USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > An oration on the annals of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations > Part 2
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What abundant incidents in King Philip's life § furnish the richest material for poetry, and song, and drama! His acces- sion to the throne of Massasoit, his patriotic speeches to his young men, his masterful diplomacy with the neighboring tribes, his secret preparations for the grand uprising, his fierce encounters and undaunted perseverance when all seemed lost, his pilgrimage to the Mohawks to engage them in the war, the capture and death of his wife, and the selling of his only son
* Judge Durfee's Works,-" History of the Subjection and Extermination of the Narragansetts," pp. 203-271.
t Drake's Indians,-Life of King Philip, book iii., chap. ii .. p. 24.
# Plutarch's Life of Alexander.
§ Washington Irving's Sketch Book, -Philip of Pokanoket, pp. 386-407, Put- nam's most elegant Artists' Edition, from Alvord's press.
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(the last of the family of Massasoit) into slavery in Bermuda, his return to the desolate solitude of his seat at Mount Hope, his desperation and the pathos of his mourning, his massacre by the hand of the traitor, the quartering of his carcass at the com- mand of the otherwise chivalrous Captain Church, and the hang- ing of it on four trees, and the rude spite of the Indian butcher addressing the dead body of King Philip: "You have been a very great man, and have made many a man afraid of you, but so big as you be, I will now chop your - for you ;"* and, finally, the exhibiting of his head on a gibbet, in Plymouth, for twenty years, one hand sent to Boston as a trophy, and the other scarred hand given to Alderman, the traitor who shot him, to show, "at a penny a sight," throughout the Colonies of New England ;+ these are copious themes for thought and for the muse.
" Even that he lived is for his conqueror's tongue, By foes alone his death-song must be sung."}
" The wife of Pometacom, the innocent Wootonekanuske, with her little son, fell into the hands of Captain Church," writes Drake.§ "No wonder that Philip was 'now ready to die, and that his heart was now ready to break,' as some of his traitor- ous men told Captain Church. All that was dear- to him was swallowed up. But his only son, the future Sachem of the Nar- ragansetts, still lived, and this most harrowed his soul. Lived for what? To serve as a slave in an unknown land. Could it be otherwise than that madness should seize upon him, and despair torment him ? That in his sleep he should hear the anguishing cries of Wootonekanuske and his son? But we must change the scene." And with him I pass to better spec- tacles in our History.
* "Fulvia, the wife of Anthony, showed her spite against Cicero by boring his tongue through with her bodkin."
+ Arnold's History of the State of Rhode Island, vol. i, p. 416. Drake's Indians,
-Life of King Philip, book iii., chap; ii., p. 37. Church's Indian Wars.
# Charles Sprague.
§ Drake's Indians,-Life of King Philip, book iii., chap. ii., p. 13.
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There have been four eras in our State :
I .- ITS SETTLEMENT.
II .- ITS CHARTER.
III .- THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. IV .- THE DORR WAR.
I do not intend to narrate the circumstances of the settle- ment of our State, with which the sons of Rhode Island are familiar, further than to trace the effects of the principle of the Civil Polity on the inhabitants, whereby Rhode Islanders are "a peculiar people;" and also note the reaction of the people on the Civil Polity, which has outlived two centuries. And this discussion will. comprehend the first two eras of Rhode Island.
The Charter of "Providence Plantations in New England," obtained by Roger Williams, was signed Thursday, 14th March, 1643-4,* and was confirmed by Oliver Cromwell, March 29, 1655.t It did not include Rhode Island, but only main-land towns.
The Charter of Charles II., procured by Dr. John Clarke,# is dated 8th July, 1663, and includes the islands and main-land, and gives the peculiar title to " The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." Amidst all the changes of the dynas- ties of Europe, and of Asia,, the Charter of 1663 remained fixed. During the Colonial Period, the Revolution, the Confederation, the Adoption of the Constitution of the United States, the establishment of New States, and amidst the unsettlements of every other State Constitution, the Royal Charter of Rhode Island stood without amendment. It contained three grand principles : 1st. The acknowledgment of Indian Titles. 2d. It allows Liberty of Conscience. 3d. It establishes Republican Government.
* Arnold's Hist. R. I., vol. i, p. 114, note.
t Il., p. 255.
# " The original projector of the settlement on Rhode Island, in 1638; and the first regularly educated physician who ever practised in the State."-GODDARD'S Address on the occasion of the change in the Civil Government of Rhode Island, May 3, 1843, p. 54. 2
·
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This old Charter, granted both by Parliament and by a king, was also THE FIRST WRITTEN CONSTITUTION IN THE WORLD. The Royal Charter survived the attempts of demagogues to an- nul and supersede it. It was the fundamental law of the State from 1663 to May 2, 1843, when it was superseded by "the authentic act of the whole people."
