif
ference It perchance was that the commonwealth

318 RHODE ISLAND
which In the Old French War had kept a large
quota In the royal navy, and fifteen hundred men
on board of privateers, contributed to the navy in
the war for the Union 480 men.
Distrust of delegated power had made it hard
for Rhode Island to ratify the Federal Constitu
tion. A like distrust made it hard for the State to
put aside the Charter of King Charles II in favor
of the Constitution of 1842, and in the case of
the Constitution of 1842 made it hard to secure
amendments. The amendment chiefly desired was
one eliminating the separatist survival which with
held from naturalized citizens, not possessed of a
freehold, the privilege of voting. Already the sur
vival which kept the judiciary under surveUlance
had been gotten rid of ; but it had not been gotten
rid of by amendment to the constitution. In fact,
down to the time of the Civil War, the only amend
ments adopted had been three: one taking the
registration of voters out of the hands of the towns ;
one investing the governor with the pardoning
power ; and one shortening the itinerary of the
General Assembly.^
After 1842 It had been the Democrats that had
1 On April 7, 1886, there was adopted an amendment (the Fifth)
prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors to be
used as a beverage. By a further amendment (the Eighth) adopted
June 20, 1889, Amendment five was annulled. For the history of
liquor legislation in Rhode Island see J. H. Stiness, Two Centuries
of Rhode Island Legislation against Strong Drink, 1SS2.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 319
advocated an extension of the suffrage to the for
eign bom. After 1842 it had been the Whigs that
had declared peril to lurk in a suffrage that was
undiscriminating. Force, now, was imparted to
the declaration of the Whigs by an arrival of
Irish Immigrants — people poor, untutored, and
driven from home by famine. In 1854 the Whig
party began to disintegrate, but the fact proved
to be little to the advantage of the Democrats.
On the ruins of the Whig organization there arose
that of Know-Nothlngism. The Know-Nothings
were the "A. P. A." of their day. They were
for America for the Americans. In Rhode Island,
therefore, they were against Irishmen and Catho
lics, and by a sweeping victory at the polls In 1855
put a temporary check to agitation in favor of
widening tbe suffrage. In 1862 and 1868, how
ever, when the Republican party was in control of
the legislature, serious effort was made to secure
for soldiers and sailors who had been naturalized
in Rhode Island the privilege of voting. The effort
met with failure, and was not renewed with success
untU 1886.
Yet even in Rhode Island the trend of the age
toward manhood suffrage was not permanently to
be stayed. In 1871, and again in 1876, the ques
tion of enfranchising foreign-born citizens was
submitted to the people, and in 1878 a systematic
and determined scheme of agitation was put in
operation. The difficulty was not to obtain a ma-

320 RHODE ISLAND
jorlty vote in behalf of the naturalized foreigner.
It was to obtain a majority vote of three fifths.
The situation was not unlike what it had been in
1840, when Dorr began his memorable crusade.
The powerholders — the legally qualified electors
— would not yield the boon desired. A three fifths
majority. It was averred, never could be secured.
What recourse was left? The same that in 1840
was left to the Dorrites, — either a new State
constitution or interposition by the Federal gov
ernment. At first Interposition by the Federal govern
ment was sought. In 1878 Charles E. Gorman
(a naturalized citizen of the United States for
nearly forty years, and since 1848 a citizen of
Rhode Island) presented a memorial to the Sen
ate and House of Representatives claiming for the
subscribers the privilege of the suffrage in Rhode
Island under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend
ments to the Constitution of the United States.
Said the memorial : " The naturalization laws of
the United States are, within the State of Rhode
Island, nullified. . . . The naturalized citizens,
who have renounced claim to the protection of the
counl/ry of their origin, and either are, or are en
titled to be, citizens of tbe United States, are ren
dered, unless in exceptional cases, utterly alien to
the institutions of their adopted country." In the
Senate the memorial was referred to the judiciary
committee, but the report upon it was unfavorable.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 321
If, observed Senator Edmunds, chairman of the
committee, voting were one of the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States as
such. It must be a privilege or Immunity of all
citizens, male and female, infants, lunatics, and
criminals. Having failed with the Federal government,
the Gormanites devoted every energy to the task
of securing a new constitution. And .here the
parallel between them and their predecessors the
Dorrites is of special Interest. Like the Dorr
ites, the Gormanites contended that the right and
power of framing a constitution was. In every
State, a right and power inherent in the people,
and that it was not limited In the mode of its
exercise by provisions of the existing constitution
with regard to mere amendment. On one point,
however, the Gormanites stopped short of their
predecessors. They did not assert a right in the
people of creating a new constitution regardless
of the legislature. The General Assembly must
take the Initial step, must submit to the people
the question, ShaU a constitutional convention be
called ?
In 1880 there was formed an Equal Rights As
sociation, prominent in which, besides Charles E.
Gorman, were Abraham Payne and Dr. L. F. C.
Garvin. The question of a new constitution was
urged upon the attention of the legislature, and
even in Congress agitation was renewed. By some

322 RHODE ISLAND
members of the national House and Senate it was
proposed In 1881 to reduce the congressional repre
sentation of Rhode Island under that clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment which prescribes reduction
for denying the right to vote to male citizens of the
United States twenty-one years of age. But Rhode
Island's senior senator, Henry B. Anthony, who
had represented the State in the Federal upper
house since 1859, was able to show in an elabo
rate speech that, counting against the State two
thousand naturalized citizens disquaUfied as voters,
the population was still sufficient to command the
existing representation.
In the General Assembly, despite the defeat of
successive proposals to submit the question of a
constitutional convention, sentiment was disturbed.
Accordingly in 1883 the senate asked of the Su
preme Court its opinion regarding the power of the
Assembly to submit such a question. The court
unanimously replied that tbe power of the legisla
ture, under the Constitution of 1842, was limited
to proposing specific amendments, each of which
required a three fifths majority of the electors for
its ratification. By this opinion the purposes of the
Gormanites — the neo-Dorrites — seemed to be
definitely and finally set at naught. The situation
found effective summary and burlesque in a
squib : —
" Alas ! what a pity our fathers did n't mention,
That we boys, if very good, could hold a convention.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 323
They never said we should n't but did n't say we might,
' Ergo,' cry the sages, ' you have n't got the right.'
'T was very bad, indeed, their permission to deny,
But infinitely worse at once to up and die ;
For thus they turned the look aud flung away the key,
And Rhode Island 's ' in a box ' for aU eternitee."
But it Is the unexpected that happens, and in 1888,
on a further submission to the electors of the pro
position to amend the State constitution by grant
ing the suffrage to naturalized citizens, there was
cast an affirmative vote in a majority of three fifths.
By the amendment of 1888 there was eliminated
in Rhode Island the last but one (the dual cap
ital) of those separatist survivals from the age of
Roger Williams which were carried In ameliorated
form into the Constitution of 1842. It was other
wise with the survivals which were of the nature
of separatism intensified — town representation in
the senate and the three fifths majority require
ment for amending the constitution. The contest
over these particular survivals (the corrupt politics
contest) had in 1888 only just begun ; nor Is it yet
finished. The history of corrupt politics in Rhode Island
is curious, interesting, and suggestive. In the
seventeenth century as early as 1649 It was found
necessary by Providence Plantations to pass an
act in restraint of fraudulent voting, and in 1666
(under the charter) a penalty of five pounds was

324 RHODE ISLAND
prescribed against voting on the part of persons
who were not freemen. In the eighteenth century
— between 1710 and 1750, the paper money era —
fraudulent voting and bribery were both practiced
with extreme boldness. A law of 1715 required
each freeman to indorse his ballot with his fuU
name, and made illegal voting punishable by a fine
of five pounds, by not to exceed twenty stripes, or
by imprisonment for one month. After 1724 voters
were required to be owners, each, of a freehold In
the value of one hundred pounds, or to be the eld
est sons of such owners ; but admission to freeman
ship was through the towns, and a landed neighbor
was apt (for a consideration) to be willing to
accommodate an unlanded one with the loan of
a freehold until after election. In 1730, therefore,
an act against fraudulent representations became
necessary, one (in 1736 and 1738) supplemented
by acts which prescribed for illegal voting the
penalty of fine and suspension of electoral privi
leges for three years. Because of the depreciation
of the currency, these various enactments were in
1742 foUowed by a law raising the nominal free
hold qualification to two hundred pounds ; and by a
law in 1746 raising it to four hundred pounds and
decreeing that the election of a candidate should
be invalidated by a single vote that was fraudulent.
It was not until 1762 — twelve years after the
interposition of Parliament — that It was deemed
practicable to restore the original freehold qualifi-

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 325
cation by lowering the nominal one to forty pounds.
Nor even then did there come a cessation of fraud
in elections. Throughout the period of the Hopkins-
Ward controversy, which did not end until 1768,
votes (especially in Narragansett) were bought
quite systematically; and in 1790 ratification of
the Federal Constitution is said to have been se
cured through purchased votes — those of dele
gates from " back towns." ^
In the nineteenth ceutury, after the town of
Providence had attained a population of 23,000, it
there became a practice on the part of dishonest
freeholders to divide up tracts into house lots, and
by conveying the lots for a limited time to accom-
.plices — transactions evidenced by the notes-of-
hand of the grantees — to multiply their electoral
power many fold. With the rise to colossal wealth
of divers individuals, just before the Civil War,
the practice of influencing votes directly by money
is again brought to notice. Since the war, in con
nection with the growth of the Republican political
machine, the practice has become ingrained and
widespread — a scandal of a magnitude that is
portentous. What, however, in the history of political de
generacy in Rhode Island Is most noteworthy Is
the intimate connection maintained between that
degeneracy and the rural districts. When, in the
' In this connection Rider's Book Notes, vol. xiii, p. 182, should
be consulted.

