A short history of Rhode Island

by George Washington Greene

The most active commerce had been that of the West Indies. But with peace a wider field was opened, and ships sent directly to the East Indies. Raw material of various kinds was sent to Europe, and European manufactures brought back in return. It was soon evident that the new State would profit England more by equal commerce than by dependence. Yet it was not all at once that the financial errors of the Revolution could be repaired, or the bitterness engendered by civil war assuaged. A deep rooted hostility to England had taken hold of many minds, to bear its fruits when republican France claimed sympathy as a sister republic.

We have already registered the birth of manufactures. Circumstances favored their growth and prepared the way for a development which has made the smallest one of the richest states of the Union. A great river runs through it, widening at its mouth into a spacious bay. Deep ponds of pure water dot its surface, and limpid streamlets which swell with every rain send from every upland their tributes to the bay. How should these waters be subjected to the will of man? Samuel Slater, a native of Derbyshire, had served an apprenticeship to Jedediah Strutt, the partner of Arkwright, and learned the secret of the new method of spinning cotton. Heavy penalties were affixed to the exportation of the new machinery. But Slater had made himself master of the theory as well as the practice of the art, and seems to have been casting about him for a way of turning his knowledge to account, when he learned that the State of Pennsylvania had offered a bounty for the introduction of it. Thus American manufactures owe their birth to protection. The story was a simple one. Slater came to America bringing the secret with him. In Moses Brown, of Providence, he found a judicious counselor, in William Almy and Smith Brown enterprising capitalists. On the 21st of December, 1790, and on the Pawtucket River, the first factory went into operation. On that day and by the hand of Samuel Slater, the destiny of Rhode Island was decided.

In these days of mingled hope and fear, on the 19th of July, 1785, closed the long and useful career of Stephen Hopkins, whose name is closely interwoven with all that is greatest and best in Rhode Island history; an astronomer of no mean pretensions, a statesman of broad views and deep penetration, a supreme executive, prompt, energetic and fearless, a genial companion when wise men relax from care, and a trusty counselor when the duties of life bear heaviest on the scrupulous conscience.

The tranquil growth of manufactures affords few materials for general history, in which it appears by its results rather than by its processes. Statistics take the place of narrative, and except in controlling and inventive minds the story of man himself is the story of a machine.

Meanwhile another seed was sown in this fruitful ground, and another name was associated with a great public benefaction, the name of John Howland, a native of Newport, but from his ninth year a resident of Providence and a barber by trade, became, in 1799, the father of the free school system of Rhode Island. Not all at once was this good work done, but slowly and in spite of much opposition, chiefly from the poor who were to profit most by it. Years were yet to pass before the pride as well as the consciences of the people became enlisted in its behalf.

In the commercial history of the State the foundation of the Providence Bank, in 1791, was an event of great importance, to be followed at intervals by others with various degrees of success. But among them all not one bore so directly upon the moral growth of the community as the Providence Institution for Savings, founded in 1819.

Great hopes were founded on a canal connecting the tide-water of Providence River with the north line of the State. A company for this purpose was formed in 1796, and so great was the confidence which the undertaking inspired, that John Brown, a leading merchant of Providence, subscribed forty thousand dollars to the stock. The project failed, and though enthusiastically renewed in 1823, failed again and forever.

The yellow fever belongs to our record, and Rhode Island came in for a full share of the destruction occasioned by the September gale of 1815. Most towns hand down from generation to generation the story of some great fire which swept over it in its young days, leaving ruin and desolation in its path. The “great fire” of Providence was the fire of 1801, the memory of which still lives in the traditions of our own generation.

Pleasant memories also belong to our record. When Washington made his first visit to the East as President, Rhode Island had not yet entered the Union. When she did he made a second visit to the East in recognition of her accession, and was enthusiastically welcomed. He had already been there under very different circumstances during the war.

We have spoken of John Howland as a public benefactor. Another of these benefactors of their race was Ebenezer Knight Dexter, founder of the Dexter Asylum, who having amassed a large fortune in honorable commerce, gave sixty thousand dollars of it to the support of the poor. A still more important movement was made in the interest of the poor, when the first temperance meeting was held in Providence in 1827.