From 1754 -1761 the British and the French battled each other on the American continent in what is known as the French and Indian War. At the conclusion of the fighting, the American colonies became aware they had to face a new reality. Before that conflict they thought of themselves as loyal British subjects who governed themselves through their own legislatures and provided for their defense with local militias. Over the decades, there had been little administrative interference from England, which was often engaged in military squabbles with other European nations on the continent.
Now the war was over and, under King George III, that old status quo was quickly changing. Large numbers of British troops had come to the colonies to fight in the war and many were remaining there. The troops were often quartered in colonists’ homes, and, to the shocked dismay of the residents, the interlopers treated them as less than full British citizens. The most upsetting of all the changes to the colonists were the new taxes imposed on them by the British Parliament. The war had been expensive for England, and it was decided in London that the colonies should pay for much of it. Parliament enacted a series of bills such as the Townshend Act, the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act that proved unpopular in the colonies which soon reacted with anger and resentment.
One of the initial acts of rebellion came from the smallest colony, Rhode Island and Providence Plantation, as it was called back then. The production of rum made from molasses which was imported from the sugar plantations of the South was a mainstay business in Rhode Island. The Sugar Act taxes promised to be a new burden for that business. The British sent warships to the area to enforce the act since Rhode Island was known as a smugglers’ haven. One of the vessels was an eight-gun schooner named H.M.S. St. John. On June 6, 1764, it was anchored near Goat Island at Newport. Apparently on the orders of the governor and Legislature, a group of colonists seized Fort George on the island and fired 13 rounds at the St. John which suffered only minor damage. The colonists then fled the fort and there was no punitive action taken against the colony.
Another defiant act also happened at Newport in 1769. A year previously the British had confiscated a sloop named Liberty in Boston because of custom violations. (The vessel’s owner had been John Hancock.) The British converted the ship’s name into H.M.S. Liberty and made it part of their fleet. It was sent to patrol for custom transgressions off the coast of Rhode Island. One day it towed two captured boats into Newport Harbor and then anchored off of Goat Island. The irate owner of the captured ships fired up the local citizens and a group of them boarded the Liberty and removed the crew. They then wrecked the vessel and set it on fire. A British ship of the line had been destroyed and again the colony did not suffer any penalties.
In June 1772, the revenue schooner, H.M.S. Gaspee, was charged with enforcing the Navigation Acts and was patrolling off the Rhode Island coast. It was chasing a vessel called Hannah when it ran aground on a sandbar near Warwick. The Gaspee was marooned until high tide would free it and the Hannah skipper informed the locals about the schooner’s plight. Seemingly instantaneously, a large number of residents, including some of Rhode Island’s leading citizens, decided to attack the ship. Among the attackers was John Brown, not to be confused with the famous 19th century abolitionist of the same name. This Brown was a wealthy slave trader, and his participation in the raid was an indication the patrols were cutting into his dastardly profits. The attacking gang shot and wounded the Gaspee’s captain, removed the crew, and burned the schooner down to the waterline.
None of the local citizenry cooperated with the British investigation of the incident and it was eventually dropped. The British did not send a regiment of troops to the colony nor attempt to blockade Narragansett Bay. Rhode Island had metaphorically stomped on King George III’s toes and kicked him in the shins and had gotten away with it.
One year later, immediately after the Boston Tea Party incident in Boston, the British frustration with the New England defiance finally boiled over and they took the punitive action of closing the port and posting more troops in Boston. The seeds of rebellion that had been planted in Rhode Island were about to blossom into the Revolutionary War in Massachusetts.
Richard Szlosek lives in Northampton.