USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 87
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recognized"; (b) against the right of Congress to decide or inquire into the merits of the People's Constitution," the said question having been finally decided by the people of this state, and the government of this state having been actually settled, and being now actually administered under and by virtue of the Constitution of this state, legally, peaceably and freely adopted"; (c) against action by Congress "calculated to stir up and excite anew rebellion, insurrection and war therein, or to excite against this state, and the people and government thereof, the ill-will of the people and government of our sister states."
The national House of Representatives appointed a committee, nevertheless, to "inquire into the interference of the President in the affairs of Rhode Island in 1842," and received both a majority and a minority report from its committee, the combined reports, with docu- ments accompanying them making a volume of 1250 closely printed pages. The majority of the committee condemned, the minority sustained President Tyler. The General Assembly expressed its disapproval of the report in resolutions, thus: Whereas the House of Repre- sentatives of Congress "in violation of the reserved rights of this state . ... did at their last session refer a memorial of certain persons styling themselves Democratic members of this Rhode Island legislature to a special committee with authority to inquire into and report upon all matters in said memorial contained .... without regard to the solemn protest of the General Assembly of the state duly communicated to said House of Representatives"; . . . and whereas said committee report "fully justified the attempt of a part of the people of Rhode Island, with others their confederates, by force and fraud to overthrow the govern- ment of Rhode Island and to establish in its stead another government, against the will of the people and the authority thereof, and several thousand copies of said report have been printed and ordered to be printed by said House of Representatives at the public expense for the pur- pose of being circulated in all the states of the United States; and whereas said report and the statements thereto appended as evidence are in general either untrue or deceptive, and injuriously affect the character of many good citizens of Rhode Island therein named or specified, and cast reproach upon the government and people of Rhode Island, so that it has become the bounden duty of this General Assembly to place upon record and to lay before the people of the United States an authentic account of the recent struggle of this state in the cause of constitutional freedom, so greatly misrepresented and misunderstood, to the end that those of her citizens who for their fidelity to the cause have been singled out for repro- bation may be sheltered therefrom by proof-that the people and government may be pro- tected from unjust reproach-and that the truth of history may be vindicated in a matter of gravest concern to the people and government of every state of this union," therefore resolved to appoint a committee to gather the material for a report favorable to the government of Rhode Island. The committee as named included Samuel Ames, William Gammell, William G. Goddard and Samuel W. King. Nathan F. Dixon and Alfred Bosworth replaced Wil- liam Gammell and William G. Goddard, who declined to serve. The Rhode Island committee did not report. The General Assembly also condemned the Democratic members as "traitor- ous" and as unworthy of holding any office of honor or trust .* The affairs of Rhode Island were brought before the United States Senate in resolutions, but no action was taken by the Senate. Aside from making the most of an opportunity for the delivery of political speeches, Congress was as little inclined as was President Tyler to take decisive action. Eventually the attitude of the three principal agencies of the federal government-Congress delaying action until Rhode Island had settled its own affairs, the President promising but refusing inter- vention unless and until actual violence necessitated it, and the Supreme Court withholding its decision to decline jurisdiction until 1849-might be epitomized, in words that were later applied to another situation as "watchful waiting."
*Resolution ordered expunged, 1853, in same manner that United States Senate expunged censure of Jackson.
