USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > Progress of Providence; a centennial address to the citizens of Providence, R.I., with a poem > Part 2
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1667, 1672-4), and the two with France (1667, 1690), in the seventeenth century, the three Spanish (1702-13, 1739-48, 1762-3), and the three French wars (1702-13, 1744-8, 1754-63), of the eighteenth, had trained the American colonies to conflict and prepared them for the greater struggle about to come. At the outbreak of the fourth inter-colonial war, known as the "old French war," this colony, with less than forty thousand inhabitants and eighty-three hundred fighting men, sent fifteen hundred of these upon various naval expedi- tions, besides a regiment of eleven companies of infantry, seven hundred and fifty men under Col. Christopher Harris, who marched to the seige of Crown Point. Thus more than one-quarter of the effective force of the colony was at one time, on sea and land, in priva- teers, in the royal fleets, and in the camp, learning that stern lesson which was soon to redeem a continent. Is it surprising then that when the ordeal came the conduct of Rhode Island was prompt and decisive? It is said that small States are always plucky ones, and Rhode Island confirmed the historic truth. When the passage of the sugar act, and the proposal of the stamp act were known in America, a special session of the General Assembly was called (July 30, 1764), and a committee for correspondence with the other colonies was appointed to devise measures to procure the repeal of the former, and to prevent the passage of the latter. The first case of armed resistance to the obnoxious
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revenue acts took place at this time. H. B. M.'s schooner St. John was fired upon from the fort at Newport by order of two of the magistrates. " The rights of the colonies examined," a pamphlet by Gov. Hopkins, submitted to this Assembly for approval, was among the very carliest of those stirring appeals that were soon to summon the young men of America to arms. The next year occurred the second overt act against the British crown in the burning at Newport, (June 4, 1765), of a boat belonging to H. B. M.'s ship Maidstone, in revenge for the forcible impressment of the crew of a brig which had arrived that day from Africa. The passage of the stamp act (February 27, 1765), roused . the spirit of resistance throughout America to fever heat. But amid all the acts of assemblies, and the resolutions of town meetings, none went so far or spoke so boldly the intentions of the people as those passed in Providence at a special town meeting (August 7, 1765), and adopted unanimously by the General Assem- bly (September 16). They pointed directly to an absolu- tion of allegiance to the British crown, unless the grievances were removed. The day before the fatal one on which the act was to take effect, the Governors of all the colonies, but one, took the oath to sustain it. Samuel Ward, " the Governor of Rhode Island stood alone in his patriotic refusal," says Bancroft. Nor was it the last as it was not the first time that Rhode Island stood alone in the van of progress. Non-importation agreements were everywhere made. The repeal of the
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odious act (February 22, 1766), came too late, coupled as it was with a declaratory act asserting the right of Parliament " to bind the colonies in all cases." Then came a new development of patriotic fervor instituted by the women of Providence. Eighteen young ladies of leading families in the town met at the house of Dr. Ephraim Bowen, (March 4, 1766), and from sunrise till night, employed the time in spinning flax. These " Daughters of Liberty," as they were called, resolved to use no more British goods, and to be consistent they omitted tea from the evening meal. So rapid was the growth of the association that their next meeting was held at the Court House. The "Sons of Liberty " were associations formed at this time in all the colonies to resist oppression, but to Providence belongs the
. exclusive honor of this union of her daughters for the same exalted purpose. This is the second time we have had occasion to notice that woman has come con- spicuously to the front in the annals of Providence, when great principles were at stake. But we claim nothing more for our women than the same spirit of self-denial and lofty devotion that the sex has every- where shown in the great crises of history. The last at the cross and the first at the sepulchre, the spirit and the blessing of the Son of God have ever rested in the heart of woman.
