USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > History of Newport County, Rhode Island. From the year 1638 to the year 1887, including the settlement of its towns, and their subsequent progress > Part 36
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In August the assembly, to encourage such brilliant actions as the capture of Prescott, although the time fixed in its offers of reward had expired. voted the sum of eleven hundred and twenty dollars for the officers and men concerned in that expo-
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dition. This assembly repealed the monopoly act on the ad- vice of the New England convention, but ordered that the con- tinental soldiers in camp from the state be supplied at the prices fixed thereby.
The convention which met at Springfield in July had resolved that an army of four thousand men should be maintained by the New England states for the defense of Rhode Island. Con- gress approved this action. There were occasional affairs of slight importance in themselves, but sufficient to keep both sides wide awake. On the 2d of August Colonel Elliott, by his artillery fire, drove the " Renown," a fifty gun ship, from her moorings off Dutch island, and in the night a raid was made on the island, when some stock was captured, and the same party, crossing to Conanicut, brought off two prisoners. On the 5th the militia in Narragansett drove off with some loss a foraging party of two hundred British soldiers; and the same day Captain Dyer, with sixty men, crossed from Tiverton to the island, attacked a party of twenty who had fired on some fish- ing boats, and compelled them to beat a retreat to the cover of their works.
Arnold informs ns that " the battle of Bennington checked the contemplated advance of Burgoyne into New England, where he proposed a junction at Springfield with Pigot's forces from Rhode Island." Baum's march into Vermont with his Hessians was absurd enough, but there does not appear to be any evidence that Pigot had any thought that he could break through the cordon by which he was held with any such force as he had under his command, though no doubt his Hessians would have been glad enough to try the venture to meet their countrymen. The defeat of Baum on the 16th of August set all such mad schemes at rest if ever there were such entertained.
On the 20 of September a new privateer of twenty guns, from Providence, attempting to run the blockade, was chased ashore by the British vessels and burned. Surprise parties were the order of the day. Colonel Cornell landed on Prudence island, at night, lay in cover, and the next morning carried off an officer and fifteen men who had landed from a frigate for fresh water. The same night an officer and two men were taken from Rhode Island by a party from Seconnet.
The assembly met at Sonth Kingstown on the 22d of Septem- ber. On the petition of Samuel Carr, Benjamin Underwood
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and Christopher Ellery, Esqs., who represented for themselves and many of the late inhabitants of Newport and the other towns of the county, that they had been driven from their island homes to the mainland, had performed all their duties in de- fending the shores, as well as supplied their quotas to the fif- teen months' men and continental battalions, but that their charges were so great that they were unable to pay the taxes now levied, the assembly exempted them from all rating except for their stock.
The news of Gates' victory at Stillwater stimulated the eastern states to an attempt to recover the island. Massachu- setts resolved to send three thousand men in addition to the two regiments she already had in Rhode Island, and in addi- tion some artillery. The Rhode Island assembly on the 22d ordered that one-half of the militia alarm, independent and artillery companies be drafted from the militia within the state on the 27th day of September, and rendezvous at the order of Major General Spencer on the Ist of October; the militia thus drafted to be formed into one brigade of six regiments, Ezekiel Cornell to be brigadier. It was left to the option of General Spencer to form two brigades, however, and appoint a second brigadier general. A bounty of forty shillings was voted for a month's service. Connectient promised fifteen hundred men to further the plan.
The British force on the island was estimated by General Spencer to be nearly four thousand men, four Hessian and three British regiments; two of each on Windmill hill, a corps of grenadiers and light infantry at Fogland ferry, one regiment on Butt's hill and two near Newport. On the 2d of October General Pigot ordered all the furniture and wearing apparel in Newport to be siezed, and on the 17th, word coming in of the threatening movements of the Americans on the mainland to the eastward, all the inhabitants were ordered to the forts to work the next day. There was cause for alarm. On the 16th nine thousand troops were gathered, and a large number of boats was in readiness at Tiverton under charge of Major Nathan Munro; but on the night fixed for the attack the prep- arations were not complete. A heavy storm set in and delayed the movement, and when it was at last made the wind was con- trary and some of the boats were fired upon. The attack was postponed and the objective point changed to a landing place
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above Fogland ferry. Again the weather was against them. The troops became nneasy and numbers marched off.
