USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 58
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HEAVY TAXATION-Rhode Island levied state taxes (exclusive of local municipal taxes) amounting to nearly eight per cent. of the assessed valuation of estates in 1777 and 1778. The actual ratio between tax and valuation was reduced by the factor of depreciation, but that was not sufficient in 1777 and 1778 to negative the fact that the taxes levied and paid in two years amounted to an overwhelming burden. When, therefore, Congress for 1779 proposed a con- tinental tax of $15,000,000 upon the United States, with Rhode Island's share, according to the old schedule of state allotments $300,000 or £90,000, equivalent to the proceeds of a tax of four and one-half per cent. on valuation, additional to what must be raised in Rhode Island to redeem outstanding notes already due, to pay interest accrued, to pay off indebtedness incurred, to sustain the Rhode Island brigade and the militia if and when called to service, and to meet the expenses of government, increased as these were, if only by the item of maintain- ing representation in Congress, by the exigencies of war times, there was reason for a pro- test. The state already had been bled white through taxes levied to avoid the evil consequences of accumulating an indebtedness in paper currency, and, as related, actually faced starvation for want of food and the means of obtaining it. Under these circumstances the General Assembly appealed to Congress for relief. The Governor was directed, in January, 1779, to instruct Rhode Island's delegates in Congress "to represent that this state, from the loss of trade, from the necessary decrease of husbandry, owing to the enemy's being in the bowels of the state, upon account of the great number of inhabitants who have left Rhode Island desti- tute of the necessities of life, and from other causes is unable to pay," etc.
SOUTH CAROLINA SUSTAINS RHODE ISLAND-South Carolina, on March 2, volunteered to assume payment of $50,000 of the tax allotted to Rhode Island, and Congress sanctioned the transfer. The General Assembly ordered taxes in 1779, as follows: In February, £90,000 payable one-half May 20 and one-half December I, to comply with a request from Congress, and £60,000 for the state treasury, including repayment of £20,000 which the treasurer had been authorized to hire at six per cent .; in June, £60,000 for supplying the state treasury, and £225,000 for payment of a continental tax requested by Congress, as Rhode Island's allotment of a United States tax of $37,500,000; in December, $400,000, or £ 120,000, to be collected and paid in 1780, as Rhode Island's share of a United States tax of $20,000,000. Congress also requested loans from patriotic citizens, and letters were read in every church in Rhode Island on Sunday or Sabbath, presenting the financial necessities of the United States. Rhode Island's share was apportioned as £ 100,000; the General Assembly, in Sep- tember, directed towns to collect contributions to this "loan" from those who could pay; the "loan" thus became involuntary and almost confiscatory. Of taxes the amount ordered in 1779 was & 555,000, equivalent to $1,850,000, or to more than twenty-five per cent. of valua- tion. The General Assembly late in the year ordered the proceeds of a United States warrant for $300,000 paid into the general treasury. By the end of 1779 the depreciation of continen- tal currency had reduced its exchange value to forty to one, or two and one-half per cent. of face value. Assuming depreciation to minimum value, the amount of taxes levied was £ 1 3,875 or $46,250. Actually it was much more than the minimum; and besides that, the depreciation indicated a woeful financial situation. Grain brought in from Connecticut early in 1779 sold at $12 per bushel, a price resulting from a combination of depreciation of currency and actual scarcity. Wood was distributed to the poor in Bristol in 1779, and was sold to those who could afford to pay for £12, or $40, per cord. If the war had not been brought home to Rhode Island by hostile occupation of one-fourth of her soil, and by the losses of her sons by death upon the battlefield, Rhode Island suffered enough economically to impress the price of liberty and independence upon its citizens. The depreciation of currency, while it tended to alle- viate the burden of taxation, was itself a staggering blow to trade and commerce, reaching every citizen, even those who worked for wages. The possession of money was a liability ; its value
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decreased while it rested in pocket or till. The return on contracts diminished in the interval between agreement and settlement, while the cost of every element entering into the article to be delivered on the contract increased in the lawful money of the period. The people were reduced to desperate straits. When Burgoyne was permitted to pass through Rhode Island to Newport on his way to embarkation, his route was laid out through open rural sections in order that he might not see the desolation prevailing in Rhode Island communities. The Revo- lution was glorious in arms, but not less pregnant with suffering for the people than other wars.