Side by side with the struggle for freedom grew the effort for a wider system of education. It was pro-
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posed to establish four free public schools. This was voted down by the poorer class of people who would be most benefited by the movement. Still the measure was partially carried out, and a two-story brick build- ing was erected (1768). The upper story was occupied for a private school, the lower, as a free school. Whipple hall, which afterwards became the first district school, was at this time chartered as a private school in the north part of the town, and all the schools were placed in charge of a committee of nine, of whom the Town Council formed a part. The next year a great stimulus was given to the educational movement in the town. Four years had passed since Rhode Island college was established at Warren, and the first class of seven students was about to graduate. Commencement day gave rise to the earliest legal holiday, in our history. A rivalry among the chief towns of the colony for the permanent location of what is now Brown University, resulted in its removal two years later (1774) to Provi- dence. This now venerable institution, whose founda- tion was a protest against sectarianism in education, has become the honored head of a system of public and private schools, which for completeness of design, for perfection of detail, and for thoroughness of work, may safely challenge comparison with any other organized educational system in the world.
Hostility to the revenue acts of Great Britain became yearly more pronounced, and was evinced in acts of
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greater boldness. H. B. M.'s armed sloop Liberty was sunk and her boats burnt (July 19, 1769), at New- port. The St. John had been fired upon. The Maid- stone's boat was burnt. The Liberty was scuttled and all her boats burned. As yet no blood had been shed on either side. There were still hopes of a peaceable adjustment of difficulties. The year 1771 was one of unusual quietness. It was the lull before the storm. Narragansett Bay was the rendezvous of a British fleet of ten vessels of war, one of which, the schooner Gaspee, of eight guns, was destined to light the fire of successful revolution. The annoyances caused by the arbitrary seizure of coasters engaged in lawful trade, as well as of vessels that were properly amenable under the revenue acts, had become intoler-
able. The people of Providence, with some from Bristol, resolved on her destruction. On the night of the 9th of June, 1772, Capt. Abraham Whipple, with eight long boats of five oars cach, captured and burnt the vessel. Lieut. Duddingston, the commander, was wounded in the fight, and his was the first British blood shed in the struggle for independence. In the flames of the burning Gaspee was consumed the last hope or wish for pardon, and the colony now prepared quietly, but firmly for the inevitable war. The Revolution had begun. Two years of increasing turmoil passed, when on the 17th of May, 1774, the townsmen assembled to recommend the last remaining act essential to a union
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of the colonies-the Continental Congress. The idea of a Congress had become familiar to the people, but as yet no official action had been taken by any corpo- rate body to carry it into practice. To the town of Providence is due the honor of priority in this national movement. A few weeks later the Assembly of Rhode Island was likewise the first to elect delegates to that Congress. At the same town meeting another illus- trious action was accomplished. Six negroes had become the property of the town. It was voted that "it is unbecoming the character of freemen to enslave the said negroes," and that "as personal liberty is an essential part of the natural, rights of mankind," a petition should be sent to the General Assembly to pro- hibit further importation of slaves, and to declare that all negroes born in the colony should be free after a certain age. A Continental Congress and freedom to the slave-glory enough for one town meeting in Provi- dence, even if there were no more to add. And both were definitely acted upon by the Assembly four weeks later. Military organizations were at once perfected. The Providence county Artillery was named the " Cadet Company," and officered as a regiment, and the First Light Infantry Company of one hundred men was chartered. To these were added in Providence in the autumn a grenadier, an artillery and a cavalry corps, and in the ensuing spring, upon news of the battle of Lexington, two of these were combined as the Providence
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United Train of Artillery. One thousand men marched from Providence to the scene of strife, and an " army of observation " of fifteen hundred men was voted by the Assembly to be raised at once. We cannot follow the course of our arms through the long conflict that ensued even if the part which Providence took were not so blended with that of the state as to be insepar- able from it, and hence, perhaps, is inappropriate for this occasion. But two or three points must be referred to. One, the capture on the 15th of June, 1775, of the armed tender of the frigate Rose by the war sloop of the colony, commanded by Capt. Whipple, who on that occasion had the honor of discharging the first gun upon the ocean at any part of his Majesty's navy in the American Revolution. It was then that there occurred between the two commanders that terse correspondence of Spartan brevity and directness-" You, Abraham Whipple, on the 10th June, 1772, burned His Majesty's vessel, the Gaspee, and I will hang you at the yard. arm. JAMES WALLACE." " Sir James Wal- lace. Sir: Always catch a man before you hang him. ABRAHAM WHIPPLE." The affair of the Gaspee three years before, was the true " Lexington of the seas," and this of the Rose tender was the Bunker Hill. The colony at once ordered two war vessels to be built. This was the commencement of the American navy. The harbor was fortified at Field's and Fox Points, and a beacon was erected on Prospect hill. Congress, at