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Rhode Island found reason for complaining of the somewhat active interest taken by sister states in the affairs of Rhode Island during the suffrage movement. Dorr was encour- aged by the Governors of Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and promised armed support in New York in the event of federal intervention. Certain citizens of Carroll County, Indiana, protested to Congress, and their memorial was referred to the committee of the House of Representatives with the petition of the Rhode Island Democrats. Newspaper reports of the procedure on Dorr's trial and other trials following the insurrection attracted attention, and the imprisonment of Dorr aroused sympathy for him without as well as within the state .. . New Hampshire, through the legislature, on June 8, 1845, addressed resolutions to Congress asserting "that it is the duty of Congress to restore to the said Thomas Wilson Dorr those sacred rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution, as a man and a citizen of this republic; and to wipe out the deep and damning stain upon the national escutcheon by the mock trial and condemnation of this individual, guilty of no offence but that of maintaining the sovereignty of the people and of obeying their sovereign will." The Rhode Island Gen- eral Assembly answered that "said resolutions, marked as they are by the grossest falsehood, ignorance and impertinence, are at once disgraceful to the legislature of New Hampshire and insulting to the government and people of Rhode Island." The Legislature of Maine in res- olutions asserted that the People's Constitution had been legally adopted, condemned Presi- dent Tyler's "interference" as "a wanton violation of the rights of the people of Rhode Island," protested against the imprisonment of Dorr as "unjust, illegal, malignant and tyran- nical, unbecoming the age in which we live, and deserving the marked disapprobation of the American people," and recognized "in the person of Thomas Wilson Dorr a bold and uncom- promising champion of the great American doctrines of the Revolution, the able and stern defender of popular sovereignty, a noble son of a degenerate state, now the victim of vindic- tively corrupt judges, and a packed and partial jury." The Rhode Island answer was a pro- test against officious meddling : "The state of Rhode Island, while she faithfully discharges all her constitutional obligations to her sister states, and to the government of the union, can never so forget her past history, her early struggle in the cause of religious freedom, her toils and sufferings and sacrifices in the War of the Revolution, and her zealous determination, at all times, to secure to the people of Rhode Island the exclusive right to manage their own affairs in their own way, as not to repel with indignation every attack, come whence it may, to deprive her of those constitutional rights which the fathers of the republic established in order to promote the peace."
With the advantage of the perspective of nearly ninety years the Dorr movement may be briefly recapitulated thus : To Dorr belongs such credit as may be due him for awakening Rhode Island to a conception of more liberal democracy, after the unprecedented and unpar- alleled democracy of the founders had become scarcely attuned to the growth of the common- wealth. Dorr's forcefulness brought the issue to a focus, and precipitated a movement out of which Rhode Island achieved a Constitution. It was altogether unfortunate that Dorr's enthusiasm led him to misinterpret the willingness of the people to pursue peaceable measures as tantamount to a disposition to vindicate their political opinions in arms. As a matter of fact, Rhode Island, even under the Charter government, was a happy state whose people enjoyed unusual personal liberty, and were restricted probably less than anywhere else in their pursuit of happiness. They might wish for broader political privileges, but they were not disposed to heroic measures to obtain them. Dorr erred in not accepting with good grace the overtures for peace made effective through the Constitution of 1842. Unfortunately, also the Charter government exaggerated both its own assumed weakness and the strength of the Dorr party. Effective measures to curb insurrection, suppress domestic violence and guard both human life and property were amply justifiable. The Charter government and the new
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government under the Constitution erred in pursuing drastic post-insurrectionary measures, which, in view of the little reason for them, were construed as vindictive. The Dorr move- ment, with all its failures, was important for the United States as well as for Rhode Island, as it established for America the path to democracy, by way of the ballot rather than by use of the bayonet. To Rhode Island belongs the credit eventually of settling the problem in its own democratic way, and of beginning under a Constitution that was liberal for the middle of the nineteenth century a fresh experiment in democracy on a larger scale than had been dreamed of by Roger Williams and John Clarke.
The monument erected by the General Assembly at Acote's Hill in 1912 carries this inscription : "Thomas Wilson Dorr, 1805-1854. Of distinguished lineage. Of brilliant talent. Eminent in scholarship. A public-spirited citizen. Lawyer, educator, statesman. Advocate of popular sovereignty. Framer of the People's Constitution of 1842. Elected Governor under it. Adjudged revolutionary in 1842. Principle acknowledged right in 1912."
CHAPTER XIX. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN RHODE ISLAND.