EVACUATION OF NEWPORT-The British evacuated Newport late in October, 1779. The movement began on October II, when a large fleet, including transports and an armed convoy, entered Narragansett Bay ; it continued two weeks. Cannon and military stores were shipped from wharves; to embark troops the transports anchored off Brenton's Point and received the soldiers from boats. Barracks, wooden platforms for guns in fortifications, and the light- house at Beaver Tail were burned, the latter wantonly. Fortifications, for the most part, were left intact ; American officers who examined them after the evacuation admired the engineer- ing skill employed in construction. An unfavorable wind on October 24 delayed the departure ; the fleet sailed away on the following day. On October 26, American troops moved into New- port to assure order and the protection of life and property until civil government, discon- tinued during the occupation, could be restored. The evacuation proceeded under the eyes of the American soldiers stationed on the east and west shores of Narragansett Bay. There was no movement to molest the departing troops; as a matter of precaution the latter were not embarked until the day of sailing, and on that day the inhabitants were ordered not to venture out of their houses. With the British sailed forty to fifty Tory families, most of them never to return. Walter Chaloner, Tory sheriff, carried away the Newport and Middletown town records, probably with the purpose of forestalling confiscation of Tory estates. Clin- ton, in correspondence with Washington, disclaimed knowledge of this violation of military comity. The records were on a small vessel, which was wrecked in the East River near New York, and had been under water six months before they were restored.
Newport was in a sorry plight physically after the departure. Besides the lighthouse, the British burned Long Wharf, which had become essential in the town's commercial life; the wharf was rebuilt from the proceeds of a lottery granted in 1795. The Newport State House had been used and abused as a barracks. The pews had been removed from churches that the buildings might not be encumbered for use by the British ; one was an officers' riding academy. Private houses, in which troops had been billeted, had suffered ; indeed, the General Assembly was called upon many times to reimburse owners of property occupied by state troops for damage arising from abuses by soldiers. Estimates of property damage alone vary between one-third and one-half a million dollars .* Newport was depressed in spirit also; before the war it had been the Venice of America, thriving on a commerce exceeded in volume and in value nowhere else on the Atlantic seaboard. Commerce had vanished, and with it most of the rich merchants, including Hebrews, whose enterprises and adventures had loaded its wharves and warehouses with costly merchandise, and filled its coffers with gold. Once the most populous town in Rhode Island, thousands had departed; those left faced the opening of winter poorly prepared. Abject poverty was the lot of many, and the winter of 1779-1780 was so severe that Narragansett Bay was frozen from shore to shore, a rare and extraordinary occurrence. The General Assembly undertook urgent measures for relief of the poor, includ- ing providing wood for fuel.
Yet Newport and Rhode Island rejoiced, for the state was free of the enemy, soldiers could be relieved from military service, husbandry could reclaim the fertile areas that had been left by the British, manufacturing could be restored, commerce could be revived, and there
*A committee reported to the General Assembly in 1782, wanton damage amounting to £124,798, or $415,994.
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was prospect of a profit also in privateering. Shortly after the departure of the British the militia was dimissed and the continental regiments, except Colonel Greene's, were ordered to join the main army with Washington in the camps about New York. Rhode Island began to assume less the atmosphere of a cantonment and more the aspect of peace. The war was not over, but, for the time being, Rhode Island was relieved.
