USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 41
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but all laws, and all taxations, which bind the whole, must be made by the whole. . . . Indeed, it must be absurd to suppose that the common people of Great Britain have a sovereign and absolute authority over their fellow subjects in America, or even any sort of power whatso- ever over them; but it will be still more absurd to suppose they can give a power to their representatives which they have not themselves. If the House of Commons do not receive this authority from their constituents, it will be difficult to tell by what means they obtained it, except it be vested in them by mere superiority and power." Hopkins then rebutted the assumption that England had engaged in any war solely to defend her American colonies, citing failure to defend them, the return of Louisburg to the French after its reduction by the colonials, and the pressure on the colonies to make war in America to sustain England's wars in Europe. He asserted that the colonies "at all times when called upon by the crown raised money for the public service," and did it "cheerfully as the Parliament have done on like occasions"; and that the colonies would be drained of money by the new system of taxation and thus ruined. The American colonists "have as little inclination as they have ability to throw off dependency; have carefully avoided every offensive measure and every interdicted manufacture; have risked their lives as they have been ordered, and furnished their money as it has been called for ; have never been troublesome or expensive to the mother country; have kept due order and supported a regular government; have maintained peace and practiced Christianity ; and in all conditions, and in every relation, have demeaned themselves as loyal, as dutiful, and as faithful subjects ought; and that no kingdom or state hath, or ever had, colonies more quiet, more obedient, or more profitable, than these have been." Only "a long train of abuses and usurpations," of which the legislation of 1763-1764 was the beginning, could drive such a people to rebellion. "The Rights of Colonies Examined" was exactly the logical exposition of a thesis that would appeal to thoughtful men.
AFFAIR OF THE "ST. JOHN" AND THE "SQUIRREL"-Meanwhile stirring events had been taking place in Narragansett Bay. Early in June, 1764, Admiral Colvill sent four armed ves- sels "to spread themselves in the principal harbors between Casco Bay and Cape Henlopen, in order to raise men." Lieutenant Hill, commanding the "St. John," schooner, reported "very little success, the merchants having, to all appearances, entered into a combination to distress us, as far as they are able, and by threats and promises, to prevent seamen from entering for those vessels." Lieutenant Hill reported also "the behavior of the people of Rhode Island . . . extremely insolent and unprecedented." From the Lieutenant's narrative it appeared that while the "St. John" was lying at anchor at Newport on June 30, news was received that a brig was unloading in a creek near Howland's Ferry. The vessel had unloaded her cargo and sailed before Lieutenant Hill reached Howland's Ferry. The cargo consisted of ninety- three hogsheads of sugar. Lieutenant Hill sent an armed boat in pursuit of the brig, which was captured and proved to be the "Basto" of New York, Wingate, master, from Monti Christo. The Lieutenant loaded the sugar, which he had seized, on board the brig; thereupon the owner of the vessel, fearing that the latter might be taken to Halifax for trial in the admiralty court, had Lieutenant Hill arrested and compelled him to give bail to take the "Basto" into Newport for trial there. On July 4 the Newport collector of customs seized the brig and cargo again, alleging that the first seizure had been irregular because Lieutenant Hill had not qualified by taking the oath of office. Lieutenant Hill was in Boston on July 9, when further events occurred, of which a relation by British officers is the only report that has been preserved.
As to the causes for the commotion in Newport in July there was disagreement. The "St. John" was on a mission to raise seamen, and probably was resorting to impressment, which was a practice approved by the British navy at the time, and one of the issues involved later in
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the War of 1812. That, besides the episode of interfering with the brig "Basto," would make the vessel unpopular in Newport. One British officer reported that trouble started when a British boat crew attempted to arrest Thomas Moss, alleged to have been a deserter ;* another officer reported that the Newporters had demanded surrender of three of the crew of the "St. John," who were accused of stealing. With that exception the narratives were essentially similar and corroborative.