326 RHODE ISLAND
eighteenth century, Rhode Island began to grow
distinctly commercial and cooperative, the agricul
turalists began as much as possible to withdraw
themselves ; to erect between themselves and the
urban centres barriers. These barriers were town
Unes. Between 1700 and 1800 twenty-one towns
were created, many of them avowedly for the rea
son that (as stated in 1765 in the petition for the
creation of North Providence) "the petitioners
are near all farmers whose interest and business
differ from the merchants." Thus barricaded,
thus withdrawn and secluded, the country towns
(not only in the eighteenth century but also in the
nineteenth) became the stronghold of corruption.
The specific spots in rural Rhode Island where
political corruption most prevaUs are the towns of
BurriUviUe, Coventry, East Greenwich, Exeter,
Foster, Glocester, Narragansett,^ New Shoreham
(Block Island), North Kingstown, North Provi
dence, North Smithfield, Scituate, Smithfield, and
West Greenwich. Of these towns six — BurriUviUe,
Glocester, Foster, Coventry, West Greenwich,
and Exeter — are on the Connecticut border, and
are called significantly " heathen." Seven towns —
Exeter, Foster, Glocester, North Smithfield, Scit
uate, Smithfield, and West Greenwich — are losing
^ Narragansett, which comprises that portion of South Kings
town lying east of the Pettiquamscutt River, was created an
administrative district on March, 22, 1888. The privilege of
representation in the General Assembly was conferred upon it on
March 28, 1901.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 327
steadily in population, and are called "dying"
towns.^ Indeed, Exeter, Foster, and West Green
wich have to-day each less population than they
had in 1790. Neither of them supports a resident
clergyman, and the three (along with BurriUviUe,
North Smithfield, and Smithfield) are handicapped
by superstition, ignorance, and certain forms of
immorality. It would be an easy explanation were one at
liberty to ascribe the aforementioned conditions
primarily to the insidious Influence of the State
machine, but to do this one is not at liberty. The
separatism of the Rhode Island agriculturalist —
due chiefly to an Individualistic bent transmitted
from the age of Roger WiUiams — furnished to
the machine Its opportunity. It furnished it, first,
with a senate so organized (upon separatist prin
ciples) as to be controllable through the control of a
few small electorates. It furnished it, second, with
electorates not only small but, through seclusion,
burdened with an ignorance and predisposition
to vice ancient enough to have been bewailed by
Roger Williams, Governor John Carver of Plym
outh, and Governor John Winthrop, Jr., of Con
necticut. It never is safe to indict a whole people,
nor, for that matter, the whole of any one class. It
1 The Rhode Island State census of 1905 (now nearly com
pleted) is expected to show little or no recovery on the part of the
dying towns. Providence (175,000 souls in 1900) should reach
190,000 in 1905.

328 RHODE ISLAND
therefore, perhaps. Is rash to assert that the agri
culturalists — ¦ the farmers — of Rhode Island are,
as a class, corrupt in a political sense, or even cor
ruptible; although the town of Coventry, which
contains 5279 souls, and which in point of social
morality stands weU, has come to be thoroughly
debauched politicaUy. What reasonably may be
asserted Is, that .in Rhode Island — a State cut up
into small towns, each (regardless of population)
possessed of a vote in the senate — there have been
found with no great difficulty corruptible farmers
in numbers sufficient to serve machine ends. Pri
marily It is to separatism — a survivalistic idea
and habit wrought relentlessly into a system — that
the political degradation of Rhode Island to-day is
to be ascribed.
Since 1888 (the year of the adoption of the suf
frage amendment) the task of the political re
former in Rhode Island has been that not of
reforming decadent rural towns, or even of trans
forming them, but of destroying the system en
grafted upon them. Under this system 330,030
(seventy-seven per cent) of the 428,556 Inhabitants
of the State constitute eight cities and towns, and
are represented in the senate by eight members ;
while 98,526 (twenty-three per cent) constitute
thirty towns, and are represented In the senate by
thirty members. One section of population (a sec
tion 175,000 strong and with 29,030 quaUfied

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER ' 329
voters — the section which constitutes tbe urban
division. Providence) is accorded one senator;
while another section (one 40,898 strong and with
5620 qualified voters — the section which consti
tutes twenty rural divisions) is accorded twenty
senators. Prior to the adoption of the suffrage amend
ment, the hope of the Rhode Island reformer cen
tred in the plan of a new constitution to be framed
and adopted by a convention of delega,tes chosen
upon a basis of population, and acting through a
simple majority. But the opinion of the Supreme
Court in 1888 denying the right of the General
Assembly to submit to the people so much even as
the question of a convention, coupled with the cir
cumstance that in 1888 there was actually obtained-
for an amendment so radical as that for an en
larged suffrage a three fifths majority, weakened
the convention plan. In 1897, therefore, when the
reformer again was urging his demand for consti
tutional betterment, he was forced to confine him
self to asking from the Assembly the submission
to the people of an Instrument in the form of an
amendment to the existing constitution, and, as
such, subject to defeat even though desired by a
majority. During the year 1897 a new constitution was
draughted, but In the draughting the senate of
course took part, and although Dr. L. F. C. Garvin
earnestly pleaded for a section reorganizing the

330 RHODE ISLAND
senate on a basis of thirty-six members, to be
chosen from three senatorial districts on the prin
ciple of proportional representation, the old provi
sion, " one senator from each town or city," was
left undisturbed. The proposed constitution never
theless was an advance upon the Constitution of
1842. It vested the governor with a quaUfied
power of veto ; it increased the membership of the
house of representatives from seventy-two to one
hundred, one fourth of which might be held by one
town (Providence) ; it provided for the adoption
of amendments by a majority vote of the electors ;
and it provided for the submission to the people
every twentieth year, beginning with 1910, of the
question, " Shall there be a convention to revise
the constitution ? " But when in 1898, and again in
1899, the Instrument was tendered to the electors,
it was rejected ; the rejection of 1899 being not only
by a majority but by a majority that was emphatic.
Thus far there has been little to show that
Rhode Island (including Block Island) has begun
to abandon venal politics and to dispense with
venal politicians, yet something has been accom
plished. In 1902 Dr. Garvin — a Democrat — was
elected governor In protest against the Republican
State machine, and in 1908 he was reelected.
Under the Constitution (that of 1842) and rules
adopted by the senate, a Democratic governor was
powerless. He could veto no bill ; he could secure
the confirmation of no appointee. One thing, how-

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 331
ever, he could do : make in his official capacity a
revelation to the State and nation of the condi
tions politicaUy which obtained about him. Ac
cordingly, in March, 1903, Governor Garvin sent
to the General Assembly a special message on
bribery at elections. The document was treated
with scant respect by senators and representatives,
but it reached the ear of the nation and also to
some extent the ear of Rhode Island. Said the
Providence " Journal " on the day after the message
was submitted : " The blame for the present order
of things . . . belongs with the educated manu
facturers and business men of the State who are
too busy making money to pay attention to politi
cal conditions." ^
As has been observed, survivalistic separatism
is the fact in Rhode Island worthiest of note since
the Civil War. Other noteworthy facts are the
growth of foreign immigration and the economic,
educational, and social development of Providence
and Newport.
1 In 1904 there was formed the Rhode Island Citizens Union,
an organization having for its object a convention to revise the
existing State constitution. In March, 1905, the Union secured a
hearing before the senate committee on special legislation, and on
May 4 it addressed to the committee a letter proposing a consti
tutional convention to be chosen on the basis of a hypothetical
membership of one hundred in the house of representatives. As
an alternative the Union offered to support an amendment to the
constitution providing for a constitutional convention in 1906.
Nothing was done by the Assembly.

332 RHODE ISLAND
Since 1848 the Irish have been a strong invad
ing element, and since 1880 the Canadian French.
Indeed, within the last two decades the influx of
the French has been phenomenal. As a result, over
thirty per cent of the population of the State in
1900 (134,519 souls out of a total of 428,556)
were foreign born. In the case of the Irish, immi
gration is a fact not especially significant. The
people ally themselves readily with tbe native and
other stocks, and they are not dlscourag^ngly lUit
erate. Tbe towns in which they congregate —
Bristol, Newport, Cranston, East Providence, Paw
tucket, Providence,- and South Kingstown — are
among the thriftiest and most exemplary of all the
towns. On the other hand, the Canadian French
by their presence give rise to a problem. They do
not amalgamate with other stocks ; they are highly
iUIterate ; and the rural towns In which they pre
ponderate among the foreigners — Warren, Co
ventry, Warwick, West Greenwich, BurriUviUe,
Glocester, North Providence, North Smithfield,
Scituate, Smithfield, and Exeter — are among the
Rhode Island towns socially and poUtlcally most
in disrepute.
Not that the Canadian French as such are de
generate. In Woonsocket, where they abound,
morals and politics are exceUent. The trouble with
them is that wherever, as in the worst rural towns,
they are brought as mill operatives into contact
with a decadent American stock, they contribute

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 333
to degeneracy by f alUng to withstand it. By tem
perament (save as to language and tbe domestic
relation) they are a conformable race. They look
to the Anglo-Saxon. Education, combined with
an environment of wholesome politics, would be
yond any reasonable doubt bring them effectually
under the great Anglo-Saxon tradition.
Providence in 1860 was a city of 50,000 souls.
In 1905 it is a city of 190,000 souls. Between
these extremes of date and population much is
comprehended. Industries have become greatly
diversified. Woolen goods as an article of manu
facture have taken precedence of cotton goods.
Silverware, rubber commodities, and malt liquors
have been added to the list of leading Industrial
products. In 1901, moreover, there was completed
in Providence, at a cost of $3,000,000, a new State
Capitol building. It Is a structure of white marble,
classic in design, and commanding in location.
Just prior to its occupation there was adopted a
constitutional amendment dispensing with sessions
of the General Assembly at Newport. The long
standing separatist survival of a dual capital has
thus been eliminated.
In an educational respect Providence possesses
features quite as remarkable as are Its vast and
varied manufactures. Brown University — excep
tional in its traditions of a Francis Wayland, an
Albert Harkness, a J. Lewis Diman, and an E.
Benjamin Andrews ; of a Horace Mann, a Henry

334 RHODE ISLAND
Wheaton, a Richard Olney, and a John Hay — has
grown steadily in equipment and importance. Its
buUdlngs now number more than a score, and Its
graduates are to be found in every State. Next to
It in Importance rank the Friends', or Moses Brown,
School (an Institution dating from 1819), the
State School of Design (1877), and the State
Normal School, admirably complete since 1898.
Then there are the seven Providence libraries : the
Athenaeum (rich in the ownership of Malbone's
" Hours "), the library of Brown University, the
library of the Rhode Island Historical Society, the
Providence Public Library, the John Carter Brown
Library, the State Library, and the State Law Li
brary. Of these the Athenaeum Is an outgrowth of
the library established in 1750 by Stephen Hopkins,
and the Brown University and John Carter Brown
coUections are memorials of the enlightened gen
erosity of John Carter Brown, son and grandson,
respectively, of the two Nicholas Browns, the prin
cipal benefactors of Brown University. The John
Carter Brown coUection Is special In character, em
bracing Americana antedating the year 1800. In
1904 it was removed from the Brown residence on
Benefit Street to a noble structure of the Greek
order built especially for Its use on the University
campus. To one limitation Providence finds it difficult to
become habituated — that of inferiority as a sea
port. Situated at the head of a charming and