ATTEMPTS TO RELIEVE DISTRESS-The General Assembly met eight times in 1779, in January, May, August, and December, at Providence; in February and September, at East Greenwich; in June and October, at South Kingstown. Governor Greene and Deputy Gov- ernor Bowen was reelected, and with them the four delegates to Congress chosen in 1778. The difficult economic situation prevailing affected legislation and resolutions; much of the business of the Assembly, aside from measures dealing with taxation, was related to adjust- ments of soldiers' wages, bounties, subsistence and other allowances, because of the deprecia- tion of currency and rising prices. The disposition not to sell to public agents, particularly military officers, because of their insistence on price levels lower than those possible in private sales and also because of delay in payment of warrants issued, had led in 1778 to the enact- ment of a statute intended to establish effective processes of condemnation for public pur- poses of forage and fuel, and the use of horses and wagons. Generals Sullivan and Cornell protested that the procedure was cumbersome and had been construed as allowing no other method, and asked repeal ; the General Assembly repealed the statute in January, 1779. To assure an equitable distribution of grain, the Assembly urged those to sell who had supplies beyond necessity, and threatened legislation. To prevent evasion of the law providing for the freeing of slaves, the exportation of slaves to other states was forbidden. The state brigade was reorganized, the infantry was consolidated into one regiment, and a new select corps of light infantry under Colonel Barton was established. The light infantry was specially equipped, and, besides, was provided with boats for use in expeditions along the bays and rivers. To promote reenlistment of the veteran officers and soldiers in the Rhode Island continental bat- talions, whose three years' terms were approaching conclusion, the General Assembly offered special bounties, and pledged the state, because of the soldiers' "proved fidelity, firmness and intrepidity in service," to repay "to them or to their representatives the wages of the estab- lishment of Congress, whereon they engaged." This was substantially a guaranty against decrease in wages by depreciation of currency. When the British evacuated Newport, statutes that had forbidden trade and intercourse with Conanicut, Rhode and Block Islands were repealed. Persons who, because of suspected or alleged illicit relations with the enemy, had been removed inland were permitted to return to their homes, and restrictions on their move- ments were relaxed. Ferries were reestablished, and, in the instance of the west ferries, between Jamestown and South Kingstown, ferry slips and wharves were repaired or rebuilt. Town meetings were ordered in Jamestown, Middletown, Newport and Portsmouth, to renew municipal government and elect Deputies to the General Assembly, with provision for exclud- ing from participation persons known to have been active supporters of or sympathetic with the British.
In December, an act providing for the confiscation of estates of persons who had given aid and encouragement to the enemy was passed. Earlier measures had sequestered rents and profits ; the legislation of 1779 aimed at estates of inheritance as a drastic punishment for treason to America and Rhode Island. It provided for judicial procedure on the complaint of treason in the Superior Court of Judicature, special sessions of which were ordered, with jury trials. Actions for confiscation opened with complaint ; complaints were continued to the next session, with order of notice by advertisement in public newspapers, personal service on defendants within the jurisdiction, or service by posting notice upon the property to be taken if the owner could not be found. In one instance, in 1780, the General Assembly enacted a
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confiscatory statute without judicial process; and in another, following a charge that a jury had been tampered with and an acquittal obtained by a stubborn juryman who held out against conviction, the acquittal was set aside, and a new trial was ordered. The dower of widows in estates sold for treason was barred in 1780; but claims of creditors were settled out of the proceeds of sales of confiscated property. Of thirty-seven persons, accused of having "left this state . . . and joined the enemies thereof, thereby not only depriving these states of their personal services, at a time when they ought to have afforded their utmost aid in defending the said states against the invasions of a cruel enemy, but manifested an inimical disposition to the said states and a design to aid and abet the enemies thereof, in their wicked purposes," thirty-four were banished forever, in July, 1780. The arrest of any of those who ventured to return was ordered, with detention until they could be sent beyond the borders of the United States, and death the penalty for a second return. Five of the large farms confis- cated were ordered sold in June, 1780, for gold or silver, the proceeds to be applied to the redemption of an issue of state bills of credit; other confiscated land was ordered sold in September to replenish the treasury; in July the state offered to grant part of the confiscated land to soldiers as payment of balances of wages due because of depreciation of currency.
