Rhode Island was a leader in the American Revolutionary movement. Having the greatest degree of self-rule, it had the most to lose from the efforts of England after 1763 to increase her supervision and control over her American colonies. In addition, Rhode Island had a long tradition of evading the poorly enforced navigation acts, and smuggling was commonplace.
Beginning with strong opposition in Newport to the Sugar Act (1764), with its restrictions on the molasses trade, the colony engaged in repeated measures of open defiance, such as the scuttling and torching of the British customs sloop Liberty in Newport harbor in July 1769, the burning of British revenue schooner Gaspee on Warwick's Namquit Point in 1772, and Providence's own "Tea Party" in March 1775. Gradually the factions of Ward and Hopkins put aside their local differences and united by endorsing a series of political responses to alleged British injustices. On May 17, 1774, after parliamentary passage of the Coercive Acts (Americans called them "Intolerable"), the Providence Town Meeting became the first governmental assemblage to issue a call for a general congress of colonies to resist British policy. On June 15 the General Assembly made the colony the first to appoint delegates (Ward and Hopkins) to the anticipated Continental Congress.
In April 1775, a week after the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, the colonial legislature authorized raising a 1,500-man ''army of observation'' with Nathanael Greene as its commander. Finally, on May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first colony to renounce allegiance to King George III. Ten weeks later, on July 18, the Assembly ratified the Declaration of Independence.
During the Revolutionary War itself, Rhode Island furnished its share of men, ships, and money to the cause of independence. Volunteers included a significant number of Negro and Indian slaves, who gained distinction as the "Black Regiment," a detachment of the First Rhode Island Regiment. Esek Hopkins (brother of Stephen, the signer of the Declaration of Independence) became the first commander in chief of the Continental navy -- a force which Rhode Island helped create -- and the able Nathanael Greene of the Kentish Guards became Washington's second-in-command and chief of the Continental army in the South.
The British occupied Newport in December 1776, and a long siege to evict them culminated in August 1778 in the large but inconclusive Battle of Rhode Island, a contest which was the first combined effort of the Americans and their French allies. The British voluntarily evacuated Newport in October 1779, but in July 1780 the French army under Rochambeau landed there and made the port town its base of operations. It was from Newport, Providence, and other Rhode Island encampments that the French began their march to Yorktown in 1781.
The Revolution did not alter Rhode Island's governmental structure (even the royal charter remained intact), but it did prompt some legal and political changes. For instance, the Revolution and sentiments it generated influenced legislation affecting Catholics and Negro slaves.
Whatever anti-Catholicism existed in Rhode Island was mollified by assistance rendered to the struggling colonials by Catholic France and by the benevolent presence of large numbers of French troops in Newport under General Rochambeau, some of whom remained when the struggle was over. Thus the General Assembly in February 1783 removed the arbitrarily-imposed disability against Roman Catholics (dating from 1719) by giving members of that religion "all the rights and privileges of the Protestant citizens of this state."
Most significant of several statutes relating to Negroes was the emancipation act of 1784. With a preface invoking sentiments of Locke, that "all men are entitled to life. liberty, and property," the manumission measure gave freedom to all children born to slave mothers after March 1, 1784. Though an encouraging gesture, it was not a complete abolition of slavery, for it failed to require the emancipation of those who were slaves at the time of its passage.
The emancipation act was followed by a concerted effort of Rhode Island reformers -- particularly the influential Quaker community -- to ban the slave trade. This agitation had a salutary result when the General Assembly enacted a measure in October 1787, which prohibited any Rhode Island citizen from engaging in this barbarous traffic. The legislature termed the trade inconsistent with "that more enlightened and civilized state of freedom which has of late prevailed."
A side effect of the Revolution to have important consequences for Rhode Island's political and constitutional development was the decline of Newport. its exposed location, the incidence of Toryism among its townspeople, and its temporary occupation by the British combined to produce both a voluntary and at limes a forced exodus of its inhabitants. In 1774 its population was 9,209; by 1782 that figure had dwindled to 5,532. The population of Providence -- more sheltered at the head of the bay and a center of Revolutionary activity -- remained stationary during these turbulent times.
The Revolution was a blow from which Newport never fully recovered. British occupation adversely affected both its population and its prosperity. From this period onward, numerical and economic ascendancy inexorably moved northward to Providence and the surrounding mainland communities.