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the suggestion of Rhode Island, organized a Continen- tal navy, and two of the frigates, the Warren of thirty- two and the Providence of twenty-eight guns, were built in Providence and launched in May, 1776. Esek Hopkins was commander of the first American fleet which sailed February 17, 1776, and captured Nassau, March 3d. The last Colonial Assembly met in Provi- dence, May 1, 1776, and on the 4th of May passed the final act abjuring allegiance to the British crowp-a declaration of Independence which constitutes Rhode Island, by two months, the oldest independent State in America. The four delegates from this town to that immortal Assembly were Dr. Jonathan Arnold, Amos Atwell, John Brown and John Smith. The Act of Independence is in the handwriting of Dr. Arnold, afterwards a member of the Continental Congress. The occupation of Newport by the British troops caused the sessions of the Assembly to be held in Providence for the next four years. Congress proposed a convention of the New England States to be held in Providence, to consider the questions of currency, and how to sus- tain the national credit. This convention (December 27) opposed the issue of paper money, and advised that taxation and loans at five per cent. be adopted, measures that unfortunately for the country, and especially for this State, were not carried into effect. At the close of the war, Providence was the rendezvous of the French army under Rochambeau. The camp of the second
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division may be traced on the west side of the Paw- tucket road extending for some distance above North street. The proclamation of peace was celebrated in Providence with great formality and rejoicing. A ser- mon by Rev. Enos Hitchcock and an oration by Hon. Asher Robbins in the now venerable church where we are to-day assembled, formed part of the proceedings (April 25, 1783). Even more jubilant were the people of Providence when the ninth State, adopting the new Constitution, rendered possible the formation of the American Union. Providence and other seaports of the State were strongly Federal, while the country towns were as strongly of the State Rights party. When two more States gave in their adhesion the rejoicings were renewed, and so violent was party spirit in those days that serious disturbances occurred, and the town was at one time threatened (July 4, 17SS,) with an assault from the excited country people. Through the bitter contest which for nearly three years distracted the State, Providence stood firmly for the Union, and at last, when, by a close vote, the Federal Constitution was finally adopted (May 29, 1790,) in the Convention at Newport, " the stillness of the Sabbath morning was broken by the joyful roar of artillery."
With the close of the war came the revival of com- merce. The news of the ratification of peace was received at Providence by a vessel direct from London (Dec. 2, 1783). In 1787, the trade began with China
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and the East Indies, which for more than half a century brought great wealth to our merchants. A rolling and slitting mill to prepare iron to be made into nails, was soon after established in Providence. "Not a hob-nail should be manufactured in America," had been the threat, to accomplish which those repressive measures that pro- voked resistance in the colonies had been devised. But this had proved a vain threat, for as early as 1721, a nail factory had been started at Newport, and in 1777, it is said, that the first cold cut nail in the world was made by Jeremiah Wilkinson, of Cumberland. Hemp duck was also made here as early as 1722, encouraged by a bounty from the General Assembly. The spinning of flax was a universal domestic occupation among women of all conditions of life, and to encourage its cultivation was the special object of the " Daughters of Liberty " before mentioned. At that time a paper mill was established (1766) at Olneyville. The manufacture of firearms, and of steel, and the casting of heavy can- non became an active industry in Providence and its vicinity, shortly before the Revolution. The troops were supplied mainly with home-made muskets, as well as artillery. Saltpetre works were set up in all the towns during the war. Whipple Hall and the brick school-house on Meeting street were converted into laboratories. Arts gave place to arms, when University HIall was used for barracks and the college campus became a drill ground. This class of industry closed
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with the war, to be revived in our own day on a grander scale. Homespun clothes were generally worn and American woolen cloths were preferred to foreign fab -. rics. A people who in their hostility to the Stamp Act had denied themselves lamb or mutton, in order to foster the increase of wool, and had proscribed tea as a beverage in their opposition to a trifling tax, were not long to be kept down even by the depressing condition of affairs in which the close of the Revolution found them. Yet how severe was that depression it would be difficult to portray. Nothing like it has since been seen. A crushing debt, a yet more crushing flood of vitiated currency, repudiation, exhaustion, and in the sad case of Rhode Island, utter isolation, bitter factions within the State, aversion and contempt outside ; por- erty everywhere ; distress universal, while almost the only gleam of light that breaks upon the dark picture is to be found in the willing industry of the people assuming a systematic form in the incorporation (March, 1789) of the " Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers." To develop the resources of the town by organizing its industry and giving a united and intelligent direction to its scattered forces, was the pur- pose of this Association ; and nobly was it achieved. The cotton manufacture had just been introduced. Daniel Anthony, Andrew Dexter and Lewis Peck, as co-partners, commenced the business of manufacturing jeans in the chambers of the old market house (1787).
