Rhode Island: Rebellion, Resistance, and Revolution

Above image of a newspaper published in Providence, RI in 1775 courtesy of George Mason University, online link.

The newspaper article pictured above was published March 4, 1775, in Providence, Rhode Island, and reveals the popular sentiment of the overwhelming majority of mid-to-late eighteenth century Rhode Islanders in no uncertain terms. So fiery the language and so wonderful the images invoked, that it seems a waste to lose any of it; therefore the entire article is copied below in bold set type for your consideration and enjoyment:

Providence, RI, March 4, 1775

On Thursday last, the 2nd instant, about twelve o’clock at noon, the Town Crier gave the following notice through the Town: “At five o’clock, this afternoon, a quantity of India Tea will be burnt in the market-place. All true friends of their country, lovers of Freedom, and haters of shackles and hand-cuffs, are hereby invited to testify their good disposition, by bringing in and casting into the fire, a needless herb, which for a long time has been detrimental to our liberty, interest, and health.”

About five o’clock, in the afternoon, a great number of inhabitants assembled at the place, where there was brought in about three hundred pounds weight of Tea, by the firm contenders for the true interest of America. A large fire was kindled, and the Tea cast into it. A tar barrel, Lord North’s speech, Rivington’s and Mills’s and Hicks’s newspapers, and divers other ingredients, were also added. There appeared great cheerfulness in commiting to destruction so pernicious an article; many worthy women, from a conviction of the evil tendency of continuing the habit of Tea drinking, made free-will offerings of their respective stocks of the hurtful trash. On this occasion the bells were tolled, but it is referred to the learned whether tolling or ringing would have been most proper. Whilst the Tea was burning, a spirited Son of Liberty went along the street with his brush and lampblack, and obliterated or unpainted the word TEA on the shop signs.

Notice the strong language that the town crier is recorded to have used in summoning the separatist patriots to the ‘tea-b-que’: “All true friends of their country, lovers of Freedom, and haters of shackles and hand-cuffs...” According to this zealous libertarian, if one was a hater of shackles and hand-cuffs (and what human being isn’t) then it follows that he also acknowledge India Tea, available only through the British East India Trading Company and taxed accordingly, to be not only “needless,” but also “for a long time… detrimental to our liberty, interest, and health.” Who knew that participating in the English tradition of afternoon tea was equivalent to Toryism! But so it was according to the article’s author, who mentions that a number of women who participated in Providence’s own tea party are but recent converts from the “evil tendency of… Tea drinking.” Luckily, these misled women soon repented their despicable tea-drinking ways, and alongside the ever-vigilant Sons of Liberty, freely discarded – nay, burned! – the “hurtful trash.”

Although Rhode Island’s Tea Riot took place almost 15 months after the famous Boston Tea Party, there had been multiple other demonstrations in the colony to clarify their feelings toward the Crown. Newport, still a prosperous seafaring and merchant town before the war, became especially famous as a hub for dissenters. One of the first revolts against British customs took place there. The HMS Liberty, originally owned by John Hancock but confiscated by the British and re-outfitted as a customs boat, was particularly hated, given its history and current use. On July 19, 1769, angry Rhode Islanders burned the ship in an act of open defiance. Several other ships were likewise pillaged and burned in the years leading up to the war, and soon Newport gained such a reputation as hostile to Loyalists that the English Colonel Gilbert wrote a letter of warning to James Wallace, commander of a British ship Rose docked at Newport, that when their men were gathered on land, they should expect to be attacked by “thousands of rebels” (Seibert).

Of course, Rhode Island has reasons that extended beyond that heart-felt patriotism and independence for which the tiniest of colonies is famous In his review titled “The Revolutionary Experience of Newport and New York,” Fred Anderson points out that ironic chiasmus which occurred in the historical port city during the war. Newport, wildly successful (albeit illegally) leader of the international Triangle Trade, and involved in other other-the-table trade ventures, was also a key port for the duration of the Revolution. From being the city from which the first rebel attack against British ships were launched in 1772, to 1780 when it became the first base for French relief soldiers to dock and disembark, Newport was crucial to the success of the American forces. However, by the time victory was achieved, Newport’s accumulative losses in trade companies’ profits (especially hampered beginning in 1764) combined with the usual cost of war, had taken such a toll on the once golden city that a 1782 visitor described the following scene: “a reign of solitude… only interrupted by groups of idle men standing with folded arms at the corners of the streets, houses falling to ruin, miserable shops…; grass growing in the public squares…; rags stuffed in the windows ” (Anderson 3). As it turned out, this rags-to-ruin phenomenon was one from which Anderson says Newport “never recovered,” and while the shambles were repaired enough to return the place to a properly functioning city, it would never regain its antebellum high social status. The gilding was gone for good.

