Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 22

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 22

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Providence voted 106 acres of land for a school in 1663, the same year that Plymouth set aside the Cape Cod fishery money for the support of schools-the first piece of school legislation in Plymouth. What was done was not recorded, a characteristic of the Providence records for a century after the founding of the town. Twenty years later, in 1683, John Whipple complained that nothing had been done, and in the next year William Turpin, claim- ing to be town schoolmaster, asked to have the lands set out for his benefit. Public action was much slower in motion in Providence than in Newport. Eight inhabitants, on request in 1695-1696, were granted "a spot of land forty feet square where it may be most convenient." They asked for land near what is now the corner of Olney Street and Stampers Lane. A schoolhouse was built in that vicinity some time during the colonial period, whether by reason of the grant or in spite of it, though Henry C. Dorr declared that the enterprise failed of consummation. The Providence records of dates before 1675 indicate disaster during King Philip's War; but after that date there is evidence of palpable neglect to enter the town's busi- ness upon the books. George Taylor was granted leave to keep a school in one of the cham- bers of the Colony House in 1735. Eighteen years later the same George Taylor was given leave to use the town schoolhouse, on condition that he "school or teach one poor child . ... gratis." Stephen Jackson leased the town schoolhouse in 1754, the £45 rental to be applied to repairing the building. The first reference to this schoolhouse in the Providence record was

*Chapter V.

*Chapter VI.

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in 1752, when a part of the schoolhouse lot "whereon the town schoolhouse in Providence standeth" was granted to the colony as a site for a jail. The schoolhouse was old enough to require repairs in 1754, yet there is nothing in the Providence town records to indicate when the land for the school was set aside, when the schoolhouse was built, or what the cost was, nor to answer any of a long list of questions suggested. All that had been done in town meetings with reference to the schoolhouse had been omitted from the records by the town clerk or clerks. The growth of the town westward, beyond the Moshassuck River, was indi- cated by a request for land for a schoolhouse presented and granted in 1752. By the middle of the eighteenth century Providence probably had four schoolhouses, some of which were proprietors' schools built and conducted by school societies, and with a town school committee from 1752, had the question of developing a complete town public school system under consid- eration. Three reports on this project were made between 1768 and 1800.

The first Portsmouth school record decipherable, for July 30, 1716, ordered a "new school- house" to be built upon one acre of land belonging to the town situated in the north part of the town. In September of the same year another schoolhouse was ordered built in the south part of the town, on recommendation of a committee that it had considered "how excellent an orna- ment learning is to mankind, and the great necessity there is of a public schoolhouse on the south side." The use of the term "new schoolhouse" in the record of July 30, 1716, warrants the inference that the schoolhouse referred to was not the first schoolhouse in Portsmouth. The associations of Newport and Portsmouth were too intimate, and the people of both towns had too many other interests in common to warrant an assumption that Newport developed a school system and Portsmouth did nothing for public education. Besides that, there is the mute evi- dence of fragmentary records that much that was done may never be known. Other schools were built in Portsmouth, two in 1722, one at the south end of the town in 1733, one near Bristol Ferry in 1746, and one on Prudence Island in 1763. The records of the towns in the territory assigned to Rhode Island by the Charter of 1663, but retained by Plymouth and Massachusetts until 1747, were not so favorable to education as were those of the towns under the Rhode Island government, and their records are interesting evidence of a genuine backwardness in education in all parts of Massachusetts not closely connected with the Bay settlements. Bristol was a notable exception, but Bristol was always more a Rhode Island than a Massachusetts town in spirit. Barrington, Warren, Bristol, Cumberland, Little Compton, and Tiverton were held by Plymouth and Massachusetts until 1747. In Barrington John Myles, pastor of the church, in 1673, taught "grammar, rhetoric and arithmetic, and the tongues of Latin, Greek and Hebrew; also to read English and to write." Bristol was settled in 1680, and ordered a school as early as 1682. Samuel Corbitt collected salary as town schoolmaster so early as 1685. Bristol was divided into two school districts in 1699, schoolhouses were built in 1722 and 1727, and a schoolhouse already erected was purchased in 1727. Nathaniel Byfield gave Bristol school land in 1714, yielding an income sufficient to cover a large part of the necessary expenditures. Bristol appointed the first Rhode Island town school committee in 1751; Prov- idence, 1752, and Middletown, 1754, followed. Middletown was included in Newport until 1745. The town records omit reference to private schools, and to tutors and governesses employed by the rich planters of Newport and the Narragansett country. In the middle of the eighteenth century many of Newport's most prominent younger citizens were graduates of Harvard College.

