At this time vaccination had not been discovered, the only preventive of the terrible scourge of smallpox being inoculation. Now Governor Ward could not spare time for the brief illness which this process involved. In addition to his duties in Congress he was obliged, owing to the physical disability of his colleague, Gov. Stephen Hopkins, to conduct all the official correspondence of the Rhode Island delegation, with the Government and citizens of the colony. His services were required on many committees, notably on the secret committee which contracted for arms and munitions of war. Hence, worn down by overwork, he fell an easy victim to smallpox. He died three months before his colleagues signed the Declaration of Independence. As he early saw the necessity of separation from the mother country, he would certainly have affixed his signature to it had he lived. His descendants may be pardoned for thinking that he made a great mistake in not taking the time required for inoculation.
Many of Governor Ward’s letters have been preserved. These show his ardent patriotism as well as the devout religious spirit of the men of 1776. He writes to his brother: “I have realized with regard to myself the bullet, the bayonet, and the halter; and compared with the immense object I have in view they are all less than nothing. No man living, perhaps, is more fond of his children than I am, and I am not so old as to be tired of life; and yet, as far as I can now judge, the tenderest connections and the most important private concerns are very minute objects. Heaven save my country! I was going to say is my first, my last, and almost my only prayer.”
Gov. Samuel Ward was a Seventh-Day Baptist. The little church in which he worshiped at Newport has all the charm of the best architecture of that period. It now forms part of the Historical Society’s rooms.
His son, Lieut.-Col. Samuel Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, joined the Continental Army when the Revolution broke out. Governor Ward writes of “the almost unparalleled sufferings of Samuel,” and these were indeed severe. Of the ill-fated expedition to Quebec, Colonel Ward writes: “We were thirty days in a wilderness that none but savages ever attempted to pass. We marched one hundred miles upon shore with only three days’ provisions, waded over three rapid rivers, marched through snow and ice barefoot ... moderately speaking, we have waded one hundred miles.” The result of this exposure was “the yellow jaundice.”
The Americans were overpowered by superior numbers, Colonel Ward being taken prisoner with many others. He was also at Valley Forge in that terrible winter when the American Army endured such great privations.
It is interesting to note that Colonel Ward assisted in raising a colored regiment in the spring of 1778. He commanded this in the engagement on the island of Rhode Island, near the spot where his granddaughter and her husband established their summer home a century later. From the peaceful windows of “Oak Glen” one sees, in the near foreground, the earthworks of the Revolution.
In spite of all the hardships endured during the Revolutionary War, Colonel Ward lived to be nearly seventy-six years of age. My mother well remembered her grandfather with his courtly manner and mild, but very observing, blue eyes. With the indulgence characteristic of grandparents, he permitted the Ward brothers to play cards at his house, a thing they were forbidden to do at home.
The State of Rhode Island is represented in the statue-gallery of the national Capitol by Roger Williams, pioneer of religious liberty and founder of the State, and by Gen. Nathaniel Greene, who rendered such important service during the Revolutionary War. My mother was related to both men, being a direct descendant of the former.
Whether or no Massachusetts was justified in driving out Roger Williams, we will not attempt to decide. He was evidently a person who delighted in controversy in a day when religious toleration was almost unknown.
To him belongs the honor of being the first to found a State “upon the distinctive principle of complete separation of Church and State.” Maryland followed not long after the example set by the “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”