As it was proclaimed at its birth as a " livelie experiment" of a pure "Democracie," with liberty of freemen to elect the freemen who should compose the State," and with "full Libertie of Con- science in all religious concernments ;" so it "particularly" orders,-before William Penn set foot in America,-"the makinge of purchases of the native Indians,"t and is the first solemn protest of mercy and justice"# against the claim of the Pope as vicar of Jesus Christ, and of the Sovereigns of Europe to the control of newly discovered countries.
The principles of ABORIGINAL TITLES, of SOUL-LIBERTY, and of DEMOCRACY, which Roger Williams asserted in 1630 before the people of England; which he avowed on arriving at Boston in 1631; which he sustained amidst the bickerings of a colonial parish in Plymouth; which he asserted before the General Court of Massachusetts in 1635 ; which, on his banish- ment from Massachusetts he introduced into the primeval forests on Narragansett Bay in 1636 ; which he incorporated into the written bond of town-fellowship in Providence (" the earliest form of government recorded, wherein is expressly recognized the rights of conscience"):§-principles which he published to the world, and defended as the birth-right of mankind; which he embodied in the Charter procured by him from Cromwell's .
* " The sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people."-ROGER WILLIAMS' " Bloudy Tenent," pp. 116, 243.
t King Charles's Charter of 1663.
# Arnold's Hist. R. I., vol. i., chapter 4.
§ Elton's Life of Roger Williams, p. 45:
" Roger Williams justly claims the honor of having been the first legislator in the world, in its latter ages, that fully and effectually provided for and established a full, free, and absolute liberty of conscience."-STEPHEN HOPKINS several times Governor; and a signer of the Declaration. For a complete refutation of the rival claims of Maryland, seo Judge Pitman's Centennial Discourse, August 5, 1837 p. 8.
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Parliament in England, in 1644; and which principles were embalmed in the Royal Charter of Charles II., in 1663,* can never be holden by the bands of death; but they are revived, and live in the Constitution of Rhode Island of 1843. On those memorable days in May (1st and 2d), in the State House at Newport, your President was the Priest who offered the prayers at the decease of the Charter and its revival in the Constitution. t There, in that most beautiful spot in Newport, where, on the 24th of November, 1663, the Colonists welcomed the arrival of "George Baxter, the most faithful and happy bringer of the Charter" (as the record quaintly reports) ; we, of this generation, assembled in the balmy month of May, 1843, to resign the parchment and to receive again its recorded principles in the more graceful investiture of a Constitution.
The Government of Rhode Island, under the Charter, has been eminently a government of law and order. No State has endured more heat in the strife of political parties, but no profane Uzzah has dared to lay his rude hand upon the ark of religious and political freedom in Rhode Island. The men who governed the State owned the State. The State has never interfered with religion, and religionists have been deprived of every pretext for interfering with the State. These are the grand secret causes of the prosperity, and peace, and order which the people of Rhode İsland enjoyed under the Charter.
One of the early colonial documents confesses, in its old-fash- ioned, expressive way, that " we have long drank of the cup of as great liberties as any people that we can hear of under the whole Heaven."# And our most distinguished historian, Mr. Bancroft, exclaims : " It has outlived the principles of Claren- don. and the policy of Charles II. Nowhere in the world have
* "Our Charter excels all in New England, or in the world, as to the souls of men." -ROGER WILLIAMS, Providence, 15th January, 1681.
t See Nore II .- The last days of the Charter Legislature, and the organization of the Government under the Constitution.
Address of Thanks of the Town Meeting of Providence to Sir Henry Vane, August 27, 1634. "Under God," (says BACKUS, Hist. of the Baptists, vol. i., p. 286- BANCROFT, vol. i., p. 427), " the sheet-anchor of Rhode Island, was Sir Henry."