No Rhode Island town in the colonial period undertook complete responsibility for main- taining a universal town system of public schools. As a matter of fact, that was not done anywhere in America before the Revolutionary War. Recognizing that the public has an interest in education as a social asset, Rhode Island aided schools in four ways, as follows :

I. Providence, Newport, Middletown and Bristol granted land for school sites, house-

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lots for schoolmasters, or tracts of land, the income of which was to be devoted to the support of schools.

2. Providence, Newport, Portsmouth, Middletown and Bristol erected schoolhouses as public property to be leased, rent free or with rent, to schoolmasters. The rental charges indi- cate that some of these public schoolhouses were dwelling houses, with one or more chambers reserved for school purposes.

3. Newport, Middletown, Barrington and Bristol hired schoolmasters on salary, or paid part of a salary, the remainder to be obtained from tuitions or other sources. In one instance the town underwrote or guaranteed a salary, the town to pay only the balance that might not be obtained from tuitions.

4. Providence, Newport and Warwick granted public land to school societies on which to erect schoolhouses at the expense of the proprietors. In some instances a grant of money or special privilege accompanied the land grant.

Public action in support of schools and education was by towns; the colony's encourage- ment of education was limited to granting the use of a room in the Colony House at Providence to a schoolmaster ; granting the use of another room in the same house for library purposes ; granting a lottery to replace the library when it was destroyed in the fire that razed the Colony House ; granting a charter to Rhode Island College, later to be named Brown University; and granting lotteries to complete the parsonage for the Baptist Church at Warren as a dormitory for students under the instruction of President Manning of Rhode Island College, for the con- struction of a schoolhouse in East Greenwich, and for the construction of the First Baptist Church in Providence, to be used "for the worship of Almighty God and holding the public commencements in."

The public schools established in Rhode Island were for academic education, not for instruction in religion, as were the schools in theocratic Massachusetts. Out of the beginnings of a system of public education laid before the Revolutionary War was to develop a distinctly Rhode Island public school system that was to furnish the model for the American public school system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As America looked to Rhode Island for the models on which it constructed a democratic form of government, so it looked to Rhode Island for the models on which to build a democratic public school system.

DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCE-Newport continued to be the largest settlement through the colonial period, and the wealthiest, as indicated by the apportionment of taxes. Newport was first of the settlements to produce an economic surplus for export, thus laying the founda- tion for further wealth to be obtained through profitable commerce. Water bailiffs were appointed as early as 1647. The reputation of the town was spread in the ports reached by its sailor sons, and by those who visited the town and marvelled at the salubrity of the climate. "Newport," wrote Neal, "is deservedly esteemed the Paradise of New England for the fruit- fulness of the soil and the temperateness of the climate." In 1712 John Mumford surveyed the streets and numbered them, on order citing that "the town had grown to be the admiration of all and was the metropolitan." Among other visitors came Rev. George Berkeley, Dean of Derry, author of the brilliant "Principles of Human Knowledge," then on his way to found a college in Bermuda, when f20,000 might be made available. The Dean of Derry reached New- port in 1729 and remained three years in this "most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its bigness." Newport society was brilliant and cultured. While Berkeley tarried the Lit- erary and Philosophical Society was organized, to consider "some useful questions on divinity, morality, philosophy, history," etc., but not dogmatic religion. Out of this society was to come the organization of the Redwood Library, with an altogether remarkable collection of books. Newport drew new settlers in large numbers, including Scotch, and in 1755 sixty Hebrew

