A short history of Rhode Island

by George Washington Greene

The annexation of the eastern towns in 1757 marks an important period in the history of Rhode Island. With two unfriendly neighbors on each side she had been compelled to contend inch by inch for her territory. All the obstacles which impede development had accumulated in her path. All the dangers which menace the existence of feeble colonies had beset her. She had faced them all, she had overcome them all. A great principle lay at the root of her civilization, and humanity itself was inseparably connected with her success.

From the annexation of the eastern towns in 1757 to the peace of Paris in 1763, all the leading events were more or less connected with the war. Privateering took the place of commerce. Taxes were levied to build and arm forts and raise and equip soldiers, not to erect churches and court houses and libraries and schools.

The war was lingering but decisive. It gave England one brilliant victory and one illustrious name—the Heights of Abraham, and Wolf—to the colonies the lesson so valuable a few years later that English troops might be driven where colonists held their ground, and the name of Washington. Recorded in European history as the seven years war, for the colonies it was a war of nine years, hostilities having begun two years before war was declared. Nowhere is man’s place in history more distinctly marked than in this war, which till the right man came was a succession of blunders and defeats. With William Pitt came victory.

While the war was still confined to the colonies a large number of French residents had been thrown into jail as prisoners of war. What was their legal position? The question was brought before the Assembly by a petition for release, which was so far granted as to authorize their transportation to some neutral port, and so far rejected as to still subject them to the laws of war.

We have seen how watchful the home government was to enforce the laws of trade. But with all its watchfulness smuggling still prevailed in every colony. New orders came from the King directing the Assembly to “pass effectual laws for prohibiting all trade and commerce with the French, and for preventing the exportation of provisions of all kinds to any of their islands or colonies.” The Assembly passed the necessary acts. But too many and too powerful interests were involved to admit of their rigorous execution.

To this period belongs the bitterest party contest in the annals of Rhode Island, generally known as the Ward and Hopkins contest. Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins were the foremost Rhode Islanders of their time; both men of self-acquired culture and both illustrious by public services. Hopkins was the elder of the two, being born at Scituate on the 7th of March, 1717. Ward was his junior by eighteen years. Both were farmers and merchants, and both sincerely devoted to the interests of their native Colony. But as to what those interests were they differed widely, and their difference soon took the form of town and country parties. Newport was the leading town of the Colony, not only in commercial enterprise but in intellectual culture. Berkeley had not left his foot-prints there in vain. This seat of Rhode Island culture was best represented by Samuel Ward. The name of Hopkins stood for the country. The distribution of taxes was one of the questions at issue. Paper money was another. By degrees all questions of public policy were classed under the one or the other of these two leading names. There were sharp contests at the polls, painful severings of social ties and all the bitterness which partisanship gives to political discussion. At last the aid of the law was invoked and Hopkins sued Ward for slander. It is a singular illustration of the altered relations between Rhode Island and Massachusetts that in order to obtain an impartial jury the trial should have taken place at Worcester. Ward was acquitted and Hopkins condemned to pay the costs. In a few years the party contest gave way to the graver contest of the Revolution wherein the two leaders took their seats side by side in Congress Hall.

Among the events of domestic interest which belong to this period was the burning of the Providence Court House—not so much for the loss of the building as for that of the Providence Library which was kept in one of its rooms. The want of a public library was keenly felt, and when a lottery was granted for rebuilding the court house, half of its proceeds were set apart for the library. Rhode Island already felt the importance of libraries and schools. She will persevere in this course till it secures her a comprehensive school system and an admirable university.

The theatre found less favor, although its founder, David Douglass, brought with him the recommendation of the Governor and Council of Virginia. His first application for a licence in Newport failed; a second was more successful; and this pioneer of the American stage drew for a while good houses. He moved to Providence and built a permanent theatre. Many came from Boston to seek an enjoyment which they could not find at home. But the current soon turned. The Bostonians met with a cold reception, and the short-lived pleasure was condemned as a nuisance.

A newspaper was a want more generally acknowledged. Hitherto there had been none in the Colony. But in the summer of 1758 the Newport Mercury was established, and has held its ground with varying fortunes to our own day. Four years later William Goddard established in Providence the Providence Gazette and Country Journal. Among its first contributors was Governor Hopkins, who began for it his “Account of Providence,” but called to other subjects by the excitement of the times he never went beyond the first chapter. Enough, however, was published to call out several insulting letters from Massachusetts.

Times were daily becoming more and more critical. The Board of Trade insisted upon the rigorous enforcement of the navigation act. The colonial governments passed the necessary laws but could not enforce them. It was then that writs of assistance were first called for, and from this call arose that trial so celebrated in colonial annals, the first mutterings of the tempest which was at hand. James Otis became a familiar name throughout the colonies.