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life, liberty, and property, been safer than in Rhode Island !"* And well do I remember the pathos of tone and the voice of trembling, when Professor Goddard, the orator, who, on May 3, 1843, made the address to the people of Rhode Island on the occasion of the change in Civil Government, wherein he said : " Fellow citizens ! can we pass, without emotions allied to those of filial sorrow, from under the beneficent dominion of the old Charter, the oldest constitutional charter in the world ? Can we take our leave of this ancient and excel- lent frame of Civil Polity, without being penetrated with sentiments of gratitude for the rich blessings of which it has been the parent to this State, through all the vicissitudes of her being ? Can we ever lose the conviction that this Charter con- tains principles destined never to perish? How inseparable, likewise, is the Charter from all our memories, not only of the deeds, but of the men of other times !"+
Shall I not, on this occasion, Sons of Rhode Island, recall the names and deeds of your fathers ? The muster-roll of no com- munity, not larger than Rhode Island, has enriched history with men who have served their generation with conspicuous merit ; or moulded public affairs at home and abroad ; or acquired a world-wide fame in the annals of Peace and War, superior to the native and adopted citizens of our State. Though her pop- ulation, even now, is surpassed in number by many a single ward in this great city of New York, yet, among the greater and lesser lights that spangle the firmament of national renown and shine throughout the civilized world, Rhode Island's sons, reared under the benignant charter of democratic and religious liberty, have emblazoned her standard with their exploits, and pervaded the nations with their influences.
Crowning the list, stands ROGER WILLIAMS,t whose teach- ings and experiments in Christian Ethics and Political Organi- zation are acknowledged to have inspired the statesmanship of
* Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. ii., p. 64. See also NOTE I.
t Goddard's Address, p. 23.
t See NOTE III .- Sketch of the Life of Roger Williams.
---
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AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
two continents. And passing along the years of our colonial infancy, till we reach the times of the Revolution, when the Colonies were ripening into the manhood of States, we come to the name of ABRAHAM WHIPPLE, the commander who first dared to attack and capture the British armed vessel, the Gas- pee, in the Narragansett waters, on June 9-10, 1772, shedding the first blood of the Revolution, and lighting, in her burning wreck, the first beacon-fires in the War of Independence; and who, six years later, being the first Commodore with the commis- sion of the Continental Congress, discharged the first American broadside into his Majesty's navy. All this happened in Nar- ragansett waters. Whipple commanded the frigate Providence. WILLIAM JONES, afterwards Governor of Rhode Island from 1811 to 1817, was Captain of Marines, and bearer of dispatches to Dr. Franklin, in Paris .* The frigate passed the blockade from Prov- idence to Point Judith, fired broadsides into the British frigate Lark and her Tender, and reached France in safety.t If pos- terity demand the names and deeds of the heroes who were fore- most, and led the van of the patriot soldiers of "the times that tried men's souls," Rhode Island presents her valiant sons who were led by Whipple, and history awards to her the honorable pre-eminence.
And next stands ESEK HOPKINS, whom Congress, in 1775, selected and commissioned as Commodore of the first Fleet, and placed him at the head of the navy of the Republic, before the first year of Independence. It was he who trained JOHN PAUL JONES in seamanship, and prepared him for the sailing orders that sent him, in the Rangert and the Bon Homme Richard, to devastate the coast of England and Scotland, and fling defiance to the lion in his lair, and spread before the dismayed populace of Britain, and the admiring eyes of Europe, the fresh flag of the Stars and Stripes, under whose folds he swept the seas of British commerce; and who has furnished story and song with the
* Captain Jones was the first officer of the navy of the United States who ap- peared in Europe in uniform.
+ See NOTE IV .- Letter of William Jones Hoppin.
# Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, vol. ii., pp. 640, 641.
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theme of heroism, and whose victorious fight with the Serapis* is world-renowned. The navy of the United States was born and nursed and reared in Rhode Island, and organized by her sons.
If we turn now to the army of the Revolution, NATHANIEL GREENE, t the blacksmith of Warwick, standing next to WASH- INGTON, was named by " the Father of his Country" as qualified to succeed him in the supreme command. He was the redeemer of the South from their captivity to the hostile Briton, and received from grateful Georgia both land and citizenship, as the tribute to her champion. And side by side with Greene fought Captain STEPHEN OLNEY#, who commanded the Rhode Island Regiment (known as the Forlorn Hope of the army), and whom La Fayette entitled his brave comrade. At the siege of York- town, which terminated the War of Independence, the Rhode Island Regiment, led by Olney, stormed the works, and planted the victorious ensign of the emancipated Republic on the con- quered battlements. I was present, when a boy, in 1824, at the entry of La Fayette into my native town of Providence, and witnessed the warm embrace of La Fayette and Olney at the west door of the State House, while the veterans wept in each other's arms. There was BARTON,§ too, who, at the peril of his life, seized General Prescott while in bed, surrounded by his guards, and bore him away, to be held as hostage for our captured Gen- eral Lee. La Fayette found Barton in jail for debt, in Vermont, for the taxes on his bounty land," and released him from prison by paying his debt. Colonel CHRISTOPHER GREENE also, for his gallant defence of the Fort at Red Bank, deserves honora- ble mention. These were sons of Rhode Island, who, with a numerous company of patriots, fought the fight of Independ- ence, and who led the armies of the Revolution. Besides these worthy men, Rhode Island gave to New York the first
* Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, vol. ii., pp. 640, 641.
t His Life and Letters, edited by his grandson, George Washington Greene, will, when published, be welcomed as a most important contribution to the History of the Revolution.