Despite Newport’s pending doom, as it were, so independently-minded was the general populace of Rhode Island, so unyielding their resolve, that it was the first colony to defiantly succeed from the British empire, on May 4, 1776. And, ever consistent in its historical independence and unwavering in its convictions, the colony was also the last of the thirteen to ratify the United States Constitution, which document was also distrusted by Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who also feared that it gave too much power to a potentially corrupt and over-powerful government: the very type of government from which the colonists now rebelled. Had those cautious Rhode Islanders and their like-minded contemporaries, the infamous Virginians mentioned above, lived to witness the federal government in 1861wield that much-debated Constitution as a terrible sword to cut in twain their beloved Articles of Confederation, had they lived to see the unprecedented power which would be seized by the yet-unborn Abraham Lincoln; what horror should have filled their libertarian bones. Yet their keen foresight was tempered by their desire for the humanitarian peace and international protection promised them by a centralized government, and more than fourteen years after renouncing allegiance to England’s King George, on May 29, 1790, Rhode Island did at last ratify the United States Constitution.


SOURCES:

Anderson, Fred. “Review: Bringing the War Home: The Revolutionary Experience of Newport and New York.” Reviewed works: “A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era” by Elaine Forman Crane, and “The New York Loyalists” by Philip Ranlet. Reviews in American History.Vol. 15, No. 4 (1987): 575-584. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2701933. April 24, 2011.

Force, Peter. American Archives, consisting of a Collection of Authentick Records, State Papers Debates, and Letters and Other Notices of Publick Affairs. The whole Forming A Documentary History of the Origin and Progress of the North American Colonies. 4th ser. Vol II. (Washington, D.C. 1839): 15. Historymatters.gmu. February 2003. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/sia/newspaper.htm. Link: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/sia/teariot.htm. April 24, 2011.

Myrevolutionarywar.com. http://www.myrevolutionarywar.com/states/ri.htm. April 24, 2011.

Siebert, Wilbur H. “Loyalist Troops of New England.” The New England Quarterly.Vol. 4, No. 1 (1931): 108-147. http://www.jstor.org/stable/359219. April 24, 2011.

Visitrhodeisland.com. http://www.visitrhodeisland.com/make-plans/facts-and-history/. April 24, 2011.

"The Notorious Triangle": Rhode Island Rum Runners

Image above courtesy of http://riroads.com/history/ri_rum_runners.htm

The “notorious triangle”, dubbed thus by Jay Coughtry (James’ review of his essay is cited below), forever changed the prospects and culture of tiny Rhode Island. When the port cities - Newport, Bristol, South Kingstown, and, slightly inland, even Roger William’s beloved Providence – partnered with the rum and slave trades, the people of the tiny and previously overlooked colony to experience an economical boom such as had not been seen in the colony yet. Soon Rhode Island became the leading colony in slave trade activity. In fact, Coughtry argues that Rhode Island merchants were almost completely responsible for the triangle trade (though James seems to believe this is an exaggeration.) A quote from a Rhode Island historian (slavenorth.com) explains the involvement of the Rhode Islanders in the gritty business:

"All together, 204 different Rhode Island citizens owned a share or more in a slave voyage at one time or another. It is evident that the involvement of R.I. citizens in the slave trade was widespread and abundant. For Rhode Islanders, slavery had provided a major new profit sector and an engine for trade in the West Indies."

While 204 investors may not seem a huge number, one must take into consideration the generally small population Rhode Island boasted in general, only several thousand people until the late 1700s. But it was not only slaves that made Rhode Island rich. Rum, distilled from Caribbean molasses, soon became the wampum (so to speak) of Rhode Island, used to trade for slaves in Africa, who were went to the West Indies, who worked the sugar plantations, from whence came the molasses in the first place. This New England-Africa-West Indies-New England ship and trade line formed a pattern dubbed the “Triangle Trade” and the “Rum Triangle.” This West Indian rum was soon the toast of Africa, some of whose citizens were willing to sell their own fellows for a bottle of the stuff. And more, besides being good for trade in Africa, rum became immensely popular among the colonists themselves.