"On Monday, the 9th of July, 1764, at two o'clock in the afternoon, sent the boat, manned and armed, on shore to bring off Thomas Moss, a deserter, who had left the vessel some days before, and was then on the wharf; a large mob assembled and rescued him; and seeing our people in great danger, we fired a swivel, unshotted, as signal for the boat to come on board. The mob took Mr. Doyle, the officer of the boat, prisoner, and wounded most of the boat's crew with stones, which fell as thick as hail round and in the boat; and they threatened to sacrifice Mr. Doyle if the pilot was not immediately sent on shore and delivered up to their mercy ; they even threatened to haul the schooner on shore and burn her. At five we sent the boat on board the 'Squirrel' to acquaint the commanding officer of our situation. In the meantime the mob filled a sloop full of men, and bore right down on board us; but, seeing us determined to defend the vessel, they thought proper to sheer off and go on shore again. At six the boat returned from the 'Squirrel' with orders to get under way and anchor close under her stern. The mob growing more and more tumultuous we fired a swivel and made a signal to the 'Squirrel' for assistance, and got under sail. As soon as the mob saw our design they sent a sloop and two or three boats full of men to the battery on Goat Island, and began to fire on us, notwithstanding the Lieutenant of the 'Squirrel' went on shore and forbade the gunner to do any such thing. They even knocked him down, and it was with much difficulty that he got from them; they fired eight shot at us, one of which went through our mainsail whilst we were turning out. At eight we anchored in ten fathom of water within half a cable's length of the 'Squirrel,' and received one shot more from the battery, which went close under the 'Squirrel's' stern. They threatened to sink us if we did not immediately weigh and run into the harbor again; but on the 'Squirrel's' getting a spring upon its cable and bringing her broadside to bear upon the battery, they left off. At eleven next morning they set Mr. Doyle at liberty."
An officer on the "Squirrel" reported that soon after the scuffle at the landing place "sev- eral gentlemen came on board and said they came to represent the occasion of the disturbance, lest the officer of the schooner should have made a misrepresentation of the affair. They said there was a theft committed by three of the schooner's people; that a peace officer went off, and they had refused him admittance; and they now imagined he would return with an armed force, to gain admittance. I told the gentlemen the offenders should be sent on shore. The signal was then made by the schooner pursuant to my former directions. I immediately sent a boat and a petty officer to order her out of the harbor; on which the gentlemen told me they would fire on her from the fort. I then told the officer if they fired from the fort, to go on shore to the fort, and let them know it was my orders for her to move and anchor near us ; and that the men should be delivered to justice; and if he fired again, I should be obliged to return it. They still continued their fire. I then ordered a spring in our cable, and went ashore to the fort to let them know the consequences of their behavior. I found no other officer than the gunner, governed by a tumultuous mob, who said they had orders to fire, and they would fire. They used me with great insolence, and knocked me down, and would have detained me. I then returned to the boat, ordered the ship to prepare for action, and proceeded on board the schooner, and brought her to anchor near the ship; they then ceased firing. I then went on shore to demand justice of the Deputy Governor for the treatment I had received at the fort.
*Desertion was the charge usually made the pretext for impressment.
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He replied I must pursue the law. I told him I would redress myself, if they were to be found, as he seemed not active to do me justice. I then returned to take the people off who had insulted me, but could not find them."
Captain Smith of the "Squirrel" reported that the gunner at the fort "produced an order for stopping the vessel signed by two of the council, the Deputy Governor being absent at that time. I, in company with my Lieutenant, waited on the Governor and council to demand a proper acknowledgment for the insult they had committed. . . . I found them a set of very ignorant council. They agreed that the gunner had acted by authority, and that they would answer for it when they thought it necessary. It appears to me that they were guided by the mob, whose intentions were to murder the pilot and destroy the vessel. I am very sorry they ceased firing before we had convinced them of their error. But I hope it will . . be the means of a change of government in this licentious republic."