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families from Lisbon, following the earthquake in the Portuguese capital. With Dean Berk- eley came John Smibert, Scotch, the first painter of note in America. Other artists were drawn to Newport by the promise of a market for their pictures, including Robert Feke and Cosmo Alexander, American teacher of Gilbert Stuart. Washington Allston, familiar friend of Stuart, was fitted for college at Newport, and Edward G. Malbone, painter of miniatures, and one of the most distinguished of American artists, was born there. Perhaps Berkeley was drawn to Newport by the brilliant society already there; he had a part in giving to New- port society a cultural impulse that was lasting. Profitable commerce brought the wealth of the world to its wharves. The town achieved a worldwide and well-deserved reputation for the beauty and cultural charm of its daughters. Its sons became daring, adventurous sailors.

Meanwhile Providence, too, was rising in prosperity. Pardon Tillinghast built the first wharf, and the town began to ship and to receive cargoes and build a substantial wealth. Nar- ragansett Bay was proving to be the jewel of New England; and on its waters were being bred and nurtured sailors whose sons would establish the navy of a great nation. Some part of the wealth of Rhode Island at this period was derived from privateering, but of that more in Chapter VIII.

CHAPTER VIII. RHODE ISLAND'S PARTICIPATION IN COLONIAL WARS.

NGLAND concluded treaties of peace with France in April, 1630, and with Spain in September, 1630. While Continental Europe was still distracted by the Thirty Years' War, ending with the Peace of Westphalia, October 24, 1648, England was passing through a revolution, the first stage of which reached a dramatic climax with the execution of King Charles I, on January 30, 1649. In the eleven years of the short-lived republic and Cromwell's long dictatorship, preceding the Restoration in 1660, England was by no means at peace. Besides suppressing insurrections in Ireland and in Scot- land on behalf of Charles II, England fought a brilliant naval war with Holland, 1652-1654; chastised the Barbary princes of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, 1655; and fought a short war with Spain, 1656-1659. The Restoration marked the ending of a second episode in the Revo- lution, which continued, even after the coronation of William and Mary, 1689, with wars in Ireland and in Scotland. Other international wars followed the Restoration in rapid succes- sion: With Holland, 1664-1667; with France, 1666-1667; with Holland, 1672-1674; with France, King William's War, 1689-1697; Queen Anne's War, the War of the Spanish Suc- cession, 1702-1713; with Spain, 1739-1748; with France, King George's War, part of the War of the Austrian Succession, 1744-1748; with France, the Old French and Indian War, part of the Seven Years' War in Europe, 1755-1763. In 1664 England acquired New Amster- dam, only to lose it to the Dutch in 1673, and regain it at the conclusion of the war with Hol- land, 1674. While the causes for these wars were principally European, involving quarrels between rival national states or dynasties, or the determination of legitimacy in royal succession to national thrones, the theatre of war was not confined to Europe. In almost every instance American colonies became involved in the quarrels of mother countries, and in some instances American colonies were part of the spoils of war, acquired or lost by conquest, or by treaty made the price of victory or defeat. In the internal quarrels of the kingdom America took little part ; the general American attitude was reflected in a recognition of any government actually in control for the time being as de facto. Rhode Island received the first Patent from Parlia- ment, acclaimed the Restoration of Charles II, and welcomed the accession of William and Mary because it ended the usurpation of Andros.

Early relations with the Dutch, settled at New Amsterdam and maintaining trading posts at points along Long Island Sound and so far east as Narragansett Bay, were friendly. As early as 1642 the Governor and Deputy of Aquidneck were instructed to "treat with the Gov- ernor of the Dutch to supply us with necessaries, and to take of our commodities at such rates as may be suitable." The generally unfriendly attitude of Massachusetts toward the Rhode Island settlers, and Plymouth's unwillingness to maintain relations that would offend Massa- chusetts, made this recourse to the Dutch advisable. When Roger Williams went to England to negotiate the first charter he sailed from New Amsterdam, because he was barred from Massachusetts. The good understanding between English and Dutch in America continued until the mother countries engaged in war in Europe, 1652-1654. Thereupon local colonial agreements for comity and amity came to an end. Even the boundary line at Oyster Bay, between Dutch settlements and English settlements on Long Island, was no longer respected. The government on Rhode Island, not yet reunited with Providence and Warwick following the separation attending Coddington's commission as Governor, because of close friendship with the Long Island settlers, took action both against the Dutch and on behalf of the English.