On the night of the 26th of October, finally assigned, hardly five thousand men remained. A council of officers was held, and it was resolved to abandon the expedition. And here again was justified the complaint often made by Washington of the utter unreliability of militia for offensive movements. Admir- able often in defense, always in the finish of a successful bal- tle, they were not to be depended upon for a concerted action, which demanded coolness and intrepidity combined. There was a general disgust at the failure, and Spencer was blamed for incapacity. But the discouragement which would have en- sued was greatly modified in the general delight at the sur- render of Burgoyne and his army at Saratoga on the 17th of October, which reached them in the midst of their disappoint ment.
The assembly met at Providence the day after the failure at Fogland ferry and appointed a committee to meet with any committees that Massachusetts and Connecticut should raise, to inquire into the grounds of the miscarriage. At the same meeting a council of war was again appointed to act in the re- cess, and the remaining half of the militia called out at the last session was ordered to be drafted into two divisions on the 6th day of November, and to march at the order of General Spen- cer or his successor in command on the 6th day of December, for thirty day's service.
The committee appointed to inquire into the late failure, after considering a statement made by General Cornell, decided on the request of General Spencer to refer the matter to a joint committee from the New England states interested. A court of inquiry was held in pursuance of this resolve, at Providence, and a report was made exonerating General Spencer and ascrib- ing the miscarriage to the failure on the part of Pahner's bri- gade to have the boats in readiness the first night set for the attack and to the bad weather afterward. An inquiry insti- tuted by congress later resulted in a similar verdict. Spencer, however, resigned his command on the 21st of December.
On the 5th of November the British ship " Syren," of twenty- eight guns, was stranded at Point Judith and captured by the artillery men of the battery at that station. Her crew, one hundred and sixty-six officers and men, were carried prisoners
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to Providence. Arrangements for winter quarters were now made by General Pigot. The Presbyterian meeting honses were stripped of their pews and turned into barracks, and the keys of the Baptist meeting houses were taken by the barrack master for the same purpose. At some time during the alarm caused by the American movement from Tiverton two regiments of loyalist Americans were raised on the island. On the 17th of November these organizations were disbanded, the colonels and officers dismissed, the non-commissioned officers and men turned into the British regiments, and on the evening of this day the lines that separated the town of Newport from the country were manned with guards for the first time and the gate locked; forty men stationed at each redoubt and two sen- tries on each flank. On the 1st of December the Landgraf regiment and a company of Hessian chasseurs were brought into the town and quartered.
Among the resolutions adopted by the continental congress was one appointing Thursday the 18th day of November for a general thanksgiving for the signal blessings and victories of the year. The general assembly which met at Providence on the 1st of December ordered the issue of a proclamation by the governor confirming the same and directing that "all servile labor and recreation be forbidden on that day."
Meeting again on Friday, December 19th, the day after this solemn act, they appointed a committee to draft a bill in con- formity with the recommendation of congress for the confisca- tion and sale of the estates real and personal of the tories of the state. This was a terrible blow to many rich merchants and large landholders in Newport who had adhered to the crown. The signature of the loyal addresses supplied sufficient proof for forfeiture. The gentlemen charged with this delicate business were Henry Ward, Henry Marchant, Rouse T. Helme and William Channing, Esquires. Ward was deputy for New- port in the general assembly and secretary of that body; Marchant delegate to the continental congress; Helme deputy for South Kingstown and clerk to the council of war; Chan- ning attorney-general to the state. The articles of confedera tion proposed for the United States and the general tax re commended by congress to be assessed on all inhabitants of the United States in 1778 was referred to the next session.