However exaggerated, possibly, the narratives were, there was no doubt that the King's colors had been fired upon, and that British naval officers were not popular in Newport. Admiral Colvill reported the matter to England, and the English government issued an order to the Governor and Company of Rhode Island to return "with all possible dispatch an exact and punctual account of the whole proceeding, authenticated in the best manner the case will admit of ; together with the names and descriptions of the offenders, and what means were used at the time of the tumult by the government and magistracy of that colony for the sup- pression thereof, and the protection of his majesty's vessels and their crews; particularly whether anything and what was done by the government of said colony when the populace possessed themselves of the battery upon Goat Island ; and what measures had been since taken to discover and bring to justice the offenders." Governor Ward had succeeded Governor Hopkins by the time, June, 1765, the inquiry reached America. He replied that "as I was out of the administration last year and was out of town when the affair happened, it will require more time for me to acquaint myself with and prepare a statement of the case properly authen- ticated than if I had been present at the time of the transaction." He promised to lay the letter from England before the General Assembly at the September session, 1765, and did. There were changes of officers in England also, and the affair of the "St. John" and the "Squirrel" was lost sight of in a series of events of greater immediate significance in England and Amer- ica, also. The General Assembly's resolution in September, 1765, that the Governor "issue a proclamation for apprehending the rioters, and commanding all persons to apprehend and bring them to justice, and to prevent any such riots for the future," referred to other distur- bances as well as the firing on H. M. S. "St. John."
THE "MAIDSTONE" AFFAIR-H. M. S. "Maidstone" replaced the "Squirrel" in Rhode Island waters in 1765, combining enforcement of the revenue laws with impressment of sea- men. For both purposes all vessels, even fishing smacks and small sloops carrying firewood to the town of Newport, were visited and searched. Impressment excepted for a time only Newporters, lest too great offence be given to the latter, on whom the "Maidstone" was depend- ent somewhat for supplies of food and water. Interference with vessels and impressment of seamen soon had the effect of banishing all shipping, save incoming vessels from foreign voy- ages, from Newport. Fishing and wood carrying stopped, and Newport was effectually cut off from supplies. Vessels were tied up at the wharves without cargoes, and hundreds of sailors loitered in the streets for want of employment. On June 4, 1765, the King's birthday, the "Maidstone" sent a boarding party to a vessel arriving from Africa, and impressed the entire crew, including several inhabitants of Newport. This aroused the people. At nine in the evening of June 4, a boat from the "Maidstone," landing at one of the Newport wharves, was seized by a crowd, estimated as including 500 sailors and boys, dragged up Queen Street at a speed so great that the iron keel left a trail of sparks, carried to the Common and publicly
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burned. Governor Ward sent the sheriff of Newport County on board the "Maidstone" to demand release "of several inhabitants of this colony, lately impressed and detained on board said ship contrary to law." On June II, Governor Ward repeated his demand "that all the inhabitants of this colony who have been forcibly taken and detained .... be forthwith dismissed." His letter to Captain Antrobus under date of July 12 summarized the situation thus :
The men whose discharge I requested were detained several weeks; many others, in the meantime, impressed; the very fishing boats which daily supplied the town were fired at, and interrupted so much in their fishing that some of them dared not go out of the harbor; and the town, if these measures had been continued, would soon have greatly suffered; nay, to such an extravagant height of imprudence and insolence had your people arrived as to enter on board a wood-boat (upon the King's birthday, the very day upon which you affect to lay so great stress), having only two men in her, and to take one of them out, and even to follow the vessel to the wharf. This encouraged the populace, and was the immediate occasion of the riot, which ended in burning the Maidstone boat. These things gave a general uneasiness to the inhabit- ants, who not only saw the great disadvantage they must suffer in their trade and commerce, but were also apprehensive that the supplies which came to the town by water (without which they cannot subsist) would be so much obstructed as greatly to enhance the price of the necessaries of life. . .