THE CrVIL WAR AND AFTER 335
navigable bay, its ships between 1804 and 1806
brought home the spoil of the Indies ; and even as
late as the period 1822-1825 its foreign commerce
was almost equal to what It had been at the end
of 1806. In the conversion of Providence from a
mart to a producing centre three stages have been
traversed : first (1787—1825) the stage In which
the town, by reason of a position interior from the
coast and by reason of the absence of competing
canals and raUways, was a natural distributing
point westward to the Hudson; second (1829-
1840) the stage in which, by reason of embargoes
and tariffs and of competing canals and waterways,
the town was forced into production as a substitute
for commerce ; and third (1840-1900) the stage in
which, by reason of inferior raUway communica
tions with the great exporting regions of the West,
it has been left behind by New York on the one
hand, and by Boston on the other.
As early as 1796 it was realized by John Brown
that Providence must hasten to avail itself of
artificial waterways as a means of commercial
stimulus, and the Blackstone Canal northward
Into Massachusetts was projected. But the work
was deferred, and when in 1828 it at length was
completed, the era of railways was at hand to
render it useless. Yet to-day Providence possesses
a coastwise trade in coal, lumber, and building
materials that far exceeds in value and in the ton
nage of the shipping employed the direct foreign

336 RHODE ISLAND
trade of the period 1787-1825. Presumably with
this not unsatisfactory showing local ambition wiU
need long to be content.
Providence since the war has advanced industri
ally. Newport during the same period has contin
ued its social advance.^ But as a resort the New
port of the twentieth century is a place different
far from the Newport of 1840 or 1860. The Uttle
harbor town, sustained by the patronage of the
South and by that of Its own sons, the Kttle town
dwelt upon so lovingly and oft by the pen of George
WiUiam Curtis, has been replaced by a Newport
sustained by patronage from a more opulent source.
The southerners of the eighteenth and early nine
teenth centuries hired such Newport dwellings or
lodgings as they could find. Between 1885 and
1840 gentlemen from Charleston and Savannah
began building cottages on BeUevue Avenue, Nar
ragansett Avenue, and the Old Beach Road. In
1844 the Ocean House was erected on BeUevue
Avenue, and thenceforth, until 1861, the social Ufe
of Newport was both a cottage and hotel life, the
latter hardly less fashionable than the former. The
Ocean House, was destroyed by fire in 1845, but it
was at once rebuUt, and in 1846 it was in the hey-
^ For a class comprehending both cottagers and hotel patrons
Narragansett Pier in Narragansett and Watch HUl in West
erly have, since the Civil War, become prominent Rhode Island
resorts.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 337
day of its prominence. It possessed a wide veranda,
was pierced by a corridor 252 feet long, and its
chambers were spacious and high. On August 31,
1846, the hotel was the scene of a characteristic
function — a magnificent ball. There were present
three hundred guests at ten doUars a ticket. Dan
cing continued from half-past nine in the evening
until four o'clock in the morning. It was described
as "a medley of quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, and
what is more delightful still, the redowa, an entirely
new and perfectly bewitching dance." Bewitching,
indeed (not to say excruciating), must have been
life at the Ocean House in 1846 to be described
as it was by the correspondent of the Providence
" Gazette : " " We are weU catered for by the
musical world," he wrote. " Miss Northall — the
plump Miss NorthaU — the charming throstle-
throated Miss Northall — has delighted us with
her vocal melody, while De BIgnis — the big De
Bignis — the prominent, aquiline-nosed De BIgnis
— has almost been the death of us with his Italian
comicalities." By 1852 the building of cottages at Newport
had become an active pursuit. There now were
twelve costly ones In existence, four owned by citi
zens of Boston, and eight by southerners. In the
winter of 1858-54 more than sixty were erected.
Among the owners were August Belmont, W. S.
Wetmore, John Carter Brown, Alexander Van
Rensselaer, Charlotte Cushman, Charles H. Rus-

338 RHODE ISLAND
sell, Peter Parker, Samuel Ward, Sara P. Cleve
land, and H. Hunnewell. In 1852 BeUevue Ave
nue was extended to Bailey's Beach, and the same
year the sajes of land by the principal agent of the
town reached |435,000. Between 1851 and 1879
tbe sales by this agent amounted to §13,746,000.
In 1860 the sales were 1508,000 ; In 1863 $900,-
000 ; in 1864 $1,100,000 ; In 1871 $1,532,000 ; in
1872 $1,451,000 ; and in 1878 $791,000.
In an article printed in 1879 in the Providence
" Journal " it is stated th^t fifty thousand doUar
Newport cottages were then common, that a good
many cost over $100,000, and a select few $200,-
000. " Every known and unknown order of archi
tecture was represented. The styles of old Germany
and of modern France, of Switzerland and Italy,
of England and the isles of the sea, were faithfully
reproduced." " Many of the cottages," to quote
again from the article mentioned, " are embowered
among trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. Borders
are cut so as to give the idea of deep vistas, and
hedges inclose beautiful lawns. Standing out in
bold relief are trees like the elm, the oak, and the
sugar maple. . . . Hidden among arbors and trel
lises are spacious conservatories where flowers for
ever bloom; and graperies where delicious fruits
are ripened almost at will. Nectarines, apricots,
peaches, and figs grow in the graperies. Tiny
dwarf trees are set in pots, and when ripened fruit
hangs on the branches, the trees are placed upon

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 339
the dining-table that the guests may pluck the
growing fruit themselves."
But the pastime of luxurious dining was but one
Newport pastime of many. There were sports —
polo and lacrosse ; there was bathing at Bailey's
and Easton's beaches ; there was driving up the
island, and, on " fort days," to Fort Adams. But
more than anything else there was driving In full
regalia In BeUevue Avenue. For what the Pincian
was (and Is) to the Roman, or the Park to the Lon
doner, or the Bois to the Parisian, that was (and
is) BeUevue Avenue to the cottager at Newport.^
Between the Newport of 1879 and that of 1905
1 " Newport is all shingle and clapboard, with a lot of preten
tious wooden houses each on its little acre, or half-acre, of land,
and subject each to the supervision of at least one neighbor.
There is no such thing as privacy, and nobody seems to desire it.
The great thing is to drive every day up and down the Avenue,
as it is called, which is a loose line of wooden cottages with board
ornamentation, or to bathe from the beach or to go on Saturday
evening to the ' Ocean House ' to dance. The air is sirocco cooled
off by the sea. Yesterday we went out on a yachting party —
Commodore Stevens's yacht — The Maria — aud had a charming
sail in the bay. . . . There were two young girls, — one-inch-one
in the waist and half-an-inch in the arms, and rather attractive
notwithstanding ! In the evening, at the Ocean House, we were
greatly amused. There was a great crowd, coming from every
where, and among them some very pretty persons. The band
played, and the great hall was crowded with dancers. People
came in from the cottages — girls, old men, servants and shop
keepers mixed together, and yet there was nothing disagreeable
in the manners of any of them — all were decorous and pleasant."
— W-. W. Story (after a long residence iu Europe) to his daughter,
summer of 1865.

340 RHODE ISLAND
the difference, though less than between the New
port of 1905 and that of 1860 or 1840, Is yet a
difference to be remarked. The fifty thousand dol
lar cottages, and even the one and two hundred
thousand dollar ones, have been superseded by
structures costing nearly half a million. Hotel life,
which even after the war continued for some years
to be fashionable, has almost altogether ceased.
There consequently is less meeting and- mingling
than of yore of representative people from different
parts of the Union. Society, which once was pan-
American, is now almost exclusively a reproduction
of New York.
Newport, the historic town, no longer commands
the unique position that it commanded in the days
of the Wantons and of Berkeley, or in those of the
Malbones and of Dr. Stiles — the days of its com
mercial and intellectual maturity ; but it Is not
therefore void of distinction. The stone windmill
of Governor Benedict Arnold is now more an
object of interest than It was in the eighteenth
century. Trinity Church and churchyard sug
gest loyalism under Queen Anne. The Redwood
Library perpetuates worthily a classic literary
tradition. The Jewish Cemetery blooms ever in
reminder of Spain, Portugal, and the East. The
State House enshrines the fuU length (replica)
portrait of Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Anti
quarians are helped by the museum and collections
of the Newport Historical Society.

THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER 341
On Coaster's Island, withal, the United States
Torpedo Station, Naval Training School, and Naval
War CoUege find congenial cohabitation ; while
in Newport Harbor there gracefuUy ride towering-
masted miracles, creations of two descendants of
John Brown of Providence, John Brown Herre-
shoff and Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, proprietors
of the Herreshoff yacht works at Bristol. From
the War College there has gone forth, in the lec
tures by Captain Alfred T. Mahan on " sea power,"
a characteristic Rhode Island influence. In the
triumphs of the Defender, the Columbia, and the
Reliance there are adumbrated the triumphs of
the Prince Charles of Lorraine, the Deflance, and
the Yankee.
In another way the southern section of Rhode
Island has sustained the Rhode Island tradition.
In South Kingstown, down nearly to the twentieth
century, philosophical idealism (the soul of Rhode
Islandism) was ministered to by Rowland G. Haz
ard, successor in spirit to Roger Williams, Samuel
Gorton, and the individualists ; to Anne Hutchin
son and the Antinomians ; to Mary Dyer, George
Fox, and the Quietists ; to Dean Berkeley and the
Idealists ; to Samuel Hopkins, Moses Brown, " Col
lege Tom," and the Abolitionists ; to Stephen Hop
kins and the Revolutionists ; to David Howell and
the political autonomists ; to WiUiam EUery Chan
ning and the Transcendentalists ; and to Thomas
W. Dorr and the liberationists. Born near Tower

342 RHODE ISLAND
HIU in 1801, Mr. Hazard early became the friend
of Channing, and afterwards the antagonist,
friendly and admired, of John Stuart MiU. He
died at Peacedale on June 24, 1888. The depth
of his individualism, as Dr. Edward Everett Hale
has pointed out, may be gauged from his postulate
that man of himself is " a creative first cause."
The history of Rhode Island has been sketched
in three parts: the part Agriculture and Sepa
ratism embracing the period 1686 to 1689 ; the
part Commerce and Cooperation embracing the
period 1690 to 1763 ; and the part Unification and
Manufactures embracing the period 1764 to the
present day. The last two parts are important as
indicating the course of industrial development
and as revealing separatism in its deep power of
survival. But it is the first part that is most im
portant. It comprehends the time when Rhode
Island alone among commonwealths exempUfied
the two leading Ideas of Christianity and the Re
formation — the two leading ideas of modern life
and progress: the idea of Soul Liberty or Free
dom of Conscience in religion ; and the idea of the
Rights of Man in politics.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

TOWNS AND COUNTIES OF RHODE ISLAND, WITH
DATE OF SETTLEMENT OR OF INCORPORATION

TOWNa.
Providence, 1636.
Foitsmouth, 1638.
Newport, 1639.
Warwick, 1643.
Westerly, 1669, May 14.
New Shoreham, 1672, Nov. 6.
North Kingstown, 1674, Oct. 28.
East Greenwich, 1677, Oct. 31.
Jameatown^l678, Nov. 4.
~BoutE"Kiii^townn?723rrebr26. Glocester, 1731, Feb. 20.
Scituate, 1731, Feb. 20.
Smithfield, 1T31, Feb. 20.
Charlestown, 1738, Aug. 22.
West Greenwich, 1741, April 6.
Coventry, 1741, Aug. 21.
Eieter, 1743, March 8.
Middletown, 1743, June 16.
Bristol, 1747, Jan. 27.
Warren, 1747, Jan. 27.
Little Compton, 1747, Jan. 27.
Tiverton, 1747, Jan. 27.
Cumberland, 1747, Jan. 27.

TOWNS.
Richmond, 1747, Aug. 18.
Cranston, 1754, June 14.
Hopkintou, 1757, March 19.
Johnston, 1759, March 6.
North Providence, 176S, June 13.
Barrington, 1770, June 16.
Poster, 1781, Aug. 24.
BurrillyiUe,' 1806, Oct. 29.
FaU River [now Mass.], 1856, Oct.
Pawtucket, 1862, March 1.
Bast Providence, 1862, March 1.
Woonsocket, 1867, Jan. 31.
Lincoln, 1871, March 8.
North Smithfield, 1871, March 8.
Central Falls, 1895, Feb. 21.
Narragansett, 1901, March 28.
COUNTIES.
Providence, 1703, June 22.
Newport, 1703, June 22.
Washington, 1729, June 16.
Bristol. 1747, Feb. 17.
Kent, 1750, June 11.

B

CHIEF MAGISTRATES OF RHODE ISLAND, 1638-1905
PORTSMOUTH. Judges.
William Coddington, March 7, 1638, to April 30, 1639.
WUUam Hutchinson, April 30, 1639, to March 12, 1640.

346 APPENDIX NEWPORT.
Judge.
William Coddington, April 28, 1639, to March 12, 1640.
PORTSMOUTH AND NEWPORT.
Governor.
William Coddington, March 12, 1640, to May 19, 1647.
PRESIDENTS UNDER THE PATENT OF 1644.
John CoggeshaU, of Newport, May, 1647, to May, 1648.
Jeremy Clarke, of Newport, May, 1648, to May, 1649.
John Smith of Warwick, May, 1649, to May, 1650.
Nicholas Easton, of Newport, May, 1650, to Aug., 1651.
In 1651 a separation occurred between the towns of Prov
idence and Warwick on the one side, and Portsmouth and
Newport on the other.
PROVIDENCE AND WARWICK.
Presidents.
Samuel Gorton, of Warwick, Oct., 1651, to May, 1652.
John Smith, of Warwick, May, 1652, to May, 1653.
Gregory Dexter, of Providence, May, 1653, to May, 1654.
PORTSMOUTH AND NEWPORT.
President.
*John Sanford, of Portsmouth, May, 1653, to May, 1654
In 1654 the union of the four towns was reestablished.
' WiUiam Coddington, of Newport, was elected, but the General Court
would not engage him, for failing to clear himself of certain accusations.

APPENDIX 347
Presidents.
Nicholas Easton, of Newport, May, 1654, to Sept. 12, 1654.
Roger Williams, of Providence, Sept., 1654, to May, 1657.
Benedict Arnold, of Newport, May, 1657, to May, 1660.
William Brenton, of Newport, May, 1660, to May, 1662.
Benedict Arnold, of Newport, May, 1662, to Nov. 25, 1663.
UNDER THE CHARTER OF 1663.
Governors.
Benedict Arnold, of Newport, Nov., 1663, to May, 1666.
William Brenton, of Newport, May, 1666, to May, 1669.
Benedict Arnold, of Newport, May, 1669, to May, 1672.
Nicholas Easton, of Newport, May, 1672, to May, 1674.
Wm. Coddington, of Newport, May, 1674, to May, 1676.
Walter Clarke, of Newport, May, 1676, to May, 1677.
iBenedict Arnold, of Newport, May, 1677, to June 20, 1678.
iWilliam Coddington, Aug. 28, 1678, to Nov. 1, 1678.
'John Cranston, of Newport, Nov. 8, 1678, to March 12,
1680.
Peleg Sanford, of Newport, March 16, 1680, to May, 1683.
Wm. Coddington, Jr., of Newport, May, 1683, to May, 1685.
Henry Bull, of Newport, May, 1685, to May, 1686.
Walter Clarke, of Newport, May, 1686, to June 29, 1686.
Henry Bull, of Newport, Feb. 27, to May 7, 1690.
John Easton, of Newport, May, 1690, to May, 1695.
'Caleb Carr, of Newport, May, 1695, to Dec. 17, 1695.
Walter Clarke, of Newport, Jan., 1696, to March, 1698.
'Samuel Cranston, of Newport, March, 1698, to April 26,
1727.
Joseph Jenoks, of Providence, May, 1727, to May, 1732.
'William Wanton, of Newport, May, 1732, to Dec, 1733.
John Wanton, of Newport, May, 1734, to July 5, 1740.
^ Died in office.
' Ihe charter was suspended, by Sir Edmund Andros, tiU 1689.

348 APPENDIX
Richard Ward, of Newport, July 15, 1740, to May, 1743.
William Greene, of Warwick, May, 1743, to May, 1745.
Gideon Wanton, of Newport, May, 1745, to May, 1746.
William Greene, of Warwick, May, 1746, to May, 1747.
Gideon Wanton, of Newport, May, 1747, to May, 1748.
William Greene, of Warwick, May, 1748, to May, 1755.
Stephen Hopkins, of Providence, May, 1755, to May, 1757.
'WilUam Greene, of Warwick, May, 1757, to Feb. 22, 1758.
Stephen Hopkins, of Providence, March 14, 1758, to May,
1762.
Samuel Ward, of Westerly, May, 1762, to May, 1763.
Stephen Hopkins, of Providence, May, 1763, to May, 1765.
Samuel Ward, of Westerly, May, 1765, to May, 1767.
Stephen Hopkins of Providence, May, 1767, to May, 1768.
Josias Lyndon, of Newport, May, 1768, to May, 1769.
Joseph Wanton, of Newport, 1769 to Nov. 7, 1775. Deposed.
Nicholas Cooke, of Providence, Nov., 1775, to May, 1778.
WiUiam Greene, of Warwick, May, 1778, to 1786.
John Collins, of Newport, May, 1786, to 1790.
Arthur Fenner, of Providence, May, 1790, to Oct. 15, 1805."
James Fenner, of Providence, May, 1807, to 1811.
William Jones, of Providence, May, 1811, to 1817.
^Nehemiah R. Knight, of Providence, May, 1817, to Jan. 9,
1821.
WUliam C. Gibbs, of Newport, May, 1821, to 1824.
James Fenner, of Providence, May, 1824, to 1831.
^Lemuel H. Arnold, of Providence, 1831 to 1833.
1 Died in office.
^ Paul Mumford, deputy governor, died in office. Henry Smith, first sen
ator, officiated as governor. In 1806, no election of governor ; Isaac WUbour,
lieutenant-governor, officiated.
B Elected United States senator, Jan. 9, 1821, for unexpired term of James
Burrill, Jr., deceased.
* In 1832, no election of governor, lieutenant-governor, or senators. Eleo.,
tions were successively ordered for May 16, July 18, Aug. 28, and Nov. 21,
1832, resulting wifehout choice. At the January session, 1833, the officers who
had not been reelected in 1832 were continued in office until the next session.

APPENDIX 349
John Brown Francis, of Warwick, 1833 to 1838.
'WUUam Sprague, of Warwick, 1838 to 1839.
Samuel Ward King, of Johnston, 1840 to 1843.
UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF 1842.
James Fenner, of Providence, 1843 to 1845.
Charles Jackson, of Providence, 1845 to 1846.
Byron Diman, of Bristol, 1846 to 1847.
EUsha Harris, of Coventry, 1847 to 1849.
Henry B. Anthony, of Providence, 1849 to 1851.
"PhUUp AUen, of Providence, 1851 to 1853.
Francis M. Dimond, of Bristol, July 20, 1853, to 1854.
WiUiam Warner Hoppin, of Providence, 1854 to 1857.
Elisha Dyer, of Providence, 1857 to 1859.
Thomas G. Turner, of Warren, 1859 to 1860.
Wm. Sprague, of Providence, 1860, to March 3, 1863. Re
signed.
»WiIUam C. Cozzens, of Newport, March 3, 1863, to May,
1863.
James T. Smith, of Providence, 1863 to 1866.
Ambrose E. Burnside, of Providence, 1866 to 1869.
Seth Padelford, of Providence, 1869 to 1873.
Henry Howard, of Coventry, 1873 to 1875.
Henry Lippitt, of Providence, 1875 to 1877.
Charles C. Van Zandt, of Newport, 1877 to 1880.
Alfred H. Littlefield, of Lincoln, 1880 to 1883.
Augustus O. Bourn, of Bristol, 1883 to 1885.
George Peabody Wetmore, of Newport, 1885 to 1887.
^ In 1839, no election of governor, or lientenant-govemor ; Samuel Ward
King was first senator and acting-governor.
2 Resigned July 20, 1853, having been elected United States senator, May 4,
1853. Francis M. Dimond, lieutenant-governor, officiated.
3 Governor Sprague resigned March 3, 1863, to accept the office of United
States senator ; and Lieutenant-Governor Arnold having been previously
elected to the senate of the United States to fiU the vacancy caused by the
resignation of James F. Simmons, Mr. Gozzens became governor by virtue of
his office as president of tbe state senate.