Before this assembly met Rhode Island had fresh cause fe:
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alarm. The extent of the barracks fitted up at Newport, the taking of the meeting houses and the building of chinmeys in them left no doubt that large reinforcements were expected. On the 14th of December Governor Cooke had represented these fears strongly to the council of the state of Massachu- setts and was at once answered that great encouragements had been extended to the regiments of Colonels Robinson and Keyes to extend their terms of service till January, 1779.
On the 5th of December the British man of war " Raisonable" arrived off the month of Newport harbor with twenty-six trans- ports under convoy from the Delaware. General Burgoyne, in accordance with the terms of convention or surrender at Sara- toga, had marched his army to Boston where he expected to embark them for England. On the 25th of November he wrote to Washington from Cambridge, near Boston, expressing his doubts as to whether the transports destined to carry the troops would be able to make the port of Boston at that ad- vanced season of the year, and asking consent from him, or from congress through him, to march the troops to Providence or pass them by small craft to Newport or some port on the sonnd when the transports should arrive at the point desig- nated; asking at the same time permission to go at once to Newport with his suite, there to take passage on a separate frigate. On the arrival of the transports, eight of them having come into port, General Pigot sent an open letter to General Burgoyne under cover to General Spencer, the American com- mander of Rhode Island, notifying him that the vessels were at hand and recommending him to apply to the council at Provi- dence for permission to obtain supplies of sheep, fowls and other live stock from the Seconnet or Narragansett shore, as the island did not abound in live stock.
This letter was sent to Governor Cooke, who, on the 7th, noti- fied the council of Massachusetts that by the convention it was evidently the intention of General Gates that " Mr. Burgoyne's troops should not intermix with the other British troops serv- ing in America, as the port of Boston was assigned for their embarkation;" that it was the intention of the Rhode Island government to fulfill that convention, and that " they could not prevail with themselves to admit Mr. Burgoyne's late army within the state in order to proceed to Newport." The Massa- chusetts council wholly agreed with this view, and answered
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the governor that the matter laid wholly with congress. But the Rhode Island assembly had not been discourteous in their relations with the British officers, and gave permission to General Pigot (Dec. 1st, '77) to send wine, sugar and tea by a cartel vessel to Mr. Ward for transmission to Burgoyne at Boston. Congress had its reasons for declining to permit the departure of Burgoyne's troops.
Although this correspondence explained in part the presence of the large squadron from the Delaware, the assembly was alarmed at the powerful armament and their exposure to "still more hostile attacks," and ordered, on the 19th of Dec- ember, the raising of two battalions, each of six hundred men, and a regiment of artillery of three hundred men, for the " de- fense of the United States in general and of Rhode Island in particular;" the three formations to be brigaded together. Ezekiel Cornell was appointed brigadier-general; Robert Elliott, colonel of artillery; Archibald Crary and William Barton (the hero of Prescott's capture), colonels of infantry; and the council of war was given power to call out such part of the militia, independent and alarm companies as would supply the delin- quencies in the quotas of the Massachusetts Bay, the New Hampshire and Connecticut contingents in case of emergency.
In January, 1778, General Pigot issned an order dividing the town of Newport into five districts, and appointing a " nightly watch." The tories on the island who, since the confiscation act, had no longer any reason for hesitancy, were now organized into a corps known as the Newport Loyal Association. It cou- sisted certainly of two, possibly of three companies. The officers were appointed by General Pigot. As the appointments of Jannary 1st, 1778, included the name of one captain, Joseph Durfee vice Simon Pease, deceased, it is probable that this was a revival or continuation of the regiment disbanded in Novem- ber.
