CHAPTER XI

THE UNION. 1786-1790.

The little state now entered on the worst period of its political history. Separation from the Crown-government of the mother country had been achieved, but a destructive revolution is easier than the construction of a new government. The inefficient Congress of the Confederacy could not be the basis of a strong government, but served only for a stepping stone toward the larger coming structure projected by the genius of Hamilton and inaugurated largely through the facility of Madison and Franklin. Virginia, the great governing member of the Confederacy, called for a convention of the states in 1786, to adopt “a uniform system in their commercial regulations.” This meeting failed, but important as might be the field of intercourse with the outward world, it was shut off in Rhode Island, by the domestic economy of the state, which mastered its course politically.

There were two main controlling motives at work in our community.¹ The natural individualistic spirit of the colony and state revolted against any strong effective federal control. This motive must wear itself out, as it did finally under the inevitable attrition of the whole country, grinding toward a juncture of the parts. Similar principles affected other sections; and the Shays rebellion in Massachusetts, touching New Hampshire, was an example of financial discontent revolting against federal authority.

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The other motive, economic in origin, went deeper, touching the basal organs of all society. The mercantile classes, including dwellers in towns, had greatly improved their condition, and there was a farmer’s opposition to every movement toward more effective government, especially in the federal form. We must remember that these troubles began in severe sacrifices of many men and women. Debt filled the social atmosphere, like a black fog that repels all sunlight. The Continental money and the paper issued by the state had depreciated, until they finally became worthless. The farmer brought his bushel of corn to the merchant and trader, who always handled the money of the community, whether of paper or specie. More produce could not be had from the land, but more paper could be readily produced. In vain, merchants and intelligent voters protested that paper must be paid, in order that it serve the uses of a currency. Delusion waxes, while it mocks at wisdom. Pay it with more paper, said the foolish incapable. Take away the influence of merchants and money changers, who send specie out of the country to make money scarce and dear; and all will be well. At first the conservative elements controlled the vote against issuing more paper money. Providence, Newport, Bristol, Westerly stoutly opposed the country party. But the insidious doctrines of inflation sapped their strength; a powerful majority for paper prevailed in May, 1786, and took possession of the government. The Assembly immediately issued £100,000, to be loaned on mortgage for seven years at four per cent, with an annual reduction of the principal. The bills were made a legal tender at par with specie. All sorts of forcing measures supported these processes.

John Brown in the Providence Gazette claimed that the farmers would not take their own medicine, or, in other

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words, would not give up produce for the bills. Some traders were packing their goods, to secure them or to carry them out of the state, while some proposed shutting up their stores. The new Solons would regulate trade and exchange by arbitrary power. All these proceedings were finally stopped by the common law, which could not be created anew in Rhode Island. John Weeden, a butcher of Newport, refused to deliver his meat to one Trevett for paper, who sued him to gain the poor man’s rights. General Varnum, the ablest pioneer of Judge Marshall in blazing the way for Constitutional integrity, showed the Court that the legislative must inevitably be subordinated to the judicial power in a stable, free government. The Court maintained Weeden’s rights, and the paper rioters tried ineffectually to turn the Court out of office.

It was even seriously mooted in convention, though the project never fairly reached the legislature, that a commission be appointed and empowered, to regulate all trade, to fix prices and compel the transfer of property. Specie especially was to be held in the iron grip of the state and not be freely sent abroad at the will of the owner. These popular delusions gradually declined, and in Oct., 1789, the act forcing the circulation of paper instead of specie was repealed. A modification of the principle was substituted, making property a tender for debt. The mortgages to secure bills issued in 1786 proved to be like straw. Depreciation of this paper was fixed at fifteen for one.

The state suffered accordingly in the opinion of her neighbors and expectant partners in the new union of states. Our delegates in the Continental Congress were deeply wounded when the proceedings of our legislature were “burlesqued and ridiculed.” The calm and discreet

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Washington could say, “Rhode Island still perseveres in that impolitic, unjust, and one might add, scandalous conduct which seems to have marked all her councils of late.” General Varnum in 1787, writing Washington, protested that the latter legislation did “not exhibit the real character of the state. He maintained that it was “equally reprobated by the whole mercantile body, by most of the respectable farmers, and mechanics. The majority of the administration is composed of a licentious number of men, destitute of education, and many of them void of principle. From anarchy and confusion they derive their temporary consequence” . . . and try for “the abolition of debts both public and private. With these are associated the disaffected of every description, particularly those who were unfriendly during the war. Their paper money system, founded in oppression and fraud, they are determined to support at every hazard. . . . These evils may be attributed, partly to the extreme freedom of our own Constitution, and partly to the want of energy in the federal union. It is fortunate however, that the wealth and resources of this State are chiefly in possession of the well affected, and they are entirely devoted to the public good.”²

About all the evils contingent to a body politic came to the surface in this little community on the shores of Narragansett Bay. It was demonstrated that a passion for individual freedom can crystallize itself into the lust for arbitrary power. Yet there was sufficient virtue inherent in this sordid wrangling mob, to throw off the evil at last, and to become a thriving republic. These events must be recorded with shame, but let it not be forgotten that, however rampant the spirit of evil, it did not finally prevail over the divine mission of government. Demos lets

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in all the people, but when he reasons and puts forth his strength, that strength is ultimately for good.