350 APPENDIX
John W. Davis, of Pawtucket, 1887 to 1888.
Royal C. Taft, of Providence, 1888 to 1889.
Herbert W. Ladd, of Providence, 1889 to 1890.
John W. Davis, of Pawtucket, 1890 to 1891.
Herbert W. Ladd, of Providence, 1891 to 1892.
D. RusseU Brown, of Providence, 1892 to 1895.
Charles Warren Lippitt, of Providence, 1895 to 1897.
Elisha Dyer, of Providence, 1897 to 1900.
WiUiam Gregory, of North Kingstown, 1900 to Dec. 16,
1901.
Charles Dean Eamball, of Providence, Dec. 16, 1901 to
1903.
Lucius F. C. Garvin, of Cumberland, 1903 to 1905.
George H. Utter, of Westerly, 1905 to — .

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INDEX

Abbott, Dfiniel, 162.
Abolition of slavery, 170-175, 282.
Albany Congress, 176.
Alexander, Cosmo, 135.
Algiers, pirates of, 273-276.
" Algerine Law," the, 296, 298, 305.
Allen, Zachariah, 313.
Almy & Brown, the firm of, 277, 278.
Amendments to the Constitution of
1842, 318-323.
Ames, Chief Justice Samuel, 313.
Anabaptists in Rhode Island, 41, 42,
132, 138. See Baptisti.
Anchor Bay, 7.
Andrews, E. Benjamin, 334.
Andros, Sir Eldmimd, claims of Con
necticut rejected by, 50 ; serves the
quo warranto, 55-59.
Angell, Israel, 316.
Angell, Thomas, 17.
Ann & Hope, the ship, 270-272.
Anthony, Senator Henry B., speech
of, against extension of suffrage,
322.
Antinomiaas in Rhode Island, 28-31,
41, 54, 132.
Aquidneck, island of, 3, 8, 13, 22 ; be
comes a political entity, 32 ; incor
porated with Providence, 35 ; name
changed, 43. See Island of Rhode
Island.
Arnold, Gen. Benedict, appointed to
the command in New England, 223.
Arnold, Governor Benedict, 6, 23, 24,
42,45.
Arnold, Jonathan, 247.
Arnold, Samuel G. (quoted), 184, 185.
Arnold, Welcome, 273.
Arnold, William, 19, 22, 23, 45.
Articles of Confederation, Rhode Is
land accedes to, 241.
Assiento, the, 112, 113.
A ssistants. Council of, 187, 188.
As 'sistants. Court of, 189.
Atl'ierton Company, the, 47^9, 51, 86 ;
Bel Is East Greenwich to the Hugue-
noti 3, 146 ; settles the Narragansett
coun , try, 148.

Atwell, Samuel Y., 293; attorney for
Dorr, 303.
Auchmuty, Robert, commissioner on
the Gaspee affair, 208.
Ayrault, Baniel, 71, 119, 147.
Ayrault, Dr. Pierre, settles at East
Greenwich, 146-148.
Bahamas, cruise of Esek Hopkins to
the, 214, 216.
Bainbridge, Capt. , 274.
Bankes, John, 86-88, 92.
Baptists in Rhode Island, 132, 150,
164, 209. See Anabaptists.
Barbary pirates, depredations of, 273-
275.
Barrington, Lady, attachment of
Roger Williams to, 14.
Barrington, the schools in, 131.
Barton, William, captures General
Prescott, 224-226 ; speech of, 255.
Bates, Frank G., monograph by, 256 ; .
reference, 193, 194.
Baxter, Capt. George, 44.
Bellomont, administration of the Earl
of, 90-93 ; report of, on Rhode Is
land, 91, 92.
Berkeley, Dean, in Rhode Island, 129,
130, 132-135, 153, 172 ; sends organ
to Trinity Church, 141.
Blackstone Canal, the, 335.
Blackstone River, the, 4.
Blackstone, William, 53.
Block, Adrian, visits Narragansett
Bay, 6 ; names Block Island, 7 ; ac
count of tlie Indians by, 7.
Block Island, incorporated with Rhode
Island, 55 ; refuge for pirates, 89 ;
British seen ofE, 222. See New
Shoreham.
Boston and Providence R. R. opened,
282.
Boston Neck, purchase of, 48.
Boundary Commission of 1665, 49.
Bowditch, Josiah B. (quoted), 9.
Bowen, Jabez, 162 ; serves on com
mittee for construction of a navy,
219 ; Federalist leader, 255.

388

INDEX

Bradish, Joseph, 88, 89.
Brenton, William^ 30, 60.
Brett, Mrs. Mary, 172.
Brett, Dr. Thomas, 135.
Briggs, Aaron, testimony of, in the
Gaspee case, 207.
Bristol, surrendered to Rhode Island,
46 ; slave trade at, 115, 263, 264 ;
schools in, 131 ; mentioned, 193;
privateers of, 277; suffrage in, 288 ;
population of (in 1840), 291; the
Irish in, 332.
British in Rhode Island, the, 221-237,
258-260.
Brown & Benson, tbe firm of, 269,
270, 274.
Brown & Francis, the firm of, 269,
270.
Brown & Ives, the firm of, 280.
Brown, Chad, 161.
Brown, James, 161.
Brown, John (of Newport), 119.
Brown, John (of Providence), 161 ;
lays comer-stone of Univeraily Hall,
166 ; plans destruction of the Gas
pee, 205-207 ; prisoner at Boston,
211 ; serves on committee for con
struction of a navy, 219, 220 ; criti
cises the American retreat from
Newport, 233 ; interest of, in com
merce, 268-270 ; death of, 272.
Brown, Joseph, 161 ; serves on com
mittee for construction of a navy,
219.
Brown, Rev. Marmaduke, 172.
Brown, Moses, 161-163, 166 ; connec
tion with the Olney-Palfrey love-
affair, 166-169 ; marriage, 170 ; ef
forts to secure the abolition of slav
ery, 170, 171, 261, 282; obtains his
brother's release, 211 ; letter of, to
Samuel Slater, 267.
Brown, Nathaniel (of Plymouth), 160.
Brown, Nicholas, the elder, 161.
Brown, Nicholas, Jr., benefactor of
Brown University, 166, 334; serves
on committee for construction of a
navy, 219.
Brown, Obadiah, letter to, 261.
Brown, Peleg, 119.
Brown Library, the John Carter, 334.
Brown University, 166, 286 ; growth
of, 333, 334. See Rhode Island Col
lege.
Bryant, WilUam Cullen, sympathy of,
for Dorr, 306.
Bull, Henry, 31, 59, 60.
Burges, Tristram, 285.
Burnside, Gen. Ambrose E., 317.
Bumyeat, John, 55.
Burrill, George R., oration of, 287.

BurriUviUe, corrupt politics of, 326;
Canadian French in, 332.
Butts Hill, British fortifications at,
229; failure to storm, 231, 232.
Cabot, career of the ahip, 213, 216, 217.
CaUender, Rev. John, 135.
Canada, expeditions against, 65-67, 84,
98.
Canadian French in Rhode Island,
332,333.
Canonchet, tbe Indian sachem, 52, 53.
Canonicus, 7, 18; sells Aquidneck, 29;
makes submission to Gorton, 46.
Carpenter, Esther B., book written by,
10.
Carpenter, William, 19.
Carr, Sir Robert, 49.
Cartagena, attack upon (1741), 67.
Carter, John, 246.
Cartwright, George, 49.
Champlm, Margaret, 240.
Channing, John, 120.
Channing, William, 82 ; marriage of,
266.
Channing, WiUiam EUery, 266.
Charter of 1663, the, 43-45, 55; for
feited and restored, 59.
Chartei'house School, Roger Williams
at the, 14.
ChasteUux, Chevalier de, description
of Newport by, 238, 239.
Chepachet, the Dorrites at, 301.
Church, Capt. Benjamin, 53.
CivU War, Rhode Island troops in the,
316, 317.
Clap, Rev. Nathaniel, 133, 135.
Clarke, John, 13, 30-33, 40, 42 ; helps
to purchase Aquidneck, 29 ; nego
tiates the Charter of 1663, 44 ; takes
part in boundary dispute, 49 ; death
of, 61.
Clarke, John Innes, serves on commit
tee for construction of a navy, 219.
Clarke, Walter, governor from 169&-
1698, 85, 91.
CUnton, Sir Henry, commands the
British at Newport, 223.
Coddington, Nathaniel, 86, 87.
Coddington, William, 13, 30, 31, 35, 60,
61 ; helps to purchase Aquidneck,
29 ; governor of Aquidneck and Co
nanicut, 38-41 .
Coddington, Gov. William, deaUngs
with pirates, 85.
CoggeshaU, David M., 309.
CoggeshaU, John, 30 ; first president
of Providence Plantations, 38.
Coke, Sir Edward, 13, 14, 16.
Cole, Robert, 19.
CoUins, Henry, 119; wealth of, 120,