In the American camp the process of organization was making headway. The recruiting was slow, but the commands were made more homogeneous. On the recommendation of General Varnum the Rhode Island battalions in camp at Valley Forge were united by Washington and the officers of one, Colonel Greene, Lieutenant Colonel Olney and Major Ward, were sent home to enlist a negro battalion for the continental service. The assembly which met in February at East Greenwich re-
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sponded to this suggestion. The preamble to their resolution, which anthorized the enlistment of "every able bodied negro, mnlatto or Indian man slave in the state into either of the two battalions," bases it on high grounds: " Whereas history affords us frequent precedents of the wisest, the freest and bravest nations having liberated their slaves and enlisted them as soldiers to fight in defense of their country." A further resolution allowed them the usual bonnty; a third, absolute freedom on passing muster before the enlisting officer; a fourth, an engagement to maintain them in case of sickness; a fifth gave a compensation to their masters at a rate not higher than one lmundred and twenty pounds for the most valuable. Six of the upper house dissented from this vote for varions economie reasons, but the resolution was sustained and Colonel Christo- pher Greene was empowered to draw one hundred pounds for bounties to slaves enlisting before him.
This assembly also instructed their delegates in the continen- tal congress, Stephen Hopkins. William Ellery and Henry Marchant, respecting the proposed articles of confederation and perpetual nnion, and suggested some alterations, the chief of which was the first formalizing of a claim or demand which, persisted in uncompromisingly, survived the war and kept back Rhode Island from the union completed in 17SS. This was the claim that the lands and revenues of the crown were forfeited to the United Colonies as a whole and not to the states within whose limits such lands lay; that the forfeiture onght therefore to be vested in all the United States, and the lands be disposed of and appropriated by congress for the ben- efit of the whole confederacy. It was not meant by this, they represented, "that congress should claim jurisdiction of the for- feited lands; but that the same shall remain to the state in which it lies." "This claim, it will be observed, did not alone re- gard the great unoccupied territory which the great states claimed to be theirs under charter to the Pacific ocean, but also the quit-claim crown rents within the established jurisdictions. Yet the assembly instructed their delegates to accede to the articles of confederation notwithstanding this claim, which they were, however, directed to enter upon the records of congress before signing the articles and to give notice that "the State intends to renew the motion for them."
The destitution of the patriot refugees from Newport was so
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great in this month of January, more than two hundred and fifty persons being then in Providence without means of liveli- hood, that an appeal was made throughout the states in their behalf and, as with Boston at the time of the Port Bill, abund- antly responded to. On the 13th of January congress urged the New England states to keep up the force in Rhode Island agreed upon by them, and the assembly in consequence ap- pointed Solomon Southwick, deputy commissary general of issues within the state. The great scarcity of wood, even at this time, in Rhode Island constantly appears. Even the troops about South and North Kingstown found it so difficult to ob- tain a supply that the quartermaster general was given authority to enter on the wood lands and out what they needed.
In February another gallant action relieved the monotony of the tedious winter. Captain John Rathbone, with the United States sloop "Providence," of twelve guns, landed a party of thirty men at New Providence, the most important of the Ba- hama islands, under Lieutenant John Trevitt, of Newport, with fifteen of whom he scaled the walls and captured the fort at night. The remainder of the party landed on an island oppo- site the town of Nassau, which they held for three days, made prizes of six vessels in the harbor, drove off a British war vessel which attempted to enter, and after spiking the guns of the batteries brought off the military stores without the loss of a man. On the 16th of February the frigate " War- ren," Captain John B. Hopkins, taking advantage of a show storm, ran the blockade of the British squadron, giving and taking lire as she passed, and got safely out to sea. The frig- ate "Columbus" made a similar attempt on the 27th of March, but was unable to get through and, driven on shore at Point Judith, was burned by the British the next day. On March 14th Green notes that "the Hessian troops appear in their uniforms for the first time," and not to be behind them in ele- gance, the Assembly ordered the purchase of silk for two stand- ards for the new regiments. On the 15th of April General Bur- goyne, by leave of congress, came down from Boston and sailed from Newport for England on parole. The convention troops surrendered by him at Saratoga, and since quartered at Cambridge, were marched into Vermont.