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On May 18, 1653, it was voted to appoint a committee of eight men, two from each town, including men from Warwick and Providence, who attended the meeting at Newport, to con- sider "matters that concern Long Island, and in the case concerning the Dutch." Upon report of the committee it was voted (I) that we "judge it to be our duty to afford our countrymen on Long Island what help we can safely do . ... either for defending themselves against the Dutch, the enemies of the commonwealth, or for offending them as by us shall be thought necessary"; (2) to loan "two great guns" to the Long Island settlers; (3) to send them "what murderers are with us"; and to permit further the enlistment of twenty volunteers for military service on Long Island; (4) to set up a prize court; (5) to issue letters of marque to John Underhill, William Dyer and Edward Hull, and to others after adjournment by action of the President and four Assistants. Providence and Warwick protested against the aggres- sive hostility suggested by granting letters of marque, on the general ground that the sending out of privateers to prey upon peaceable intercolonial commerce would tend to produce war, and was likely to "set all New England on fire." Not less than three, probably four, priva- teers were fitted out at Newport, and they were so daring and so successful as to spread terror amongst the Dutch shipping and to arouse doughty Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Amsterdam, to undertake reprisals by sending two armed Dutch vessels into Long Island Sound against the Rhode Island privateers. Friendship and trade with the Dutch were reestablished almost as soon as the mother countries concluded their quarrel across the Atlantic. For years afterward the Rhode Island General Assembly recalled this short period of privateering, as action was taken to adjust rival claims arising therefrom, to collect the colony's share of prize money, and to enforce an accounting for England's share of the prize money, which remained in the possession of Nicholas Easton, who refused to turn it into the colonial treasury. While the records of the prize court, from which it might be possible to estimate the value of captures, are not available, the venture at successful privateering did much to confirm Newport's inter- est in the sea, and it induced some Newporters to become "sailors of fortune," in the sense that they sought letters of marque in the quarrels of other nations than England, in much the same way that professional soldiers seek service wherever there may be fighting. Privateer- ing, though hazardous, might and did yield large fortunes.

In England's second war with Holland, 1664-1667, New Amsterdam surrendered to an English fleet, almost at the opening of hostilities, despite a gallant one-man defence by Gov- ernor Peter Stuyvesant, described thus in the inimitable chronicle of the renowned and illus- trious historian of New Amsterdam, Diedrich Knickerbocker: "Having resolutely thrown his gauntlet, the brave Peter struck a pair of horse-pistols in his belt, girded an immense powder- horn on his side, thrust a sound leg (the other was wooden) into a Hessian boot, and clapping his fierce little war hat on the top of his head, paraded up and down in front of his house, deter- mined to defend his beloved city to the last." Under the circumstances of peaceful surrender by the Dutch, there was no privateering from Rhode Island in this war. Like many another European war of the same century, it spread, France joining with Holland against England. Rhode Island then undertook prompt and vigorous measures for defence against French and Dutch, and the possibility of an Indian uprising, which was feared. The militia was thor- oughly organized, stores of ammunition were provided, troops of cavalry were recruited, one in each town, Indians were disarmed, inventories of private supplies of ammunition and arms were made, Newport was advised to mount "the great guns," and a series of beacons were established to spread an alarm in the event of an attack. A fire lighted on Tonomy Hill was to be the signal for other beacon fires, on the rocks at Sachusett, near Pettaquamscott and Watch Hill, from east to west ; and on Windmill Hill in Portsmouth and Prospect Hill in Providence, from south to north. Much the same plan for sending warning messages was adopted dur-

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ing the Revolutionary War. The enemy did not appear, perhaps because the war was soon over, 1667, although it was resumed five years later.