INDEX

389

134| gives site fnr Redwood Library,
135.
Oolllns, John, Antl-Federatlst loader,
255.
OolvlU, Admiral, letter of, 200.
Ooiner, Rov. .lolin, VA'.i. 130.
Oonunlout Island, 3.
Oonflans, Admiral, 100.
Oougregationallsts In Rhode Island,
132, 188, 138, 140, 150, 104.
Oonneotlout, relations of, with the In
dians, 20 ; boundary disputes with,
40-BOi oliarter for, 48, 40.
Constitution of 1842, 201-304; tho
adoption ot, 308, 300; provisions of,
810-313; amendments to, 318-323.
Oonstltution, the frigate, 274.
Convention for ratlBoatlon of tho Fed-
oral Constitution, 255, 250.
OooUe, Nicholas, 102; beootnes gov
ernor, 214; Borvee on ooniuilttee for
construction of a navy, 210.
OorllBB, George H., engine invented
by, 314.
Corrupt politics In Rhode Island,
• 323-331.
Cotton, John, 28.
Cotton, Bev. Josiah, 132.
Court of ABsistants, powers of, 180.
Coventry, 24; corrupt politics of, 320,
828; Oanadian Freitoh in, 332.
Oraudall, John, 42.
Orautield, Mward, claluu of Conneo-
tlout sustained by, 60.
Cranston, Samuel, governor, 07, 01 ;
report of, on Rhode Island (1708),
108, 100 ; deoth of, UO.
Craneton, the town of, tho Irish In,
332.
Crawford, Gideon, 100.
Crawford, ¦WUUam, 100.
Cromwell, Oliver, 40, 11.
Crown Point expedition, blUs to meet
the OOBt of, 74. . . ..
Cumberland, 53; suvreudered to
Rhode Island, 40, 103; population
ot (In 1840), 201.
Cutler, George, 80.
D'Anville, Duo, 09, 100.
Dartmouth, Lord, 2(17, 20».
Dooatur, Bte|iiien, inii.le a freeman,
183; his grandson, 275.
Deming, Clarence ((|uolod), 0,
Dennis, Capt. John, of tho Deflanoe,
102-105.
Dennis, WilUam, 105.
D'Estaing, Admiral, ,.rrlvc« o« Ebode
iBhind. 227 ; urges actio", ...i ,
bloUnl™ British licet, 230 ; moots
K now. aud retires to Boston,

231, 232; Balls for the Wimt Indies,
237.
De Ternay, Admiral, 237.
Devol, GUbnrt, judgo In tho caBc of
Trfiirit vs. Wrnhii, fa.
DcWoU, Charles, 20:1.
DeWoU, James, 203; In the war of
1812, 277.
DeWolf, John, 203.
Do Wolf, Mark Authony, 203.
Diman, J. Lewis, 333.
Dorr, Henry 0. (quoted), 184.
Dorr, SuUIvan, 280.
Dorr, Thomas W., 285, 2R7, 289-304;
reversal of judgment against, 312.
Dorr Rebellion, the, 285-3(17.
Douglas, Stephen A., hmuecli of, 315.
Doyle, John A. (quotecf), 185.
Duddingstou, Lieut. William, 205, 200.
Dudley, Joseph, made president of the
OounoU for New England, 58 ; gov
ernor of Massaohusetts, 02, 01;
complaints against RhoiJe lelaud,
by, 147.
Dnnlop, Lieut., commander of the
Pigot, 235.
Durfee, Chief Justice ,Iob, 200 ; pre
sides at the trial of Dorr, 303.
Durfee's Hill, 4.
Dyer, Mary, 43.
Dyer, WUliam, 31.
East Groenwloh, 50 ; Huguenots In,
140-14,S; corrupt politics In, 320.
East India trade of Providence, 200-
273.
Kaston, John, governor from 1090-
1005, .S5, 87.
Kaston, Nicholas, 30, 33, 00.
Edmundson, WUUam, 55,
Edwards, Dr. Morgan, 105.
KUzar, Isaac, denied naturaUzatlou,
I, SO- 182.
Kllery, WiUiam, 71, 110, 134, 140.
BUiiry, William, .Ir., delegalu to the
Continental Cougresa, 222, 227.
Bplscopalhins iii Rhode iHlaml, 132,
133, 138, 140, 150, 104; effortB of, to
Hooure the aboUtloii ot slavery, 171,
172; loyalism of, 209.
Kxotor, corrupt politics in, 32G.
Fauque, Father, letter of, 102, 203.
Feke, Robert, 135, 13(1.
Feuuiio Oooso Bay, OO.
Fenner, Governor Arthur, 281, 282.
Fonnor, Governor -liiim^s, 281.
Fletcher, Ooveriior linujinnln, of New
Vorli, appeals to Rlimtc Island, 0('>.
Fones, Capt. Daniel, of the Tartar,
08-100.

390

INDEX

Fort Anne, 70.
Fort George, 70, 71.
Foster, corrupt poUtics in the town of,
326.
Foster, Theodore, 273.
Foster, WiUiam E. (quoted), 161, 193.
Fox, George, controversy of, with
Roger WiUiams, 55.
Franchise in Rhode Island, the, 319-
323.
Franklin, James, 131, 132, 135.
Freebody, John, 71, 119.
Freebody, Samuel, 119.
Freemen's Constitution, the, 295, 304.
French-Canadians in Rhode Island,
332 333
French War of 1756, the, 84, 105.
Friends' School, the, 334.
Gardiner, Hannah, 151, 155.
Gardner, Newport, the free negro,
125.
Garvin, Dr. L. F. C, efforts of, for
the extension of suffrage, 321 ; ca
reer as reformer and governor, 329-
331.
Gaspee, destruction of the, 204-209,
276.
Gates, Gen., appointed to the com
mand in New England, 236; mea
sures of, for the reUef of Rhode Is
land, 236, 237.
Geography, 3-7.
George Washington, the ship, 269, 274,
275.
Georgia, refuses to accept the 5% im
post, 244, 245.
Gillam, James, 90.
Glasgow, H. M. B., fight with, off Point
Judith, 216, 217.
Glocester, town of, created, 160; Dorr
ites in, 301 ; corrupt politics in,
326 ; Canadian French in, 332.
Glover, John, brigade of, sent to New
port, 228.
Goat Island, 6.
Goddard, WiUiam G., oration by, 309.
Gorman, Charles E., efforts of, for ex
tension of the suffrage, 320-322.
Gorton, Samuel, 13, 21-27, 30, 31, 40,
46 ; services on the Connecticut
boundary, 50; death of, 61.
Grant, Sueton, 119.
Greene, Christopher C, 316.
Greene, John, 19, 23, 92 ; services on
the Connecticut boundary, 50 ;»
deputy-governor, 86, 88, 89 ; Bello
mont's account of, 91.
Greene, Nathaniel, made commander
of the Rhode Island mUitia, 213;
mentioned, 227 ; letters of, 228, 233 ;

drives CornwaUis into Yorktown
240.
Greene, Governor WiUiam, 71, 98, 99.
Greene, Governor William the
younger, appeals to Connecticut for
aid, 236.
GrenviUe, George, 200.
Hamilton, Alexander, 245-247.
Harkness, Albert, 334.
Harris, William, 13, 18, 19, 50, 51, 61,
86, 159.
Harrison, Peter, architect of the Red
wood Library, 135, 136.
Hay, John, 334,
Hazard, Benjamin, chairman of com
mittee on suffrage, 288.
Hazard, Jonathan J., Anti-Federahst
leader, 255.
Hazard, Joseph, judge in case of Tre
vett vs. Weeden, 82, 83.
Hazard, Rowland G., 341, 342.
Hazard, Thomas, 31, 120; efforts to
secure tbe abolition of slavery, 282.
Hazard vs. Ives, case of, 313.
Herreshoff yacht works, 341.
Het, Ren6, 100.
Holden, RandaU, 23, 46 ; services on
the Connecticut boundary, 50.
Holliman, Ezekiel, 19.
Holmes, Obadiati, 42.
Holmes vs. Walton, the case of, 80, 81
(note).
Honyman, Rev. James, 133, 135, 172.
Hope Island, 7.
Hopkins, Esek, 161 ; commander-in-
chief of the navy, 213, 214 : career
of, 216-220.
Hopkins, John B., commander of the
Cabot, 216, 217.
Hopkins, Rufua, serves on committee
on construction of a navy, 219.
Hopkins, Rev. Samuel, 135, 137, 138 ;
efforts to secure the aboUtion of
slavery, 171-173, 282 ; letters of, 261.
Hopkins, Stephen, early life of, 161,
162 ; chancellor of Rhode Island
College, 165; efforts to secure the
abolition of slavery, 170 ; official
positions held by, 175-177, 200;
pamphlet by, 201, 202 ; leads oppo
sition to the Stamp Act, 203 ; atti
tude in the Gaspee affair, 208 ; dele
gate to the Continental Congress,
209, 212, 222; member of the Marine
Committee, 213 ; President of the
New England Convention, 222 ;
Athenaeum estabhshed by, 334;
death of, 257.
Hopkins, Thomaa, 161.
Hopkins, WUUam, 161.

INDEX

391

Hopkins- Ward controversy, the, 177,
178.
Horsmanden, Daniel, commlBsioner on
the Gaspee affair, 207.
Howard, Martin, Jr., delegate to the
Albany CongresB, 176 ; answers Hop
kins's pamphlet, 202, 209; house pU-
laged, 203, 210.
Howe, Admiral Lord; engages D'Es
taing, 231.
HoweU, David, 243 ; advocates state
rights, 244-249 ; course of, in Tre
vett vs. Weeden, 82, 83, 257.
Howland, John, 225 ; efforts of, to se
cure free schools, 279.
Hull, John, 97.
Hunter, Dr. WUliam, 135.
Hutchinson, Anne, 13, 28-30; becomes
Anabaptist, 41 _; death of, 41, 61.
Hutchinson, William, 30 ; chief magis
trate ot Newport, 31.
Indians ot Rhode Island, the, 7, 52.
Irish in Rhode Island, the, 332.
James, Thomas, 19.
Jamestown, Address ot the inhabitants
of, to George III, 223.
JenckoB, John, 162.
Jenckes, Governor Joseph, report of,
109; vetoes issue of paper money,
70, 71, 96, 111, 188 ; removes to New
port, 177.
John Carter Brown Library, 334.
John Jay, the ship, 270, 271.
Johnson, Augustus, houBe of, pillaged,
202, 203 ; claims of, 210.
Johnson, Samuel, 134.
Jones, John Paul, 214.
Jones, Governor William, 276 ; ob
tains indorsement of the Hartford
Convention, 288.
Kay, Nathaniel, 71, 96.
Kidd, WUliam, 90.
King George's War, 96-105.
King PhUip's War, 51-54.
Kmg, Samuel, 135, 136.
King, Governor Samuel W., letter to,
296 ; reelection of, 298 ; proclaims
martial law, 302, 305.
King's Province created, 49 ; becomes
Kingstown, 50 ; Huguenots in, 146-
148 ; large estates of, 149, 151 ; di
vision of, 188.
Kingstown, 50; population ot (m
King William's War, 66, 85, 89, 95.
Know-Nothings, the, 319.
Knox, Henry, describes Esek Hop
kins, 218.