ARRAGANSETT BAY had been the prize contended for, in the earliest period of New England's colonial history, by Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachu- setts. Besides furnishing harbors not surpassed on the Atlantic coast of North America, the bay and rivers emptying into it penetrated deeply into the terrain and were navigable for full thirty-five to forty miles from the open ocean, with the consequence that no farm in Rhode Island was more than twenty miles from tidewater, and most were very much nearer. There was agrarian opposition to the construction of the Blackstone Canal because it tended to give the farmers along the Blackstone Valley so far as Worcester, and beyond, advantages almost equalling those theretofore enjoyed exclusively by Rhode Island farmers through easy access to markets. The short haul of produce or drive of stock to tidewater markets compensated abundantly for the poor quality of much of the soil; wherefore Rhode Island farmers were among the most prosperous in colonial America, because they encountered no serious natural obstacles to selling so much of their produce as exceeded what was necessary for home consumption. Thus they not only escaped the abject poverty that usually attends farming in places isolated from markets, but also shared in the genial glow of prosperity radiating from the rising commercial towns. The proximity to tidewater of farms producing butter and cheese, flax and wool, horses and poultry, beef and pork for provisions, hay and other forage crops, facilitated the operations of traders seek- ing cargoes for sale in West Indian markets. Rhode Island farms furnished food (I) for home consumption on the farms; (2) for residents of compact commercial towns such as Newport and Providence, no longer able to feed their denizens through home production and dependent upon the farming towns for necessary food ;* (3) for sailors of the fleets sailing in and out of Narragansett Bay; and (4) for English and other colonies among the West Indian islands. Besides food, the farmers had hides, timber, lumber, barrel staves and hoops, cordwood and trash wood for sale, and sometimes potash and saltpetre.
The commercial towns were prosperous-even wealthy-and Newport reached the zenith of her golden age in commerce, art, literature and social culture before the Revolution. Peace favored commerce; in war merchants turned to privateering, hazarded and won or lost for- tunes, with the scale tipped usually by a favoring balance. Once Rhode Island had taken to the sea, her sons were versatile mariners and adventurous merchants. Commerce broadened and became more profitable, as new markets were sought and found, and Rhode Island sloops, schooners, brigs and clipper ships became carriers in trade between ports other than those on Narragansett Bay. Offshore fisheries and whaling lured many in pursuit of fortunes. Mary Brown, sister of the famous four brothers of Providence, married Dr. Vandelight, skillful chemist and graduate of Leyden University, who brought from Europe the Dutch process of separating spermacetti from sperm oil; and the Brown brothers added spermacetti works to their numerous other enterprises. The West India sugar trade was supplemented by the building of distilleries, by the rum trade and by the slave trade in triangular voyages yielding a profit on each leg of the triangle, from Narragansett Bay to Africa, from Africa to the West Indies or South America, and thence home. Shipbuilding yards produced the first Rhode Island trading vessels, and as commerce extended, the shipbuilding industry grew with it, Rhode Island producing typical fast-sailing vessels for home merchants and for sale abroad.
*Newport and Providence, the latter particularly, were threatened with famine during the paper money controversy. Chapter XVI.
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Along with ships went the production of masts and spars, hemp and ropes, flax and canvas, pulley blocks and myriad types of metal fittings for ships, nails and bolts, chains and anchors, cannon and other arms for defence of peaceful commerce against pirates, or for the more aggressive activities of privateers, and colonial ships-of-war. An abundance of hides and the demands of growing population for leather suggested tanneries, and the manufacture of leather into boots and shoes, saddles and harness. Besides family, intramural production of home- spun cloth and garments, there were, in the colonial period, several ventures in the manufac- ture of textiles, including duck for sails, to promote which a bounty and subsidy were offered. More manufacturing there might have been had not the English colonial policy either for- bidden or discouraged competition with British factories, and had not the English navigation acts restricted and hampered the development of American commerce. The major productive enterprises in colonial Rhode Island, both primary and secondary-food and provisions, hides and leather goods, ships and ship findings, cast iron and ironware, timber and lumber-all were related to the dominating geographical fact-Narragansett Bay-and the development of commerce.
CHANGES FOLLOWING REVOLUTION-As the causes of the Revolution had been economic as well as political, the establishment of independence brought both political and economic changes. Rhode Island lost the intercolonial trade that had been highly profitable before 1776, and harbors and ports that had been familiar in bygone days were not visited by Rhode Island vessels, because England reserved intercolonial trade for British and colonial vessels. On the other hand, the acknowledgment of independence removed the barriers that England had set up against foreign commerce; into the new field enterprising Rhode Island merchants and shipowners lost no time in entering. With the coming of peace Rhode Island shipyards were once more busy with the construction of larger vessels for transoceanic, around-the-world, trade. The southeastern extremity of Providence, where the Seekonk River turns sharply westward to join the Providence River, was named India Point because of the new commerce with the Far East, and the cargoes landed there from India and the Spice Islands.