# Mrs. Williams's Life of Barton and Olney. § Ib.
Barton swore he would not pay a tax for his country's gift. 1
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AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
· Mayor of the city after the conquest by the English in 1665,- Thomas Willett, who afterwards returned to Rhode Island, where his monument still exists .* He was twice mayor, and was the great grandfather of the famous Colonel Marinus Wil- lett,t of the Revolution.
And let us not forget Rhode Island's adopted son, the good DEAN BERKELEY, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland. Intent on the benevolence of missionary efforts among the In- dians, in a time of deep religious lethargy in England, when bribery and corruption blackened Walpole's administration and darkened the historic era of both Church and State, Berkeley won the unforced eulogium of the poet Pope :
"To Berkeley, every virtue under heaven."
And the calm Bishop Atterburyt said of him : "So much un- derstanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, until I saw this gentleman." Arriving in Rhode Island January 23, 1729, with several literary and scientific gentlemen, and artists (among whom was Smybert, who gave the first im- pulse to American Art, in Painting and Architecture), he fixed his residence in Newport ; and was admitted freeman of Rhode Island by the Colonial General Assembly. He built a house (now standing and visited by the curious and the reverent), which he named " Whitehall;" and there waited in vain for the promised endowment of his Indian College from the British Administration. But not in vain, nor idly, did this great man spend his time in Rhode Island. During his residence there, he meditated and composed his " Alciphron, or Minute Philos- opher ;" and, as tradition says, wrote it in the natural alcove of the Hanging Rocks at the beach in Newport. Inspired by his
* Stone's Life and Recollections of John Howland, p. 267.
+ Presiding officer of the Sons of Liberty in New York, in 1775; sheriff for sev- eral years, and Mayor in 1807. See Narrative, with Sketch of his Life, New York during the American Revolution, pp. 53-65.
# Francis Atterbury, born 1662, Bishop of Rochester under Queen Anne, friend of Pope, Swift, and Berkeley, was banished by the Parliament of George II., and died in France, in exile, 1742.
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mystic theme, in full view of the ocean, and surrounded by the expanse of Nature, he produced a work which, for subtle argu- ment and nice illustration, has commanded the admiration of the metaphysicians of the world; while it shamed into con- fusion the materialism of Hobbes and the sophistries of Hume, to the delight of theologians. It was published by James Franklin, in Newport. The old organ* in Trinity Church, Newport, and the Berkeley Library in Yale College, and in Harvard University, are mementos of the benevolence and learning of Bishop Berkeley. His letters to England first ac- quainted his contemporaries with the details of the climate and government of Rhode Island, with which he was charmed. In Newport, under the date of April 24, 1729, he writes, to Thomas Prior, of Dublin, thus : "I can, by this time, say some- thing to you, from my own experience, of this place and people. The inhabitants are of a mixed kind, consisting of many sects and subdivisions of sects. Here are four sorts of Anabaptists, besides Presbyterians, Quakers, Independents, and many of no profession at all. Notwithstanding so many differences, here are fewer quarrels about religion than elsewhere, the people living peaceably with their neighbors of whatsoever persuasion. They all agree in one point, that the Church of England is the second best. The climate is like that of Italy, and not at all colder in the winter than I have known it everywhere north of Rome. The summers are much pleasanter than those of Italy by all accounts ; forasmuch as the grass continues green, which it doth not there. The vines sprout up of themselves to an extraordinary size, and seem as natural to this soil as to any I ever saw. The town of Newport contains about six thousand souls, and is the most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its bigness. I was never more agreeably surprised than at the first sight of the town and its harbor."t
* "The first organ ever heard in America. '-LOSSING's Pictorial History of the U. S., p. 118. "In Old Trinity the organ he bestowed, peals over the grave of his firstborn in the adjoining burial-ground. A town in Massachusetts bears his name." -- TUCKERMAN'S Biographical Essays, p. 266.
+ Bishop Berkeley's Works-Extracts from Letters, p. xxii. Also Callender's Historical Discourse in Collections of the R. I. Hist. Soc., vol. iv., p. 31, notes.