It seems the Spanish had started this “rum-running” tradition, when Columbus found himself no Asian treasure-laden plains in his “India.” To appease the Spanish crown, who had fronted a large sum of money to pay for his multiple voyages, he began to take “Indian” slaves and also sugar back to Spain. The first attempt at distilling a liquor from this raw sugar was a failure, but within a few years, success resulted from the venture. And as usual, British adventurers soon followed suite. I apologize for the following lengthy quotation, but its conciseness makes it worth repeating:

“Between 1709 and 1807, Rhode Island merchants sponsored at least 934 slaving voyages to the coast of Africa and carried an estimated 106,544 slaves to the New World. From 1732-64, Rhode Islanders sent annually 18 ships, bearing 1,800 hogsheads of rum, to Africa to trade for slaves, earning £40,000 annually. Newport, the colony's leading slave port, took an estimated 59,070 slaves to America before the Revolution. Bristol and Providence also prospered from it. In the years after the Revolution, Rhode Island merchants controlled between 60 and 90 percent of the American trade in African slaves.” (slavenorth.com)

And so, the “notorious triangle” gave eighteenth century Rhode Island’s economy a makeover it would never forget.

SOURCES

James, Sydney V. “Review: Of Slaves and Rum.” Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1982): 168-172. Online. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2702323.

http://64.251.194.106/archives/2004-july-aug/wine_rum_revival.htm

www.slavenorth.com

Population Growth and Immigrants in the Rhode Island Colony

In the late 17th through the early 18th century, Rhode Island colony experienced a slow influx of migration, stimulated only by the maritime and slave trades which boomed in the early 1700s.

12 friends, as Roger Williams dubbed them, founded Providence, Rhode Island in1636. These were religiously-independent Englishmen, soon followed by their wives and families and other religious refugees persecuted in the Massachusetts Bay colonies. They were overall a hard-working group, as they, unlike some southern and Caribbean colonists, for example, did not expect aid from the crown or native tribute. They knew they would forge their own way in that forested Rhode Island shoreline. This lifestyle and the general disdain that Massachusetts held for the colony – in fact, far from supporting this infant colony, Massachusetts sought to destroy it – kept its numbers small. The initial wave of settlers occurred between 1636 and1645, but over the next few decades population growth was very slow, mainly only the descendants of the original generation which had multiplied itself by then with children and grandchildren, etc. The English maintained a handful of towns consisting of several hundred families total, roughly two thousand people according to my estimate. Quakers established themselves particularly in Newport, and small populations of Jews, Catholics, and variant protestant remnants found sanctuary in this relatively tolerant society of misfits. Indians, though usually not included in population estimates, also thrived there, though they sold a large portion of their land to the settlers for profit.

The next wave of immigration occurred after King Philip’s War, which began in 1674 and after almost a two-year bloody conflict ended in 1675. Squashing native strongholds allowed the English to feel a new sense of ownership of their colony, originally purchased from the Narragansett and until 1675 dependent upon Indian trade and relations. Now the English formed a stronger government, spread out across the previously sparsely settled land, and began to receive immigrants directly from England. By 1689, the population doubled, perhaps 4000 people, again not counting the Indians.

Over the next twenty years, the rate of growth slowed somewhat, yet still the population nearly doubled again by 1708, when a census recorded 7,181 persons living in Rhode Island – a tiny number compared to the great plantation states of Virginia and Pennsylvania, surely, but a respectable growing community considering its unofficial beginnings in ratio of people to land area. Of this number, there were many descendants of the original first generations, people who tended to keep to themselves and would not have infiltrated the neighboring colonies too much. There were also newcomers, many of them lured by the prosperous fishing business, and by the ever-growing, highly profitable slave trade. And finally, the colony was now not as unpopular as it once was with the Massachusetts folk, now that Indian friendship had been minimized and official English government had been established.

Maritime industries brought some success to the small, formerly isolated colony; however, it was not until the lucrative slave trade was established in Newport and surrounding ports that Rhode Island became a really powerful, wealthy colony. The slave trade brought with it international affiliations, rum-running, and even more maritime fame. As will be revealed later in our study, this new-found status brought with it a sudden population boom, and by 1774 a census listed tiny Rhode Island’s population at 59,678 person – more than 8 times as many people as in the 1708 census taken only two generations years earlier.