Besides direct trade with European and Asiatic ports, Rhode Island merchants developed a new and novel plan for profitable foreign trading. Instead of consigning cargoes to factors or agents in distant ports and risking losses because of unprofitable selling in unfavorable mar- kets, Rhode Island vessels carried a supercargo as agent for the merchant owner of the cargo. The supercargo, at discretion, might dispose of the cargo in the port for which clearance had been taken, or, finding the prospect unsatisfactory there, might order clearance for another port, selling part or all of the cargo from port to port to best advantage. The supercargo might sell the ship if opportunity offered good profit. The Brown & Francis ship "Presi- dent" was sold, after one voyage, in Calcutta to a Dutch firm. The De Wolf ship "Juno," Bristol, for the Northwest Coast and the China fur trade, was sold to Russians. The com- mander, Captain John De Wolf, returned to Bristol by way of the Pacific Ocean, Siberia, Russia and the Atlantic Ocean, thus completing a journey around the globe. The voyage net- ted the owners a profit of $100,000. The supercargo might invest the proceeds of sale of his outgoing cargo in a return cargo for Rhode Island, or he might, on selling the first cargo, buy another for disposition in another foreign port, or take another cargo on charter similar to the practice of modern "tramp" steamships. Thus after one or more incidental voyages, a Rhode Island vessel might return from a long journey with the profits of several voyages to offset the heavy expenditures involved in long direct voyages. In an extension of the plan an out- going cargo might be divided and transferred in foreign ports to smaller vessels, which besides disposing of their cargoes, gathered foreign goods for shipment back in the larger vessel to Rhode Island. Enterprises involving, as these did, hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in ships and cargo and expended for wages and provisions for sailors and officers, called for sound business judgment, as well as daring initiative. The commerce was profitable, yielding
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fortunes if successful, but also extremely hazardous because of the perils of the sea, piracy, privateering, and war.
The new foreign commerce substituted new markets for old markets lost, and restored in Rhode Island the prosperity that had preceded the Revolution ; it also brought into promi- nence a new and decidedly American type of wealthy Rhode Islander to replace the Tories and Hebrews who had been leaders in commerce before the war. The De Wolfs of Bristol ; Gibbs & Channing and Champlin & Champlin of Newport; the four Brown brothers and their partners, Benson, Francis and Ives; several of the ten sons of Joseph Carlo Mauran, Edward Carrington, Joseph and William Russell and a host of others of Providence, were the new merchants and mariners trading with Sweden, Russia, China, India, Australia and the East Indies. Edward Carrington, who had been American Consul at Canton, China, returning to Rhode Island, became builder and operating owner of the largest fleet of sailing vessels, twenty-six at one time, in America. Rhode Island ships and sailormen went anywhere that promised profit. When whaling, after a quarter-century of quiet from 1795 to 1820, was revived, Rhode Island sent out ships on three-year voyages to the Pacific Ocean. The "Lion," ship, clearing from Providence November 10, 1843, returned in 1846, after having taken 1800 barrels of whale oil, 100 barrels of sperm and 36,000 pounds of whalebone, a record catch. The "Lion" was also the last whaler cleared from Rhode Island; sailing July 17, 1854, she was lost at sea November 10, 1856. When South Carolina opened the port of Charleston to the slave trade for four years, January I, 1804, to December 31, 1807, of sixty-seven Ameri- can vessels engaged in the traffic fifty-nine were owned in Rhode Island. Of 212 vessels entered as carrying slaves eighty-eight were consigned to residents of Rhode Island. Rhode Island vessels, for the most part brigs and schooners, carried 8238 of 39,075 slaves imported. Bristol vessels carried 3914 slaves into Charleston, Newport vessels 3488, Providence ves- sels 556, and Warren vessels 280. Ten of the Rhode Island vessels were owned by James De Wolf of Bristol; he was interested as consignee in three others, and may have owned yet three more-probably sixteen in all. James De Wolf was subsequently elected to the United States Senate, and there attacked vigorously by Senator Smith of South Carolina, following Rhode Island's opposition to the admission of Missouri as a state. The slave trade was for- bidden by Congress in 1808; yet the "Haidee," completed in 1853, the last ship built in Provi- dence, became a slaver. After two voyages, one to Australia and another to China, the "Hai- dee" was sold, and in 1857 made the crossing from New York to Oporto, Portugal, in seven- teen days, twelve hours, the record for a sailing vessel. The "Haidee" cleared from New York for Gibraltar in 1858, and from Gibraltar cleared for Africa, this time without Captain Manton of Providence, who had been sailing master. The "Haidee" landed 900 slaves in Cuba, and, to evade capture and confiscation, was scuttled off Montauk Point, September 18, 1858.
