CHAPTER XXIV.

PROPOSITION FOR THE UNION OF THE COLONIES.

ACTIVE

MEASURES TAKEN LOOKING TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE.DELEGATES ELECTED TO CONGRESS.-DESTRUCTION OF TEA AT PROVIDENCE.-TROOPS RAISED.-POSTAL SYSTEM ESTABLISHED.-DEPREDATIONS OF THE BRITISII.-" GOD SAVE

THE UNITED COLONIES."

THE 22d of June, 1772, was memorable in the history of humanity, for it was on that day that Mansfield solemnly declared as Lord Chief-Justice of England that slavery could not exist on English soil. This declaration met with a hearty response in Rhode Island. On the 17th of May, 1774, the citizens of Providence met in town meeting to take counsel together upon the questions of the day. Two resolves of this meeting stand fitly side by side. An intestate estate comprising six slaves had fallen to the town. In the meeting it was voted that it was "unbecoming the character of freemen to enslave the said negroes, that personal liberty was an essential part of the natural rights of mankind, and that the Assembly should be petitioned to prohibit the further importation of slaves, and to declare that all negroes born in the Colony should be free after a certain age."

In the June session of 1774 the question was brought before the Assembly. "Those" says the preamble, "who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others."

Therefore, says the bill, "for the future no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into this Colony." To perfect the act clauses were added defining the condition of slaves in transit with their masters, and protecting the Colony against pauper freedmen.

Having taken this high ground concerning the individual, they took ground equally noble concerning the Colony, "resolving that the deputies of this town be requested to use their influence at the approaching session of the General Assembly of this Colony for promoting a Congress, as soon as may be, of the representatives of the general assemblies of the several colonies and provinces of North America for establishing the firmest union, and adopting such measures as to them shall appear the most effectual to answer that important purpose, and to agree upon proper methods for executing the same." Thus in Rhode Island the condemnation of slavery and the call for union went hand in hand.

The time for hesitation was past. Event came crowding upon event. Virginia, also, called for a Congress. But it was on Boston chiefly that all eyes were fixed. Her example had strengthened the hands of the discontented, and both the

King and his Parliament had resolved to make her a warning example of royal indignation. For this the bill closing her port and cutting off her commerce and known in history as the Boston Port Bill was passed. It was to go into operation the 1st of June, 1774. Never did a great wrong awaken a more universal resentment. Old jealousies and rivalries were forgotten in the sense of a common danger. On the 1st of June the voice of mourning and commiseration was heard throughout the land. Virginia set it apart as a day of fasting and prayers. From every Colony came contributions in sheep and oxen and money. Rhode Island sent eight hundred and sixty sheep, thirteen oxen, four hundred and seventeen pounds in money. Boston in this day of suffering was for her no longer the Boston of the Atherton Company and disputed boundary lines.

But intelligent as Rhode Island had proved herself in her political measures, she could not altogether raise herself above the ignorance of her age in sanitary measures. The small-pox was in Newport, and inoculation was still an undecided question. Should the legislature be asked to declare for it or against it? After four days of discussion it was decided in the negative by a close vote.

We have already seen that a special tribunal had been organized to follow up the question of the Gaspee. In its instructions directions were given to send their prisoners to England for trial.

Hutchinson, the renegade Governor of Massachusetts, proposed to annul the charter of Rhode Island. The committee applied to Samuel Adams for counsel. "An attack upon the liberties of one colony," was his answer, "is an attack upon the liberties of all."

The new year, the eventful 1773, began amid anxious doubts and firm resolves. The Assembly was sitting at East Greenwich, the Gaspee court at Newport. "What shall I do?" asked ChiefJustice Hopkins. The Assembly bade him follow his own judgment. "Then for the purpose of transportation for trial," said the brave old man, "I will neither apprehend any person by my own order nor suffer any executive officers in the Colony to do it." The question fortunately never rose, but questions equally important were at hand.

The burning of the Gaspee was a sudden outbreak of popular indignation. To thoughtful minds it was a still more alarming indication of popular feeling that the senior officer on the station, Captain Keeler, of the Mercury, should have been seized and verdicts of trespass and trover found against him in the colonial courts. England did not heed the warning.

But

But the great work was done by the Committee of Correspondence, already formed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1764, but more effectively organized in Virginia in 1775—the railroads and telegraphs of those days. They bound the

colonies in a union which doubled their strength and fanned their zeal into a flame. Through them the earliest and most authentic intelligence of all such acts and resolutions of the British Parliament, and measures of the ministry as may relate to or affect the British colonies in America" was obtained, and a correspondence concerning them kept up with the other colonies. In all these preparations for the struggle, now so near at hand, Rhode Island bore her part. And while they were going on, and as if his part had been done, her faithful agent, proved by fourteen years of assiduous service, Joseph Sherwood,

died.

In October, 1773, the tea act went into operation, leading the discontent still more directly to action. But as no tea was sent to Rhode Island, and the story is well known I shall not repeat it here, only saying that public meetings were held in all of which it was resolved to confirm the Philadelphia resolutions. Rhode Island had another grievance to complain of.

The story of the Hutchinson letters is well known to every reader of American history. Some unknown friend of the colonies had put them in the hands of Franklin, and Franklin had sent them to America. "Among them was a letter of George Rome, written six years before, denouncing the governments and courts of Rhode Island." It was immediately published in newspapers and on broadsides, and in every form