SOURCES:

Fisch, Lila M. [untitled]. Review of Economic development and Population Growth in Rhode Island, by Kurt. B. Mayer. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1954): 240-242. Accessed online March 18, 2011. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3348354

Whitney, Herbert A. “Estimating Precensus Populations: A Method Suggested and Applied to the Towns of Rhode Island and Plymouth Colonies in 1689.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 55, No. 1 (1965):179-189. Accessed online March 18, 2011. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2561608.

Labor & Ethniticity Sources

The power point presentation embedded below alters the format, for which I apologize. It also cuts off the bottom of each slide, where I listed my sources. Below is a copy of my sources:

Sainsbury, John A. "Indian Labor in Early Rhode Island." The New England Quarterly. Vol. 48, No. 3 (1975): pp. 378 – 393. Online.

http://www.slavenorth.com/rhodeisland.htm

http://www.naacpprov.org/articleDetails.cfm?articleid=46

Labor & Ethniticity PowerPoint

Rhode Island Feb. 24

Material Culture in the 1630s - 1660s

Life during the initial colonial period in Rhode Island, beginning with  its founding in 1636 and lasting shall we say for a few decades, was more similar to life in Massachusetts’ English colonies than their southern neighbors, the Virginia plantation colonies. Yet there were many differences even between the almost sister colonies of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

During its first few decades, Rhode Island was much smaller and had fewer direct settlers than its larger neighbor, Massachusetts. Mainly Rhode Island’s small white communities consisted of immigrants from Massachusetts, who had found that colony’s stringent Puritan stance a bit stifling. Overall, the settlers were very religious, but often they were religious outcasts – Seekers, Quakers, Baptists, and Jews found safe harbor in the small, religiously tolerant villages Rhode Island boasted in its early years. Local government was somewhat different also, suffrage extended to every landowning man of age, regardless of his church creed. Roger Williams proposed that it is impossible to see into a man's heart, so what does it profit to insist that he convert with his lips before voting.

Material life was simple, no doubt, and relied heavily on trade with the native Narragansett Indians initially. Yet Rhode Island’s settlers were not the indulgent gentlemen of Virginia, nor were they the Purist-minded Anglicans of Massachusetts; the “red island’s” new residents proved more industrious than the Virginians and less prejudiced than the Massachusetts folk. Rhode Island villages (the first villages, that is) were fairly purchased from Indian friends, and were small in number. This alone helps account for some of the Wampanoag and Narragansett acceptance – small towns of only a dozen or so people were hardly a danger to native societies. These settlers might easily be incorporated into the Algonquian government of assimilating small “tribes” into a larger native realm. This seems to have been the case initially with Rhode Island, and Roger Williams himself was especially diligent to learn the Algonquian language, including several of its north-eastern dialects.

 After Rhode Island continued in this almost isolated way for several decades – that is, Rhode Island almost sought to isolate itself from its unfriendly Massachusetts neighbor – yet after this rather isolated, mild, tolerant beginning, what to me is a shocking development arose: an almost sudden interest in the African Slave trade. In 1652 Rhode Island acquired its first African slaves, purchased from ships which passed that way usually on route as follows: from Europe, to Africa, to the Caribbean Islands, to New England, then either back to the islands or directly to Europe. Rhode Island turned out to be a key port involved in the trade, as it lies slightly south of Massachusetts and contained many entrepreneur-type settlers.

By 1661 (though not wholly do to the slave trade as it had not developed much yet) Rhode Island was beginning to be quite prosperous. Roger Williams and his band were no longer ruling the white roost politically it was more involved with Europe now. Yet it was still on working terms with the Indians, because of furs, fishing, whaling, etc.

One European traveler, a Swiss surgeon named Felix-Christian Spori, noted that in the early Massachusetts Bay and Narragansett Bay towns, Indian wampum was incorporated into the English settlers’ monetary system. So we can assume that the early days in Rhode Island were particularly friendly with the natives (whom Williams had always acknowledged to be the natural owners of the land) in so much that the two monetary systems were partially merged.

There are a number of interesting anecdotes referencing material life in this area recorded in Spori’s account, including a shocking tale of a forest snake which reportedly swallowed a whole deer. That same snake was suspected of eating several missing local sheep. Fish were also important to diet, especially (as one might guess) the plentiful cod, and also mackerel. So it would seem that early Rhode Island colonists heavily relied upon hunting and fishing, while at the same time often fearing yet-unfamiliar wild creatures!