On the 17th General Sullivan, appointed by Washington to succeed General Spencer, whose resignation had been accepted
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by congress on the 13th of Jannary but who was still in command, arrived at Providence and was placed in command of Rhode Island by the council of war. The treaty of Paris, secured by the instrumentality of Lafayette and signed on the 6th of Feb- ruary, reached Boston on the 19th of April and Providence on the 21st. when salutes were fired from the battery at Fox point and from the frigate " Providence, " and repeated at sunset with military honors. The 22d was a day of fast by appointment of congress, but became a day of thanksgiving throughout the land as far as the news had reached. On the 25th General Pigot enclosed to General Sullivan copies of the bills of conciliation adopted by parliament under the alarm caused by the French- American alliance. They were burned by the public hangman on the demand of the people. On the night of the 30th Cap- tain Abraham Whipple took out the frigate "Providence," in the dark and a heavy storm, and ran the blockade of the Brit- ish squadron, firing his broadsides as he passed and sinking one of the tenders. He carried despatches to France and re- turned safely to Boston.
At the May election Governor Cooke retired and was suc- ceeded by William Greene, son of the late Governor Greene, who held the important post throughout the war and for some years after its close. Rhode Island was certainly happy in her chief magistrates in this tronblous period of her history.
On the night of Sunday, the 25th of May, General Pigot sent a fleet of small vessels np the bay from the Newport anchorage to break up the preparations which were making for a descent on the island. Six hundred men were embarked under com- mand of Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, and landed at day- break between the towns of Bristol and Warren. They marched at once through Warren to Kickemut river, where they burned a number of flat bottomed boats and a galley, which were being repaired. On their return through Warren they entered the honses, plundered the inmates of clothing, bedding and furni- ture, and then set fire to the meeting house, parsonage and other houses and destroyed a magazine of military stores. They also set fire to a new privateer sloop in the harbor, which was not, however, seriously injured. They then retreated by the road through Bristol, where they pillaged and burned in the same fashion all that their haste admitted, not excepting the Episcopal church in the center of the town which, with
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eighteen others of the most elegant dwelling houses, were burned to ashes. In some of the houses they tore the women's aprons and handkerchiefs from their persons, their buckles from their shoes, their rings from their fingers.
Word of this raid reaching Providence in the morning, vol- unteers marched at once toward Bristol. Colonel Barton went forward under orders from General Sullivan to rally the people and delay the retreat of the party till the troops could reach them. With twenty men he pursued them and fell on their rear near Bristol ferry. Badly wounded, he was compelled to leave the fight. The enemy's boats arrived in time for the party to get off before Sullivan's arrival, but Barton's attack saved the carrying away of the live stock, which were already collected on the shore. A number of inhabitants were carried away prisoners. A captain and nine men were also taken on Popasquash neck, and a galley with some of the crew cut out from Taunton river. Fleet Green's journal records that the next day, May 26th, "wearing apparel of all sorts, necklaces, rings and paper money, taken as plunder in a recent raid at Bristol and Warren, were offered for sale by the soldiers at Newport." That night, he says, there was an alarm of fire in Newport, and the inhabitants who went to the assistance of the owners were "greatly abused, knocked down and beat."
The state was in a miserable condition of defense at this time. Sullivan wrote that he had not five hundred men under his command, and that there were less than two hundred from the other New England states. A special meeting of the assembly was held on the 28th of May, and orders given for the raising of eight hundred and thirty-nine effective men by all the towns, except Newport and the other island towns, to fill up the bat- talions of infantry and the artillery regiments before the 10th of June ; and the conduct of the governor, who had already summoned into actual duty one-sixth of all the militia com- panies, was approved. Little Compton and Barrington were ex- empted from the militia call, but one-half of their force of this nature was continued in service. General Sullivan was fur- ther empowered to call out the entire force of the state in his discretion.
On Sunday morning, the 3ist of May, the British made a dash at Fall river. One hundred and fifty men, under Major Ayres, were landed at daybreak at the mouth of the river and
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burned a mill and house on the shore, but were prevented from going inland, where they proposed to burn Freetown and the mills, by Colonel Durfee, who, with twenty-five men covered the bridge from behind a wall until the militia came up. Two British vessels, a galley and sloop, covering the retreat, were driven on the Rhode Island shore and abandoned. The boats and vessels were warmly received as they passed down the river by a hot fire from the fort on Bristol neck.
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