Lafayette, the Marquis de, sent to
Newport, 228, 229, 231, 232; influ
ence in aid of America, 237 ; visits
Rhode Island in 1824, 285.
Laurens, Col. John, 228.
Lauzun, Due de, 238.
Lawtou, Polly, 238.
Leif, visit of, to Narragansett Bay,
6.
Lexington, the battle of, 211.
Liberty, the revenue sloop, 204.
Lincoln, Abrahson, speech of, 315.
Lindsay, Capt. David, of the Sander
son, letters of, 117.
Lippitt, Christopher, 316.
Little Compton, surrendered to Rhode
Island, 46.
Local government in Rhode Island,
180, 186-188, 193, 194.
Lonsdale Cotton Company, 280.
Lopez, Aaron, 127 ; denied naturaliza
tion, 180-182.
Louisburg, capture of , 67, 98-101.
iMt/ier vs. Borden, the case of, 305,
306.
MacSparran , Rev . James, 151-155,
172.
Madison, James, 245-247, 252.
Mahan, Capt. Alfred T., 341.
Malbone, Edward G., miniatures by,
266.
Malbone, Godfrey, 103, 119; estate of,
121.
Malbone, John, 119.
Mann, Horace, 334.
Manning, James, 163 ; president of
Rhode Island CoUege, 165 ; Congres
sional delegate, 251.
Marchant, Henry, counsel in Trevett
vs. Weeden, 79 ; delegate to the
Continental Congress, 222 ; advo
cates use of flre-ships, 233, 234^;
Federal leader, 255.
Masham, Sir William, of Otes, 16.
Massachusetts Bay, connection of,
with Roger WilUama, 15-18 ; rela
tions of, with Rhode Island, 26-34;
with the Narragansett Indians, 27,
53 ; claims eastern Rhode Island,
45, 46 ; paper money in, 68.
Massachusetts, relations of Rhode
Island with the state of, 252.
Massasoit, 7, 17, 18, 52.
Maverick, Samuel, 49.
Mayes, WiUiam, 86, 87, 92.
Mexican War, the, 314.
Miantonomi, 7, 18, 52 ; sells Shawo
met to Gorton, 24-27 ; sells Aquid
neck, 29 ; his death, 27.
Middletown, 222.

392

INDEX

MiUer, Nathan, speech of, 255.
Misquamicutt purchase, the, 47 ; be-
• comes Westerly, 146 ; part played
in settling Narragansett, 148.
Moffat, Dr. Thomas, 135 ; house pU-
laged, 203 ; claims for damages, 210.
Mohegan Indians, the, 7, 26, 27.
Montagu, Admiral John, 205.
Mooshassuc River, township on tbe,
18, 19, 21, 23.
Moravians in Newport, the, 138.
Morris, Robert, financial measures
of, 242, 244, 245.
Moses Bron'n School, the, 334.
Mount Hope, 6 ; the refuge of King
PhiUp, 53.
Mumford, Paul, judge in the case of
Trevett vs. Weeden, 182.
Munday, Richard, 135, 136.
Munday, Robert, 89.
Namquit (Gaspee) Point, 205.
Narragansett Bay, geography of, 3-7 ;
characteristics ofthe region of, 9;
Indians of, 7 ; British fleet in, 217,
218 ; opening of the east passage of,
233-235.
Narragansett Country, settlement of
the, 146-157 ; slavery in the, 155,
156 ; fraudulent votiug in the, 325.
Narragansett Indians, 7, 18, 26 ; terri
tory of the, 47 ; war of the, with the
New England colonies, 53.
Narragansett Patent, the, 34.
Narragansett, the town of, corrupt po
litics in, 326, and note.
Nassau Bay, 7.
Navigation Acts, 56-58 ; effects of.
198.
Navy, the American, 213-220.
New England Confederation, the, 26,
35,42.
New England, Convention of the
States of, 222, 235.
Newport, 4, 13 ; settlement of, 31 ;
government of, 31, 32 ; patent for
incorporation with Providence and
Portsmouth, 34, 35 ; deputies from,
45, 187 ; growth of, 60 ; privateers
of, 95, 96, 101-105; pirates of, 84-
IK) ; commerce of, 107-110, 112-118;
population in 1708, 108 ; slave trade
at, 114-117, 261, 264; society of,
119-123, 238-240; slavery m, 123-
125 ; Jews m, 126-128, 180-184 ; Dean
Berkeley in, 129, 130; schools in,
131, 172 ; newspapers in, 132 ; sects
in, 132, 133, 138; Redwood Library,
134-136, 139; age of preeminence,
129-145 ; political rival of Provi
dence, 177,178; riots at, 202; loy

alists at, 209, 223, 259; British at,
222-237, 258; retreat of the Ameri
can army from, 231, 232 ; the French
at, 238-240; tonnage of (in 1810),
264; resort for Southerners, 265;
representation of, 288 ; the Irish in,
332; ceases to be a capital city, 333;
a social resort, 336-340.
Newport Mercury, the, 132, 252.
New Providence, descent of the Amer
ican navy upon, 214.
New Shorehain, 55 ; corrupt politics
in, 326. See Block Island.
Nightingale, Joseph, serves on com-
mittee for construction of a navy,
219.
Nightingale, Samuel, 162.
Ninigret, the sachem, 48.
Nipmuc Indians, the, 52.
North Kingstown, purchase of, 48; as
sistant given to, 188; corrupt poli
tics in, 326.
North Providence, suffrage in, 288;
population of (in 1840), 291 ; cor
rupt pontics in, 326; Canadian
French in, 332.
North Smithfield, corrupt politics in,
326 ; Canadian French in, 332.
Nyantic Indians, 7 ; lands sold by,

Old Stone MiU, the, at Newport, 6,
340.
OUver, Justice Peter, commissioner
on the Gaspee affair, 207, 211.
Olney, Polly, the love-affairs of, 166-
170.
Olney, Richard, 334.
Olney, Stephen, heads detachment at
Yorktown, 240.
Olney, Thomas, 19, 159.
Ormsbee, Elijah, steamboat mvented
by, 314.
Osgood, Herbert L. (quoted), 185.
Paine, Capt. Thomas, 84, %; an asso
ciate of Kidd, 90.
Paine, Thomas, 247.
Paper money, issues of, 67-83.
Partridge, Richard, colonial agent for
Rhode Island, 110, 111; letter of,
128; death of, 200.
Patent of 1644, the, 33, 44, 49.
Pawcatuck River, 4, 8, 49.
Pawtucket, miU of Almy & Brown at,
267 ; local industries of, 314 ; the
Irish in, 332.
Pawtuxet, 23-25, 50, 205.
" Pawtuxet Purchase," the, 20.
Pawtuxet RiveT, 4, 8: township on
the, 19, 20, 23-25.

INDEX

393

Payne, Abraham, efforts ot, for exten
sion ot suffrage, 321.
Pembroke College, Cambridge, Roger
Williams at, 14.
Penu, WilUam, colonial agent for
Rhode Island, 92.
People's Constitution, the, 293-297.
People's Convention, the, 293, 294.
Pequod Indians, the, 7, 27 ; destruc
tion of, 28.
Percy, Hugh, Earl, commands the
British forces at Newport, 223.
Perry, Commodore Oliver Hazard,
276, 277.
Peters, Rev. Hugh, 34, 39.
Pettiquamscutt Company, the, 47, 148,
149.
Phips, Sir WUliam, 65.
Fierce, Dutee J., 293 ; speaker, 297 ;
arrest of, 300.
Pigot galley, capture ot the, 233-235.
Pigot, Sir Robert, commands the Brit
ish forces at Newport, 227.
Piracy in Rhode Island, 87-93.
Pokanoket Indians, the, 7, 52.
PoUock, Myer, 127.
Port Royal, expeditions against, 67.
Portsmouth, 13; Gorton at, 22, 46;
founded, 29 ; government of, 31 ; pa
tent tor incorporation with Provi
dence and Newport, 34, 35 ; conven
tion ot 1647 at, 36-38; deputies from,
45, 187 ; growth ot, 60.
Potter, Capt. Simeon, of the Prince
Charles, 102, 192, 262.
Prescott, Gen. Richard, commands the
British at Newport, 223 ; capture of,
224-226.
President Washington, the ship, 269.
Privateering in Rhode Island, 66, 84^
86, 91, 94-106.
Providence, 4, 13 ; settlement of, 18 ;
government of, 20; Gorton at, 22,
26 ; patent tor incorporation of, 34,
35 ; deputies from, 45, 187 ; burned
by Indians, 53; growth of, 60; pri
vateers of, 105, 160, 219, 220 ; popu
lation ot (in 1708), 108 ; churches
ot, 132; commerce of, 160, 267-273;
education in, 162 ; college removed
to, 166; population of (m 1750),
175 ; revolutionary .measures taken
bv, 210 ; attitude of, toward the Fed
eral Constitution, 264, 255 ; tonnage
ot (in 1810), 264 ; manufactures in,
278. 279, 333; representation ot, 2»b-
288; suffrage in, 289, 291-298 301 ;
population of (in 1840), 291 ; Dorr's
deception at, 300. 304 307, 310; loca
industries of, 314 ; libraries of, 334 ,
coast-trade of, 335.