Spori also remarks upon Indian canoes, which apparently he had never heard tell of previously as he described them in detail, from their long length which might seat 6 men, to their body made of bark. He also recounts an incident involving an Indian who stuck himself with a harpoon while hunting crab, “from hand to elbow”! Because of the barbs it could not be easily removed, but the Swiss man, being a surgeon, was able to remove it and saw the patient for check-up visits for 2 weeks.

There was “no scarcity of greens, fish, and game” in the area. Spori does mention that he could not find all of the medicinal plants he knew in England but the ones that were there were so populous they were shipped to England. Furs, timber, fish, and fish oil, tobacco, and other products were also being exported already. Horses and livestock had been transported there, and whaling had begun to be a prosperous business. With such plentiful timber, and imported livestock on the rise, Rhode Islanders typically lived in wooden houses, and had small gardens and a few animals to sustain its households, while still relying upon local fish and the like to supplement their diets and pocketbooks.

Spori calls Rhode Island “Read Island” as indeed it was called for awhile. His entire account is quite colorful, and if it is in fact true, it paints Rhode Island and the other bay colonies as relatively thriving fishing towns, whose business and livings were intertwined with the native Indian tribes. He does not mention the presence of African slaves, perhaps because he did not travel very far inland. One can only wonder how different America’s material history would be had the partnering with the Indians continued, instead of turning to the growing African slave trade – of which tiny Rhode Island was quickly becoming the head.

SOURCES:

Schemel, Emma. “A Swiss Surgeon Visits Rhode Island 1661-1662”. The New England Quarterly. Vol. 10, No. 3 (Sep., 1937), pp. 536-548. Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/360323.

http://www.slavenorth.com/rhodeisland.htm

Native Cultures and First Contacts

First we must understand that Rhode Island and Massachusetts are almost inseparable in their history, European and Native. As for the English, Providence’s founders were in fact Plymouth’s and Salem’s cast-offs. Rhode Island was first thought a convenient banishment-ground then a growing threat to Massachusetts, and a cold war brooded between the colonies throughout the colonial era.

Furthermore, many of the tribes who lived in Rhode Island also lived in and/or heavily interacted with Massachusetts. The indigenous inhabitants of area were several tribes of the Algonquian Indians, including the Wampanoag, the Narragansett, and the Pequot, among others. Memorably, the names of cities, rivers, etc. reflect the predominant thriving Indian culture in the early years of colonization, including the following: Narragansett Bay, Massachusetts, Massasoit, Nantucket, Mashpee, Natick, and I could go on. One has but to view a map of the area and be overwhelmed by everything from gold courses to creeks that bear names which are obviously Algonquian. When the English arrived just east of Rhode Island in Massachusetts, they were certainly not alone.

The entire Massachusetts May and Narragansett Bay areas were heavily populated with Algonquian speaking peoples. The various tribes had different dialects but seemed able to easily communicate among themselves. The tribes shared many aspects of their culture. They were hunters, fishers, and farmers. They had already cleared much of the land just inland, where they had built a multitude of villages boasting tens of thousands of people in total. They had a complex government system, and even a road system. Though previous bouts with European sicknesses had reduced the numbers of some tribes, the result was hardly a vacuum domicilian in general, but simply the opportunity for other tribes to increase their power over of the others (I am referring here chiefly to the rise of the Narragansett as the dominant tribe in Rhode Island.)

As for the English settlers in Providence, I'll focus on the "first contact" of Roger Williams and his group of immigrants with the native tribes. Of course, the Indians had previous contact with the English, French, and Dutch, some of it relatively fair trade, and some of it unfriendly. There had been occasional kidnapping on both sides, and even a few deaths. Both sides were still trying to maintain some form of civility however, mainly as they both sought trade with each other, and at any rate Williams' little band seemed to have little trouble living alongside the Indians. Surely this was largely owing to the fact that that group of people were not seeking gold or glory, and while they were in a way seeking God, their main objective was not evangelicalism. They were not seeking territory expansion, only a home for their small company; their leader did not consider the King of England to be sovereign over the land, and therefore only lived on land they had fairly purchased from the natives; and also, Williams himself being a brilliant linguist, he soon required no interpreter when speaking with the various tribes.

The founding of Providence by Roger Williams and his “twelve friends,” however, hardly represents the whole of Rhode Island’s history. As the colony grew, and England’s interest was piqued, greed from various directions began to overtake the colony’s once peaceful and almost unnoticed beginnings.

SOURCES:

Conforti, Joseph A. Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006.

http://www.wampanoagtribe.net/Pages/index