The constitution of the United States was not a miraculous issue from the brain of man, as Mr. Gladstone hinted. It was unrolled and unfolded from the historic life of the American colonies, and the interpretation was effected by a singular association of the greatest men the country could afford. Its making and framing were slow; its adoption was painful and protracted. Rhode Island was outside the controversial arguments and struggles, for she was without representation. All efforts failed to get Varnum’s anarchical legislature into line. The federal union was virtually decided upon, when New Hampshire voted for the constitution June 21, 1788. The federalists of Rhode Island seized the occasion for popular demonstrations, though they were still in the minority.³ The state was still obstinate in opposition to adoption.

At last the period of agony drew to a peaceful conclusion. A convention was called for May 24, 1790, and the towns instructed their delegates for or against the union. So severe was the parturition that Providence had provided for a possible separation from the state, if it should not adopt the Constitution. May 29, the instrument was adopted by a majority of only two votes. So close was the contest between anarchy and order. The momentous event was embodied in the change of invocation from “God save the State” to “God save the United States of America.”

John Brown had been very energetic in canvassing for the constitution. He built wharves and shipyards at India Point, Providence, and in 1787 sent his ship Washington to India and China—the first oriental voyage from our city. This literally opened a new world for our

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commerce. It was prosecuted vigorously and ably in the closing years of the century by his nephews—by kin and marriage—Brown & Ives. Two years later Moses Brown started Samuel Slater at Pawtucket on his career of cotton spinning. These two movements widened out the sphere of Rhode Island, giving the state a new social life according with its new political opportunity.

Brown was always a pioneer in all directions, and as he sent out his oriental ship, he built from plans of his brother Joseph, the house on Power Street at the corner of Benefit. John Quincy Adams noted in his diary that it was “the finest house on the continent.” It was worthy of the powerful merchant, and the forerunner of the Colonial or Georgian mansions, which distinguished Providence for a century. The broadening spirit of the eighteenth century had penetrated our community, and Obadiah, the son of Joseph Brown, was a “freethinker” in the language of that day. At a dinner in the new house, this rash innovator gave the toast, “Here’s a short respite to the damned in hell.” The practically minded John, too much charmed by freedom in the end to balk at the hedgerows of orthodoxy by the way, instantly drank in this wise, “Truly, a most admirable sentiment, gentlemen, and one in which I am sure we can all join.”

Shipbuilding and the passage of vessels went forward as of old, in the cove and the stream above Weybosset Bridge. The trade on Cheapside was fed by supplies brought to the docks about Steeple Street. In 1792, North Water (now Canal) Street was established; this marks the relegation of commerce to docks below the bridge.

Some six-score years have passed since Rhode Island entered the Union. She has kept pace with the whole country in population, and in wealth per capita is not

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surpassed by any state. In spite of her limited territory, there are nine or ten great states having fewer people. Her people excel in numbers the inhabitants of her sister states Vermont and New Hampshire. This is the social outcome and expression of Roger Williams’ and John Clarke’s “lively experiment.” Quidnuncs, whether of Massachusetts or of London, two and one-half centuries ago, would have said such results would be impossible. I have tried to set forth some of the fads, which made the achievement—if not easy—at least attainable in the ordinary life of peoples.

The Virginians contributed to the great purposes going to form America; and Hamilton’s incisive intellect pruned them into a possible system of government. Such must be in the end a government of men and women. The individual of the eighteenth century received something creative and peculiar in the soul-liberty of Roger Williams. Though not adopted as a dogma by the whole country until well into the nineteenth century, it was alive and at work. Note Borgeaud’s statement in Preface.

Consider the positive acts of rebellion in the little colony. The sinking of the cruiser Liberty, the burning of the Gaspee in 1772, Brown’s rebellious seizure of gunpowder in the West Indies; accompanied by the explicit movement of the colony for a general congress in 1774, the actual earliest renunciation of allegiance to the Crown in May, 1776; all these events were political acts individually conceived and brought to an issue in this home of individualism.

Stephen Hopkins, of marvellous forensic foresight in the pre-revolutionary period, John Brown, with sagacity of a merchant and courage of a corsair, Nathaniel Greene,

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dropping a smith’s hammer to grasp the sword; Weeden, the butcher, resisting arbitrary power at home, worse than the hated “ministerial tyranny” abroad; these men all embodied the spirit of Roger Williams’ descendants. These were the types of the men needed throughout the colonies to resist misdirected power in the Crown-government, and to build and establish a new nation.

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