Rising prices and the continued depreciation of currency remained perplexing problems, in spite of measures intended to correct both. A Rhode Island conference met at East Green- wich in August, and adopted a scale of prices for staple articles ; it referred a proposed scale for labor and board, and manufactured articles to the town meetings for consideration. Simi- lar conferences were held in other states, followed by interstate conferences. Stephen Hop- kins and Charles Holden represented Rhode Island at a meeting of commissioners from the New England States and New York in October, 1779. William Ellery was sent to a confer- ence of all states north of and including Virginia, which met at Philadelphia in January, 1780. To hold supplies of food within the state, and to restrict somewhat the activities of profiteers, who bought up available supplies of the necessities of life and of articles wanted for the army, most states enforced rigid embargoes. Rhode Island imposed an embargo on all commodities in October, 1779, as a measure intended to deal with a situation indicating extreme shortage, and to restrict the activities of profiteers buying in Rhode Island for exportation. John Brown and Joseph Nightingale were sent to present to the General Court of Massachusetts Rhode Island's straits because of embargoes; in consequence there was for the time being a mutual relaxation of embargoes between the neighboring states. High prices resulted from the com- bined effect of shortage of supplies and a debased currency, the contribution of each factor being difficult to calculate. The General Assembly voted in November, 1780, for each soldier enlisted in continental service, "forty continental dollars out of the general treasury, in lieu of one pair of stockings, which was promised him upon his enlistment." Robert Currie was paid £720, or $2400, lawful money, for transporting "Colonel Josiah Brewster, six Oneida Indians and their interpreter, on the stage coach to Boston." Earlier during the war period the General Assembly had increased the amounts of fines, penalties and forfeitures, taxed in money, to make the assessment other than ridiculous, because so trifling in the lawful money value of the period. Fines, penalties and forfeitures of a pecuniary nature were raised "twenty-fold" in February, 1780; "forty-fold" in June, 1780; "eighty-fold," in October, 1780. East Greenwich had been granted a lottery to raise $600 to build a schoolhouse in 1774; in 1780 the lottery was increased to $40,000 to build two schoolhouses.
Rhode Island repealed the act to prevent depreciation of continental and other currency in February, 1780, as a measure to protect the general treasury, and thereafter in levying taxes and issuing notes stipulated the money of payment; this drastic measure, restoring a coin standard, was consistent with the new policy of Congress adopted only after the futility of unlimited paper currency without adequate provision for redemption had been demonstrated almost by disaster. Rhode Island, in further compliance with the new policy, considered
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measures for state redemption of continental currency, including raising a tax of £ 420,000, or $1,400,000, lawful money, which might be paid in silver at the ratio of one silver dollar for forty dollars in continental bills. The rate of exchange for continental bills in coin was seventy-two to one in November, 1780; in that month the General Assembly adopted a "scale of depreciation of continental bills of credit" between January 1, 1777, and April, 1780, indi- cating a month-to-month depreciation over the period. The scale was part of an act providing "that all private contracts made before the first day of May, 1775, and all special contracts made for silver or gold after that time, between individuals, shall be paid in gold or silver only ; that all other private contracts made since the first day of January, 1777, may be dis- charged by paying the just value of the currency, contracted for, as ascertained by this act, in silver or gold, or in bills of credit of the United States at the current exchange at the time of payment ; that the aforesaid scale be the rule, in all courts of law, for settling the rate of depreciation in all contracts as aforesaid; and that judgment be entered accordingly."
The General Assembly met nine times in 1780, at East Greenwich in February, March and November; at Providence, in May, July and October; at South Kingstown, in June; at Newport, in July and September, the first sessions at Newport since 1776. William Greene was reelected as Governor; William West was elected as Deputy Governor. John Col- lins was reelected as delegate to Congress; James M. Varnum and Daniel Mowry were chosen by the people to succeed Henry Marchant and William Ellery; the General Assembly elected Ezekiel Cornell as delegate to replace Stephen Hopkins, the people having failed to cast a majority vote for any one of the three candidates for first delegate to Congress. Besides Generals Varnum, West and Cornell, other prominent soldiers elected to civil office in May, 1780, were Colonels Elliott, Topham, Comstock and Crary, and Captain Taggart. Several of these had resigned from state military service during the preceding twelvemonth because of dissatisfaction. The election meeting in May, 1780, which, under the Charter, should assemble at Newport, was held at Providence, because "the State House at Newport is at present in so ruinous a condition that the General Assembly cannot be accommodated therein." Repairs on the State House at Newport, and also the jail, were ordered in May ; at the same session the leaden roof was ordered removed from the State House at Provi- dence, and suitable repairs made. The military hospitals at Newport and Providence were closed, and the hospital was relocated at Tiverton barracks. University Hall, at Rhode Island College, which had been used for barracks and later as a hospital, was wanted by the col- lege, which wished to reopen. The building had been remodelled somewhat to adapt it for hospital use, and, like other structures taken for occupation by soldiers, had deteriorated. The General Assembly referred to Congress the college request that repairs be undertaken at public expense. The French, on their arrival, were not entirely satisfied with the hospital accommodations provided at Bristol and Tiverton, and asked for the college building; the request was granted, in spite of the college protest against further remodeling by the French surgeons and officers, who displayed the same thoroughness in care for the sick that was characteristic of all their wartime activities in American. For use of the college while the French occupied University Hall, the brick schoolhouse on Meeting Street was cleared of public stores. The lottery grant for building schoolhouses in East Greenwich and the activ- ity of the college authorities reflected the more hopeful attitude in Rhode Island following the evacuation of Newport; there was a disposition to return so soon as possible to peace condi- tions, and to a resumption of the community enterprises that war had interrupted. Thus, a lottery to raise $30,000 to pay the cost of paving Union Street, between Broad Street and Westminster Street, in Providence, was granted in May, 1780. The statute forbidding sales at auction was repealed; it had been enacted as a measure to restrict profiteering through the procedure of fictitious public sales to establish market prices.
