The Assembly which met on the very day of the evacuation, found much to do. Many expenses which the presence of the enemy had made necessary, ceased. The coast-guard was dismissed. The ferries from Newport to South Kingstown were reöpened. The four island towns resumed their charter administration. The non-intercourse act was repealed, and New Shoreham restored to the exercise of her corporate rights. To meet the embargos laid by the neighboring states, an embargo was laid upon all articles of exportation. The militia was reörganized. In August acts had been brought in confiscating the property of Tories, and forbidding the sale of slaves out of the State against their will. They were passed in October.
We come now, and reluctantly, to a disgraceful page of our annals, the Revolutionary debt of Rhode Island. In the December session of 1779, the State acknowledging “the proved fidelity, firmness and intrepidity in service, of its soldiers,” pledged itself through its constitutionally elected representatives, to make good at the close of the war, “to them or their legal representatives, the wages of the establishment of Congress, wherever they engaged.” Upon the strength of this solemn engagement many of the men and officers of the three Rhode Island regiments of the line, whose terms of service were about to expire, reënlisted for the war.
This pledge was broken, leaving an ineffaceable stain upon the shield of Rhode Island. Nor does it lighten the disgrace to say that other states also were untrue to their pledges. Other states persecuted for opinion, but in this Rhode Island did not follow their example.
A bitter winter followed the evacuation. The bay was blocked up with ice. Seaward the ice extended as far as eye could reach. Government had to come to the relief of the starving and freezing poor. Corn cost four dollars a bushel, potatoes two—famine prices, as prices ordinarily ruled.
We have marked the first appearance of the Newport Mercury. During the three years of British occupation it was published at Rehoboth, but at the evacuation was brought back to Newport, and resumed its original influence under the editorship of Henry Barber.
As time wore on things gradually assumed a more hopeful aspect. In April, 1779, Lafayette returned from France with the cheering assurance that a French fleet would soon follow him. Preparations for effective coöperation immediately began. The militia was called out for three months. Rhode Island’s quota of men was one regiment of six hundred and thirty men; of supplies, seventy one thousand six hundred and seventy-five pounds of beef, thirty hogsheads of rum, and twenty-two hundred and eighty-five bushels of forage grain; of transportation, two hundred draft horses.
The promptness with which the little State met the heavy calls upon her limited resources was warmly acknowledged by Washington in a letter to Governor Greene. And at the same time one of her regiments was winning high honor at Springfield, under the guidance of one of her best officers, Israel Angell.
The arrival of the French fleet and army under Ternay and Rochambeau was the signal for universal rejoicing. The hopes and confidence of the first year of the alliance were revived. But this time the efforts of the combined forces were to be directed against the enemy’s strongest post—New York itself. Some apprehensions were still felt from the secret machinations of the Tories, and an act was passed banishing them.
Meanwhile preparations were made for quartering and feeding the troops. In Providence, University Hall was set apart for a hospital. The barracks at Tiverton and a farm near Bristol were assigned to them for the same purpose, and Pappoosquash Point was given to them for a burial place.
To meet the expenses imposed by these preparations new taxes were assessed, founded upon a new estimate of taxable property, and designed to sink the remaining portion of the State’s quota of old Continental bills and meet present and future expenses. Taken altogether the taxes voted in the July session of 1780, reduced to a specie standard, amounted to one hundred and twenty-six thousand three hundred and sixty-nine dollars and fifty cents. It was a heavy burden, and the good spirit with which the people bore it showed how thoroughly their hearts were enlisted in the cause of their country.