Providence Atheneeum, the, 334.
Providence Gazette, the, 163, 246.
Providence Plantations, charter tor
the, 33-35; government ot, 36; laws
ot, 37, 38; first president of, 38;
fraudulent voting in, 323-325.
Providence Society for Promoting the
Abolition ot Slavery, 282.
Prudence Island, 3.
Pumliam, the sachem, 24, 25, 45.
Quakers in Rhode Island, the, 42, 43,
54, 132, 133, 138, 160, 164 ; efforts of,
to secure the abolition of slavery,
171, 172; opposition to the Revolu
tion, 209.
Queen Anne's War, 69; privateermg
in, 95, 96.
Randolph, Edward, sent to New Eng
land, 67, 58 ; visits Rhode Island, 91.
Redwood, Abraham, 71, 119, 135.
Redwood Library, the, 134-136, 139.
Refuge, Bay of, 6.
Rhode Island, geography of, 3, 4, 7 ;
discovery ot, 4-6 ; industries ot, 8 ;
paper money in, 67-83; land
"banks" of, 68.69; privateers of,
84^6, 94-96, 101-106, 218, 277; pi
rates ot, 87-93 ; commerce ot, 107-
110, 112-118, 264-273, 342; slavery
in, 112-118, 123-125, 155, 156, 170-
175, 260-264; Jews in, 126-128, 136,
180-184 ; schools in, 131, 279 ; news
papers of, 132 ; churches ot, 132 ;
suffrage in, 180-187, 285, 298, 310,
319-323 ; dominance ot the legisla
ture in, 187-193 ; courts of, 189-192;
causes ot colonial discontent, 198-
204 ; smuggling in, 200, 202 ; the
Revolution iu, 211-237 ; proposition
to create an American Navy comes
from, 213 ; the theatre of war, 216-
237 ; accepts the Articles of Con
federation, 241 ; refuses to accept
the 6% impost, 245 ; indorses David
Howell, 247 ; acknowledges taxing
power of Congress, 249 ; attitude of,
toward the Federal Constitution,
249-256 : unrepresented at Conven
tion of 1787, 251; Convention for
ratification of the Federal Constitu
tion in, 255, 256 ; railroads in, 265,
266 ; manufactures in, 267, 277-281,
313, 314, 342 ; suffers in the war of
1812,275,276; taxation in, 286; Dorr
rebeUion, 285-307 ; constitution of
1842, 308-313; attitude of, toward
southern slavery, 314, 315 ; in the
civil war, 316-318 ; Know-Nothings
in, 319; corrupt politics in, 323-331;

394

INDEX

separatism in, 337, 328, 333, 342;
poUtical reform in, 328-331 ; towns
of, how represented, 328, 329; for
eign immigration, 331-333 ; towns
and counties, list of, 345 ; chief
magistrates, list of, 345.
Rhode Island, the battle of, 231.
Rhode Island Citizens' Union, 331,
note.
Rhode Island College, 163-166. See
Brown University.
Rhode Island Gazet^ the, 132.
Rhode Island Historical Society,
282.
Rhode Island, the island of, 3, 5, 43,
44.
Rivera, Abrabmn Rodriguez, 127.
Robin, Abb6, 238.
Robinson, Hannah, 154.
Rochambeau, Comte de, sent to Amer
ica, 237 ; at Newport, 238-240.
Rogers, CoL Robert, 104.
Rnsmeyer, Albertns Ludolphus, 138.
Russell, Joseph, serves on committee
for constmction of a navy, 219.
Sacononoco, 24, 25, 45.
Sadleir, Mrs. Anne, an account of
Roger Williams by, 14.
8t. Juan Baptist, Bay of, 6.
Sanford, Governor Fel^, report of,
108, 109, 123.

Scituate, town of, created, 160; cor
rupt politics in, 326 ; Canadian
French in, 332.
Seekonk River, the, 4, &
Seekonk, the town of, 17, 18, 35.
Sessions, Darius, 162.
Shaler, Frofeasor N. 8., prediction of,
12.
Shawomet, the Gorton settlement at,
24-27 ; reoccupation of, 50. See
Warwick.
Sherwood, Joseph, colonial ^ent for
Rhode Island, 200, 201. I
Shirley, Governor William, of Masaa-
chusettB. 98-101.
Simons, Peter, 154.
Slater, Samuel, letter of, to Moses
Brown, 267 ; career of, 2rn-279.
Slave trade, the, in Kiode iBland,
112-118, 260-264.
Sloop Bay, 7.
Smibert, John, 135, 136.
Smithfield, town of, created, 160;
population of (in IftW), 291 ; cor
rupt politics in, 326 ; Canadian
French in, 332.
Smith, Richard, trading po6t of, at
Wickiord, 47.

Smytbe, Frederiek, commissioner on
the Gaspee affair, 207.
South Kingston (or -town), purchase
of, 47 ; negroes in, 156 ; aseiatant
given to, 188 ; the Irish in, 332 ;
Rhode Inland traditicm sustained in,
341.
Southwick, Solomon, 1^.
Spencer, Gen. Josej^, appmnted to
the command in New ^^glwpi^^ 223 ;
resigns, 227.
Spragne, William, 280, 281, 316.
Stamp Act, the, 199, 202.
Stanton, CoL Joseph, 224.
Star Chamber, tiie Court of, 13.
Stiles, Rev. Ezra, 1^, 137-141, 155 ;
dr^ts charter for Rhode Islaiid Col
lie, 163; efEdrts for the negroes,
173 : on the Gaspee afEair, 208, 209 ;
on the battle of Lexington, 211 ; on
Providence privateers, 220 ; on the
French at Newport, 23§, 239; ac
count of British evacnatiom of New
port, 258.
Stuart, Gilbert, 135, 136, 310.
Stubbe, John, 55.
Suffrage in Rhode Island, the, 180-
187.
Sugar Act, the, 110, 111, 198, 215;
renewal of, 199; protest a^nst,
202 ; enforcement of, 203.
Sullivan, Gen. John, appointed to the
command in New England, 227 ; let
ter of Gen. Greene to, 228 ; ma-
nceuvrea and defeat at Newport,
230-232.
8ni>erior Court of Judicature, the, 191,
192.
Talbot, Major Silas, captures the ^Pigok
galley, 233-235 ; sent to Long lelaDd
Sound, 236; csqitain in tiie navy,
274.
Tammany Hall, support gvrea Dorr
by, 299, 306.
Tartar, the colony sloop, 97-101, 106.
Taylor r-5. Place, case of, 312.
Tew, Thomas, 87, 88.
Throckmorton, John, 19.
Thnrlow, Edward, Attorney-General
for the Crown, 207.
Tilden, Sunuel J., sympatiiy of, for
Dorr, 306.
Tillinghast, Daniel, serves on conir
mittee for construction of a navv,
219.
Tillinghast, ^rdon, lot granted to,
160. *
TiUinghast, Thomas, judge in the case
TreveU vs. Weeden, 82, 83.
liverton, siirrendered to Rhode Is-

INDEX

395

land, 46, 193 ; retreat ot the Ameri
can army to, 232.
Touro, Isaac, 135-137.
Towusend, Solomon, 120.
Townsend, Vice-admiral, 99.
Trevett vs. Weeden, case of, 78-83,
193.
Trials, the Court ot, 189-191.
Tucker, Rev. Mark, sermon by, 302.
Turpin, William, plea for schools by,
131.
Tyler, President John, letter of, to
Governor King, 296 ; appeal tor aid
to, 298.
Uncus, 7.
Underhill, Capt. John, 17.
United States Naval Training School,
341.
United States Naval War College, 341.
United States Torpedo Station, 341.
Updike, Daniel, 1»4, 162 ; library ot,
154.
Usher, Rev. John, 172, 192.
Vane, Sir Henry, 28, 33, 39-41.
Varnum, James M., counsel in caae ot
TreveU vs. Weeden, 79, 80, 165;
brigade ot, 228 ; delegate to Conti
nental Congress. 242 : upholds power
of Congress, 243; advocates accept
ance of the Constitution, 252.
Vernon, Samuel, 120.
Vernon, William, 140.
Verrazano, Jean, 3, 6; letter ot, to
Francis I, 5 ; account ot tbe Indians
by, 7.
Vlneland, 6.
Wager, Sir Charles, 97.
Wallace, Capt. James, 276.
Wampanoag Indians, the, 7, 17.
Wamsutta, the death ot, 52.
Wanton, Edward, 95.
Wanton, (Jovernor Gideon, 98, 120.
Wanton, John, 95, 96, 119.
Wanton, Governor Joseph, 120, 124 ;
connection of, with the Gaspee,
204-207 ; suspended from oince, 21J.
Wanton, Governor William, 95, 119,
124,134. ^ _^ ,,_
Ward, Governor Richard, 114, ii'.
177 ; defense ot paper money by, 71..
Ward, Samuel, represeutative of New
port, 177; action as governor, UU;

delegate to the Continental Con
gresB, 209, 212; death ot, 221.
Warren, surrendered to Rhode Island,
46 ; slave trade at, 115 ; mentioned,
193 ; ship-building and commerce ot,
264, 274; suffrage in, 288 ; Canadian
French in, 332.
Warwick, 18, 24 ; deputies from, 45,
60, 187 ; burned by Indians, 53 ;
growth ot, GO, 201 ; Canadian
French in, 332. See Sliawomet.
Warwick, Robert, Karl of, 34.
Wasliington, Gen. George, orders of,
respecting Rliode Island, 222, 227,
228 ; visits Newport, 239, 240.
Waterman, Richard, 19.
Wayland, Dr. Francis, 833; sermon
by, 302.
Webster, Daniel, argument of, in
Lxdher vs. Bunlev, 305, 306.
Welde, Rev. Thomaa, 34.
Westoott, Stukeley, 19.
Westerly, purchase ot, 47 ; Seventh
Day Baptists in, 132 ; name changed
to, 146 ; news ot British received
from, 222.
West Greenwich, 9; corrupt politics
in, 326; Canadian French in, 332.
Weston, Francis, 19.
Weybosset Neck, 160.
Wheaton, Henry, 334.
Wheelwriglit, John, 28, 29.
Whipple, Abraliam, 120 ; takes part
in the destruction ot the Gaspee,
206 ; reply ot, to Capt. Wallace, 277.
Wickford, 47, 152.
Wilkinson, David, steamboat invented
by, 314.
Williams, Alice, 13.
Williams, James, 13,
Williams, Mary, wife of Roger, 16.
Williams, Roger, 3 ; early lite of, 13-
17 ; age of, in Rhode Island, 13-61;
founds Providence, 18, 19; influ
ence with tlie Indians, 27, 63 ; the
patent ot 1644 and, 33 ; religious
views of, 42 ; dlBpntes with George
Fox, 66 ; deatli of, 61 ; relations
with the Jews, 126.
Wilson, Rev. John, 28.
Winthrop, Governor Jolm, 21, 24.
Winthrop, John, Jr., 48.
Woolman, John, 171.
Woonasquatucket River, the, 4, 8.
Woonsocket, Canadian French in, 332.

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