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MORE TAXATION-Taxes levied in 1780 included £180,000 in February as the state's allotment of a continental tax of $45,000,000; £180,000 for the state and £180,000 for the United States, in May ; £400,000 for the state, £420,000 for the United States, in July; £5000 in June and f10,000 in July, both payable only in gold or silver, or new bills of credit issued by the state and redeemable in coin. Estimating the depreciation of continental notes at forty to one, the taxes for the year totalled £49,000, or $163,000, in coin, perhaps $125,000 with a calculation for depreciation after April. Notes were emitted as follows: In June £20,000 at five per cent., payable June 1, 1781, in gold or Spanish dollars, at six shillings for one dollar ; in July £39,000. The £780,000 of taxes assessed for Congress were payable in continental notes or in specie at the ratio of forty to one; if paid in continental currency, they would withdraw from circulation for sinking all of Rhode Island's quota of the continental notes emitted prior to March 18, 1780. Had other states acted as promptly in assessing and as diligently in collecting these taxes and paying the proceeds thereof into the continental treas- ury, and few did and most did not, all of the earlier continental notes would have been redeemed by actual sinking or accumulation of a sinking fund by 1781. The £39,000 of notes issued in July were Rhode Island's quota in a new series of state-continental currency intended both to replenish continental and state treasuries and furnish money for trade and exchange. These notes were emitted on the credit of the state, to be redeemed through annual taxes over a period of five years, carried five per cent. interest, and were indorsed by Congress, which guaranteed principal and interest. The ratio of exchange for old and new series was estab- lished at forty to one; new notes were to be emitted only in the ratio of one to twenty of old notes paid into the treasury for sinking. The proceeds of the emission of new notes were to be divided betwixt state and Congress, three-fifths for the state treasury and two-fifths for the continental treasury.
The new policy of Congress to shift to the states, as repositories of the taxing and other financial powers, the immediate burden of carrying on the war was exemplified in a resolu- tion adopted February 25, 1780, calling upon the "several states for specific quantities of pro- visions, rum and forage for the army, and directing the articles to be collected and deposited at such places in each of the states as should be judged most convenient" by Washington as commander-in-chief. Washington designated Providence as the depository for 18,621 gallons of rum, leaving the time and place of delivery of beef and salt to the commissary, and of hay to the quartermaster. The shortage of salt had already occasioned measures for sending vessels abroad to obtain this valuable preservative and condiment. When, in June, Congress requested Rhode Island to furnish 2000 bushels of salt, the latter was purchased from the cargo of a prize brought in by the "Hermione," French frigate, Chevalier de la Touche com- manding, on which Lafayette returned from his mission to the French King to obtain the grant of a French army for America. The commissary of purchases was ordered to buy and have in readiness on July I "200 good draught horses, 30 hogsheads of rum, 9000 pounds of beef on the hoof, hides included, and 2285 bushels of grain for forage." The committee of Congress in June established monthly quotas of commodities to be furnished by the states for the army; the quotas of other supplies were apportioned to towns except Providence and Newport, which were ordered to find the rum and salt requested by Congress. Rhode Island undertook to supply these quotas with the zeal that had characterized every contribution to the success of the war.
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