Rhode Island was rehabilitated after the Revolution by successful ventures on the sea. Bristol, Newport, Providence and Warren participating, but all of Rhode Island sharing in the prosperity that was diffused, farmers as well as residents of the commercial towns. Once more the dominating factor in the new economic organization was Narragansett Bay. The era of profitable foreign commerce was short-lived. It opened so soon after the close of the Revolution as keen-visioned, daring merchant princes recognized opportunity. It had reached the zenith before 1810, and with the passage of another generation, foreign commerce, steadily declining in profit, in the number of persons engaged, and in ships, had given place to a new industrial organization. The wealth of Rhode Island was invested in factories.
MOSES BROWN AND TEXTILES-Perhaps it was the excessive caution which was char- acteristic of his long life, which distinguished him among the four brothers, and which con- trasted so emphatically with the adventurous daring of John Brown, which led Moses Brown, after retiring from the family partnership, to seek for his fortune investments less hazardous
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than commerce; it is scarcely believable that he foresaw, more than a generation in advance, the decline of foreign commerce that followed the world-disturbing European wars of the Napoleonic era and America's War of 1812, the abolition of the slave trade and its suppres- sion, the cessation of the whale fishery and allied industries, and the changes resulting from the introduction of steam navigation and the building of steam railways. Yet it was the wealth of Moses Brown and his willingness to spend his money to finance the experiments and projects of Samuel Slater which opened the gateway of a new opportunity for Rhode Island just as the period of successful foreign commerce was passing. The immense wealth accumu- lated in foreign commerce was available for investment in mill sites, water rights, buildings and machinery; nature had provided for Rhode Island an abundance of water and water- power, the Blackstone and the Pawtuxet Rivers were lined with factories within a generation, with less intensive, though still notable developments along the Pawcatuck and beside inland rivers, lakes and ponds furnishing water for bleaching, dyeing and finishing processes. Tex- tile factories dotted Rhode Island, and with them other mills producing textile machinery and tools and supplies used in the dominating industry.
The following is a suggestive rather than a complete or comprehensive outline of the new development : The factory project of Almy, Brown & Slater at Pawtucket was the first successful American cotton manufactory, and continued for several years to be the only project of the kind that was so profitable as to be successful. Job Greene had built a cotton mill at Centreville in the Pawtuxet Valley in 1794. William Almy and Obadiah Brown pur- chased a half-interest in 1799, and the remaining half-interest two years later. Under their management the enterprise became profitable and the cotton textile industry was launched in the Pawtuxet Valley on a successful basis. Other mills were built in Warwick: Across the river from the Centreville mill, by the Warwick Manufacturing Company, in 1807; at Natick, 1807; at Crompton, 1807; at Lippitt, 1809; at Pontiac, 1810; at Phenix, 1811, 1812; at Riverpoint, 1812; near "Flat Top," 1816. The Clyde Bleachery and Print Works was estab- lished in 1828. The rapid development in the town of Warwick was characteristic rather than exceptional. Within twenty-five years of the coming of Samuel Slater to Rhode Island ( 1795- 1820) Rhode Island cotton factories employed 26,000 operatives and turned 29,000 bales of cotton annually into 27,840,000 yards of cloth. Other developments in the Pawtuxet Val- ley included the building in Coventry at Anthony by Richard and William Anthony of "one of the largest mills in the state at that time" in 1805. Mills were built in Coventry, at Fair- banks, 1800; at Arkwright and Coventry Centre, early in the nineteenth century; at Spring Lake, 1818; at Harris, 1822.
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