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The first spinning jenny built in the United States, was made by them, and had twenty-eight spindles. Such was the modest birth of the mighty business which now sends its textile fabrics to every quarter of the earth. A few thousand pounds of the raw material imported chiefly from Surinam, (for the cotton plant had not theu been introduced to become the staple of our South Atlantic and Gulf States), then sufficed for the annual consumption of a business which last year required a quarter of a million of bales, or nearly fifty thousand tons of raw cotton, and which sent out from this market alone, in but one branch of the cotton manufacture, the single article of print cloths, over 3,300,000 pieces of forty yards each, or 132,000,000 yards-enough to girt three times the entire circumference of the globe. The value of the print work alone upon this immense pro- duct was nearly four millions of dollars. Three years later (1790) this machinery was removed to North Providence, where the arrival of Samuel Slater, with his improved machinery, from England, began the suc- cessful manufacture of cotton cloth in America. Cal- lendering commenced in Providence, in 1788, and calico printing, already started in East Greenwich, was intro- duced at Providence in 1794. Between the close of the war and the end of the century, most of the business pursuits of the present day had their humble origin. A few have quite disappeared after a brief struggle for profitable existence, but far more have been added.
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Many have transferred their sphere of active operation beyond the limits of the city, while owned and managed by residents of Providence. Most of the vast mechani- cal and manufacturing establishments that have built up the large towns and villages on the Blackstone and Pawtuxet, making these valleys great hives of industry, and an almost unbroken succession of towns, are of this character. Our twenty-eight spindles have grown to be two millions, of which but a small portion are operated within the city .*
Down to the time of the Revolution the growth of churches, like that of population, was extremely slow. At that period there were but tive in Providence. The First Baptist Church, already referred to, was contem- porary with the settlement of the town, and after two changes in its place of worship, erected this beautiful edifice, which last year celebrated its centennial. The Friends' Society, established in 1701, built on the pres- ent site in Meeting street, in 1726. St. John's, Episco- pal, was formed in 1722, and the original church was succeeded by the present one, on the same spot, in 1811. With these were two Congregational churches,
* By the census returns for 1875, there were in Providence aml Kent counties 155,805 spindles employed in woolen manufacture, and 1,504.933 on cotton goods. These mills are mainly owned and managed in this eity. The mills owned here, but situated out of the State, and which, therefore, do not appear in the Bhode Island census returns, would swell the number of spindles beyond two millions. The spindles now in the city limits employed on woolen goods, number 39,374, on cotton 110,879, being in round numbers 150,000, and the value of their joint product was over six millions of dollars.