And here, sir, I must observe, that the impressing of Englishmen is, in my opinion, an arbitrary action, contrary to law, inconsistent with liberty, and to be justified only by urgent necessity. . . . You assert that while your ship is afloat the civil authority of this colony does not extend to and cannot operate within her. But I must be of opinion, sir, that while she lies in the body of a county, as she then did and still does, within the body of the county of Newport, all her officers and men are within the jurisdiction of this colony, and ought to conform themselves to the laws thereof; and while I have the honor to be in the administration, I shall endeavor to assert and maintain the liberties and privileges of his majesty's subjects ; and the honor, dignity and jurisdiction of the colony. . . . As the men whose discharge I was anxious for have been dismissed, and no further complaints have been made me on that head, I am content to drop the dispute, and hope for the future there may be no occasion for renewing it.
The Governor mentioned in his letter a formal complaint of the destruction of the boat to the Chief Justice of the county, and added : "But in justice to this town I must observe, that by the best information I can get, no person of the least note was concerned in the riot ; the persons who committed the crime consisting altogether of the dregs of the people, and a number of boys and negroes." The famous Boston tea party, several years later, was con- ducted by a strange band of Indians who appeared suddenly in the quaint and quiet Puritan town. Who shall say that disguise was not known by the strange tatterdemalion band, includ- ing negroes, who burned the boat of the "Maidstone"? The courts of Rhode Island were open to the British officers for prosecution of offenders, "supposed to be known," but there were no convictions.
THE STAMP ACT-The exasperation aroused in Newport by the activities of the "Maid- stone," including what was described by a contemporary writer as "the hottest press ever known in this town," had not subsided when news reached America that Parliament had passed the stamp act, to become effective November I, and that it had been signed for King George III, who was mentally deficient and under guardianship. Venturesome sea captains, sailing to and from ports farther up Narragansett Bay, no doubt had found ways of avoiding the "Maid- stone" by use of the West Passage or by night sailing, which were not available to Newport vessels, which must lie at wharves commanded by the "Maidstone's" batteries. But the stamp act could not be avoided by seamanship. Providence expressed its discontent with the stamp act in resolutions. At a special town meeting on August 7, 1765, Stephen Hopkins, Nicholas Cooke, Samuel Nightingale, Jr., John Brown, Silas Downer and James Angell were appointed a committee to draft instructions to the town's representatives in the General Assembly. Reso- lutions drafted by the committee were adopted August 13; in large part they were similar to
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the resolutions adopted by the Virginia House of Burgesses on motion of Patrick Henry, and, with variations emphasizing Rhode Island's unusual independence in legislative matters, were subsequently adopted by the General Assembly at its session in September, 1765. The "Provi- dence Gazette," revived after a long suspension, printed a special edition on August 24, which included copies of the Providence resolutions, extracts from reports in other colonial papers of action taken elsewhere, part of the speech made by Colonel Barré in Parliament against the stamp act, and an editorial praising resistance by patriots. The edition of August 24 carried the motto: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty," and across the top of the front page, in glaring letters after the streamer fashion of modern newspapers, the words "Vox Populi, Vox Dei." The revolution against the stamp act had been complete, though quiet and orderly, in Providence. In Newport, where the people had been stirred to violence by persistent interference with the commerce on which the prosperity of the town depended, popular demonstration of wrath preceded action in town meeting by resolution, on September 3, 1765. On August 27, Augustus Johnston, who had been appointed distributor of stamps in the colony; Thomas Moffat, Scotch physician, temporarily resident in Newport and out- spoken advocate of the English policy; and Martin Howard, whose "Letter from a Gentle- man of Halifax to His Friend in Rhode Island," answering "The Rights of Colonies Exam- ined," by Stephen Hopkins, had been second in a series of pamphlets recalling exchanges a century earlier by Roger Williams and John Cotton, were hanged in effigy on a gallows erected in front of the Colony House. In the evening the effigies were cut down and burned in the presence of a throng of people that filled every available space from which the fire might be seen. The demonstration was continued on the following day, when the houses of Johnston, Moffat and Howard were wrecked, and much of their furnishings destroyed. Johnston, Mof- fat and Howard, with the three officers at the custom house in Newport, fled from the town in terror, seeking protection on board the "Cygnet," English sloop-of-war, then in the harbor. Johnston, whose resignation as distributor of stamps, because he could not "execute the office against the will of our Sovereign Lord the People," had been announced by the "Providence Gazette" of August 24, in a letter dated November 22, declared: "In the evening of the twenty-eighth of August last a large mob was raised in the town of Newport, on account of the stamp act, as was said; and I was reduced to the necessity of seeking for an asylum on board H. M. S. 