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AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
While residing in Newport, Dean Berkeley composed the stirring lyric that, with prophetic ken, startled into derision the men in the Old World, and now stirs the American people with its truth-the last verse of which Leutze has frescoed on the walls of the new Capitol at Washington, by his inimitable illustration. Though often quoted, yet, as a Rhode Island pro- duction, I may be pardoned for reproducing and reciting it. .
It is entitled :
ON THE Profpect of Planting ARTS and LEARNING in America.
T HE Mufe, difgufted at an Age and Clime, Barren of every glorious Theme, In diftant Lands now waits a better Time, Producing Subjects worthy Fame :
In happy Climes, where from the genial Sun And virgin Earth fuch Scenes enfue, The Force of Art by Nature feems outdone, And fancied Beauties by the true :
In happy Climes the Seat of Innocence, Where Nature guides and Virtue rules, Where Men fhall not impofe for Truth and Senfe, The Pedantry of Courts and Schools :
There fhall be fung another golden Age, The rife of Empire and of Arts, The Good and Great infpiring epic Rage, The wifeft Heads and nobleft Hearts.
Not fuch as Europe breeds in her decay ; Such as fhe bred when freih and young, When heavenly Flame did animate her Clay, By future Poets fhall be fung.
Weftward the Courfe of Empire takes its Way ; The four firft Acts already paft, A fifth fhall clofe the Drama with the Day ; TIME'S NOBLEST OFFSPRING IS THE LAST.
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I come now to the third era in the History of Rhode Island-the Adoption of the Constitution of the United States.
The happy establishment of the Independence of the Colonies fixed Rhode Island as a State in the posture of sovereignty, wherein, she, more than any other of the Colonies, had placed herself. Her Charter was peculiar ; her population, at first het- erogeneous, and made up of refugees ; and her territory become, what Roger Williams reckoned as its glory, the place of resort of all persons "distressed of conscience," fleeing from the per- secutions, real or fancied, of the Puritan brethren. She was sequestered, like her own dear island, from her neighbors, and stood aloof, in the dread of contact and in the pride of seclusion. All this produced and fostered a spirit of independence, both of thought and action. Nevertheless, Rhode Island was favor- able to a Confederation, on the basis of her sovereignty as a State, with her sister Colonies. The dangers impending in 1774, which threatened the subjugation of the Colonies, had suggested the necessity of Union; and the "Sons of Liberty," in New York, on the 16th of May, had made a proposal for "a General Congress." But this, and other suggestions to the same end, were unofficial and diffused. But on the 17th of May, 1774, the people of Providence, in town meeting, form- ally proposed " a Union of the Colonies-the Continental Con- gress," and "a few weeks later, the Legislature of Rhode Island was also the very first to elect Delegates to that Congress." Accordingly, the Historian of Rhode Island, Mr. Arnold, justly claims for Rhode Island "the distinguished honor of making the first explicit movement" of established authority, for the Continental Congress, which framed the ARTICLES OF CONFED- ERATION .*
When the Articles of Confederation were adopted, which recognized the sovereignty of each State, and admitted all on an equality, Rhode Island had attained an acknowledged posi- tion, to which her institutions and her education had prompted her to aspire.
* Arnold's Hist. R. I., vol. ii., p. 334.
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It is, hence, no matter of surprise, that her people should cling to the Confederation, when all the other States had abandoned it, and that Rhode Island should be the last of the States to adopt the " FEDERAL CONSTITUTION," whereon the unity of the American nation was to be established for- ever.
The prevailing temper of the people of Rhode Island was eminently conservative. They disliked change, and they were suspicious of all propositions to change, which emanated from a foreign source. They were, besides, remarkably prosperous. The harbors of Narragansett, not only could float the navies of the world, but the ancient city of Newport saw her wharves thronged with ships; and the town of Providence had sent the first ship to the East Indies which had left an American port. In an article of the Newport Mercury, about this time, the growth of New York was noticed; and the far-seeing writer, with evident complacency, ventured the prediction of congrat- ulation to the Knickerbockers that New York would one day, far in the future, "rival Newport in Commercial prosperity and greatness." The country people of Rhode Island were not distinguished for learning; but, on the contrary, were de- ficient and below the standard of their neighbors in Connecticut and Massachusetts. There were no Free Schools in Rhode Island. And one of the evils of the great principle of re- ligious independence, as pushed to the extreme latitude of per- sonal prerogative, was the fancied right of religious indifference ; so that the public teachings of ministers of the Gospel were nowhere held in less repute.
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