Upon the receipt from England in 1672 of news that a fresh war with Holland had been begun, measures were taken for the defence of the colony. On July 30, 1673, a Dutch fleet recaptured New Amsterdam. At a meeting of the General Assembly at Newport on August 13 following, Captain John Cranston was appointed commander-in-chief on the island, and provision was made for calling out the militia, should the Dutch approach Rhode Island. Pensions were ordered for soldiers wounded, and for the relatives of soldiers slain in service. Conscientious objectors were to be excused from military service in arms,* but might be required to drive cattle and remove others' property to places of safety. The Dutch were con- tent for the time being with regaining possession of New Amsterdam, and did not molest Rhode Island. At the end of the war, 1674, New Amsterdam was restored to England, and known thereafter as New York. During King Philip's War Rhode Island maintained a fleet of armed boats, probably sloops, on the waters about the island, to which most of the inhab- itants of the colony were withdrawn. This fleet was the first Rhode Island Navy. For a cen- tury to follow, while Rhode Island soldiers fought bravely on many battlefields, the more spec- tacular achievements of Rhode Island in war were to be maritime.

PRIVATEERING-Privateering was abolished by the European nations signatory to the Declaration of Paris at the end of the Crimean War in 1856. The United States, not a party to nor bound by that agreement, issued no letters of marque during the war with Spain, 1898. Privateering no longer is sanctioned by international law; like guerilla warfare by irregular troops, it is discountenanced. In view of the clear understanding between nations in the twentieth century, it appears likely that a nation issuing letters of marque would be regarded as an outlaw, and that a privateer when captured would be punished as a pirate. The distinc- tion betwixt pirate and privateer rested solely upon the issuing of a commission to the latter ; both were sea robbers, the one preying upon allcomers, the latter commissioned against an enemy nation. Like Captain Kidd, many another pirate went to sea as a commissioned pri- vateer, and forgot the limitations suggested by his commission when out of sight of land. Thus William Mayes, of Portsmouth, at whose house the General Assembly met June 28, 1682, some years later was cleared from the customs house at Newport "to go on a trading voyage to Madagascar, with a lawful commission to fight the French, his majesty's enemies, from the government." In the trial of a pirate named Avery, in London, Mayes was accused of piracy. In correspondence concerning this accusation Rhode Island maintained that the clearance was legal and regular, and that Avery probably had plundered Mayes. The English government was embarrassed not only by the piratical inclination of privateers, and even of armed merchant men not carrying letters of marque, but also by the "sailors of fortune" who accepted commis- sions from foreign nations to conduct maritime warfare against nations for the time being friendly to England. The almost intermittent European wars of the period produced a condi- tion in which the high seas were infested by pirates and privateers. The English government had not found a way of limiting colonial letters of marque; the Constitution of the United States reached this solution so far as it has forbidden states to issue letters of marque and reprisal. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, while all of New England was striv- ing to maintain charter government in the face of an aggressive movement by England to suppress the charters and establish a royal government in New England, Rhode Island fre- quently was accused, not only of fitting out and harboring privateers "indiscreetly," but also of sending out and harboring pirates, and of being vastly more friendly to pirates than to the

*Repealed 1677.

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ministers of the English government. For the most part these accusations were without foun- dation in fact and were made by men of the type of Bellomont and Randolph, who were seek- ing pretexts for the revocation of colonial charters. It is true that Rhode Island was never enthusiastic in enforcing the English trade and navigation act, and was not delighted by the establishment of an English court of admiralty at Newport. In October, 1682, the crew of a privateer taken at sea and brought into Newport, while in prison awaiting transportation to Vir- ginia, plotted escape and the assassination of Governor Sandford; one of the privateers, who revealed the plot in time to frustrate it, was pardoned. When Captain Thomas Paine sailed his privateer into Newport in July, 1683, his majesty's collector at the port of Boston demanded seizure of the vessel on the ground that Captain Paine's papers purporting clearance from Jamaica were forgeries. Governor Coddington refused to order the vessel seized, taking the position that the papers appeared to be regular, and that the law courts were open to try the issue suggested.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 22

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716