'Cygnet,' for the preservation of my life. On coming on shore the next day I was obliged, for the security of my life and property, to sign a paper purporting that I would not execute said office without the consent of the inhabitants of the colony, which was the first time that I was desired to resign said office." Samuel Crandall, described as "a principal fel- low amongst the mob," was accused by the customs officers of proposing "infamous terms presumptuously" for their return to shore, as follows: "That we must receive our fees as settled by an act of the Assembly of the colony, in defiance of an act passed at the last session of Parliament; and deliver up the prize sloop, molasses and scows, now under protection of the 'Cygnet,' waiting the determination of the prosecution against them, at Halifax." From the latter it appeared that, while the stamp act was the immediate irritant, the uprising at New- port followed a series of provocative measures taken by the King's collectors and English naval officers. Gideon Wanton, Jr., an Assistant, acting in the absence of Governor Ward, assured the collector and his associates, on August 31, that "the fury of the populace hath entirely subsided, and the minds of the people quieted ; so that there is not the least danger or apprehension of any further riotous proceedings"; and expressed his wish that the customs officers would resume the execution of their offices under an assurance of "all the protection in my power for the safety of your persons and interest." He pointed out that the "putting an entire stop to the trade and commerce of the colony," by closing the custom house, "will be
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attended with most pernicious consequences." Governor Ward, who returned to Newport on August 31, in the afternoon renewed Gideon Wanton's request, with "the most absolute assur- ance that everything is perfectly tranquil," and on September I, writing again, said that Sam- uel Crandall had called on him and given further assurance "that he has not the least intention of raising any disturbance or riot, or of doing any kind of injury." Governor Ward placed an armed guard about the custom house. On the same day the captain of the "Cygnet" com- plained that rumors had reached him of a plot to retake the prize sloop, and warned Governor Ward that if any demonstration of force was made, the "Cygnet" would open fire on the fort and on the town of Newport. The war might have begun at that moment, so tense was the atti- tude of all parties. Johnston, Moffat and Howard subsequently presented claims to the Eng- lish government for damages, amounting approximately to £2500, because of destruction of property, and removal from the colony of two of them. The colony disputed the claims as excessive, and also because they had not been presented either to the General Assembly or to the colony courts. In later negotiations these claims were urged as set-off against the colony's petition for reimbursement for war expenditures incurred on behalf of the English government in 1756. In 1772-1773, itemized inventories of property alleged to have been destroyed or carried away were presented; the totals of £613 were reduced to £296 by committees of the General Assembly which investigated the claims, and ordered paid on settlement by England of the colony's account as of 1756.
The General Assembly met at East Greenwich on the second Monday in September, 1765, for a most momentous session. The Speaker of the House of Deputies announced receipt by him of an invitation to send representatives to a conference to be held at New York on the first Tuesday in October, and Metcalfe Bowler and Henry Ward were thereupon chosen to attend the Stamp Act Congress. Careful instructions for the delegates were drafted, and the Assem- bly itself adopted resolutions more emphatic and daring than any others of the period, as follows :
This Assembly, taking into the most serious consideration an act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain at their last session for levying stamp duties, and other internal duties in North America, do resolve: I. That the first adventurers, settlers of this, his majesty's colony and dominion of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, brought with them and transmitted to their posterity and all other his majesty's subjects since inhabiting in this, his majesty's colony, all the privileges and immunities that have at any time been held, enjoyed and possessed by the people of Great Britain.
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