In 1778 the state had quickly ratified the Articles of Confederation, with its weak central government, but when the movement to strengthen that government developed in the mid-1780's, Rhode Island balked. The state's individualism, its democratic localism, and its tradition of autonomy caused it to resist thecentralizing tendencies of the federal Constitution. This opposition was intensified when an agrarian-debtor revolt in support of the issuance of paper money placed the parochial Country party in power from 1786 through 1790. This political faction, led by South Kingstown's Jonathan Hazard, was suspicious of the power and the cost of a government too far removed from the grass-roots level, and so it declined to dispatch delegates to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, which drafted the United States Constitution. Then, when that document was presented to the states for ratification, Hazard's faction delayed (and nearly prevented) Rhode Island's approval.
In the period between September 1787 and January 1790, the rural-dominated General Assembly rejected no fewer than eleven attempts by the representatives from the mercantile communities to convene a state ratifying convention. Instead, the Assembly defied the instructions of the Founding Fathers and conducted a popular referendum on the Constitution. That election, which was boycotted by the supporters of stronger union (called Federalists), rejected the Constitution by a vote of 2,708 to 237.
Finally, in mid-January 1790, more than eight months after George Washington's inauguration as first president of the United States, the Country party reluctantly called the required convention, but it took two separate sessions -- one in South Kingstown (March 1-6) and the second in Newport (May 24-29)-- before approval was obtained. The ratification tally -- thirty-four in favor and thirty-two opposed -- was the narrowest of any state, and a favorable result was obtained only because four Antifederalists either absented themselves or abstained from voting.
Rhode Island's course during this turbulent era -- first in war and last in peace -- is attributable in part to its tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and dissent. Most of its residents feared the encroachment on local autonomy by any central government, whether located in London, Philadelphia, or Washington. This ideology, coupled with the economic concerns of the agrarian community, explain Rhode Island's wariness of the work of the "Grand Convention.'' Those economic worries consisted principally of a fear that the new central government would be financed by exorbitant taxes on land and that the new constitution's ban on state emissions of paper money would terminate the inflationary financial scheme formulated by Hazard and the Country party to discharge public and private debts.
Because the Constitution three times gave implied assent to slavery, the influential Quaker community also denounced it. These factors explain the strength of Antifederalism. Small wonder that Rhode Island withheld ratification until May 29, 1790, making it the last of the original thirteen states to join the new federal union.
Fortunately, a number of equally influential factors turned the tide in favor of ratification. These included the desire of the holders of national securities and continental loan office certificates to be paid by a strong, fiscally sound central government. Coastal towns desiring federal reparation for wartime losses had a similar desire. The local press -- Peter Edes's Newport Herald, John Carter's Providence Gasette, and Bennett Wheeler's U.S. Chronicle (Providence) -- all urged ratification. Such a plea was aided by the prestige and integrity of the new national leaders, especially Washington, and by congressional passage of a Bill of Rights to safeguard individual liberties from federal invasion. The proposed federal assumption of state debts was a carrot, and the economic coercion exerted upon alien Rhode Island by the new central government (a tariff and a demand for debt payment) was a stick. Most bizarre was Providence's threatened secession from the state on the eve of the May convention if that body rejected or deferred ratification once more. In the end, a nearly immovable object yielded to an irresistible force; Rhode Island joined the union, which had left it behind and embarked upon a new era of economic and political development.
Before examining that new age, however, it is worthwhile to note that the Revolutionary era was marked by more than battles, whether military or constitutional. Like any age, it had diversity and significant developments in many fields. Most notable was the founding of Brown University (first situated in Warren and called Rhode Island College) by local Baptists in 1764. This institution, destined to emerge as one of America's foremost citadels of higher learning, was ably directed by the Reverend James Manning (1738-91), its founder and first president.
In the economic realm, the famous Brown family of Providence rose to new financial, commercial, and industrial heights, surpassing in stature even the celebrated merchants Aaron Lopez, Joseph Wanton, and Christopher Champlin in Newport and James D'Wolf of Bristol. The resourceful Brown brothers -- Nicholas (1729-91), Joseph(1733-85), John (1736-1803), and Moses (1738-1836)- guided by uncles Obadiah (1712-62) and Elisha (1717-1802), laid the groundwork in this turbulent age for the remarkable commercial and industrial advances of the early national period.