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the first formed in 1720, the second in 1744, which latter built on the site of the present church, erected in 180S on Broad street. The former built in 1723, on Benefit street, where they remained for seventy years, on the corner of College street, and then built on their present site, corner of Benevolent street, and rebuilt after a fire in 1814. The old building became what was known in our day as " the old town house," on the site of the new court house. And here I may say, in passing, that no better illustration can be given of the difference between the ancient town and the modern city of Providence than is presented by the contrast between these two buildings-one poor, plain and simple, the other rich, elegant and ornate. A cen- tury ago there were five churches to 4,321 people, or one to 864. To-day there are seventy-five churches, of which eighteen are Baptist, one Friend, eight Congre- gational, eleven Episcopal, of the denominations existing here in colonial days, and thirty-seven of other denomi- nations, all of which, except the First Methodist (1798), were organized since 1816 .* With 101,000 inhabi- tants the proportion is now one to 1,346.
In 1791, the Providence Bank, the oldest in the State, was incorporated with a capital of half a million of dollars. It was modelled after the Bank of North
* There are eleven Methodist, ten Roman Catholic, three Unitarian, two Presbyterian, two Universalist, two Hebrew, one Swedenborgian, one Latter Day Saints, one African Union Church, and one Mariner's Bethel.
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America in Philadelphia, that monument of the genius of Robert Morris, and the first in the country to issue bills redeemable in specie on presentation. To-day Providence has thirty eight banks, with over eighteen millions of capital, four millions of which have been added within the last sixteen years. Providence has long ranked as the second city in the United States in the number of its banks, and is now the third in the amount of its banking capital. Besides these thirty-eight banks, there are now eleven Savings banks in the city, with an aggregate deposit of twenty-seven millions. The first of these in the State and one of the oldest in the world (for savings institutions were estab- lished in Europe only two years prior to their introduc- tion in America), is the Providence Institution for Sav- ings, incorporated in 1819, and whose deposits now exceed eight millions of dollars.
Iron, as has been seen, was early wrought in Rhode Island, and has now become a vast industry in this city, the product of Providence in this metal alone amount- * ing in the last year to eight and a half millions of dol- lars. In the manufacture of screws, Providence leads the world, and is little behind in that of arms ; while in the infinite variety of tools and machinery there is perhaps no city on earth that can rival it, although some surpass it in the value of certain special products. In jewelry there is but one city in America (Newark, N. J.) that exceeds this in the value which our more
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than one hundred and fifty firms engaged in that manu- facture produce, and which last year amounted to nearly six millions of dollars .* In silver ware Provi- dence has the largest manufactory in the world. Forty-five years ago the late Jabez Gorham began to make silver spoons, employing ten or twelve men. His business prospered, and was gradually extended till in 1847 he introduced steam power, and was the first man who ever employed steam or horse power in the working of silver. The Gorham Manufacturing Company's products are now known and sold all over the world. The five stories of their great establishment include over three acres of flooring, and their working force, when in full operation, is over four hundred men. There are some significant facts connected with the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which serve to show the relative importance of this city in the indus- trial summary of the country. One is that in the three principal buildings Providence occupies the central and most conspicuous place. We all know the man who commands Presidents and Emperors, and they obey ' him-who says to Dom Pedro, "Come," and he cometh, and to President Grant " Do this," and he doeth it, and we have seen the mighty engine that from the centre of Machinery Hall moves fourteen acres of the world's most cunning industry. The Corliss engine
* The exact value of the product of jewelry manufactured in Providence in 1875, by the census returns, was $5,933.629.
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proudly sustains the supremacy of Providence amid the marvels of both hemispheres. Facing the central area of the main exhibition building, the Gorham Manufac- turing Company have their splendid show of silver ware around the most superb specimen of the crafts- man's art that has ever adorned any exposition in modern times. Under the central dome of Agricultural Hall, the Rumford Chemical Works present an elabo- rate and attractive display of their varicd and important products, arresting the eye as a prominent object among the exhibits of all the world. And when we visit the Women's Pavilion we shall see that of all the rich embroidery there displayed none surpasses that shown by the Providence Employment Society, and shall learn that little Rhode Island ranks as the fifth State in the amount of its contributions to the funds of this department, being surpassed only by New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Massachusetts. A city which occupies these positions in the greatest Exposition of the century, has no cause to shun comparison between its past and its present.
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