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In 2003, a dramatic movie about a Depression-era race horse and his oversized jockey became a top box office film hit.  This story of hope and perseverance was woven into …
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The opening page of Rhode Island blacksmith “Nailer Tom” Hazard’s diary includes an entry for June 21, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War. At the time, the British occupied Newport. Hazard records …
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Esek Hopkins, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War, hailed from Rhode Island. He has two significant honorifics in Rhode Island. First, there is a statue …
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Rhode Island has frequently had third parties appear in its statewide elections. Almost always these parties had a single purpose, whether Anti-Masonic, Liberty (opposed to the expansion of slavery), American/Know-Nothing …
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Last spring, Patrick Donovan, the talented and hardworking curator at the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum in East Greenwich, announced his discovery of  a handwritten letter from a formerly enslaved man …
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Rhode Island’s first lighthouse was constructed in 1749 on Beavertail Point, the southern tip of Conanicut Island (better known as Jamestown). Initially named Newport Light, Beavertail followed Massachusetts’s 1716 Boston …
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[This article originally ran in the Journal of the American Revolution, at www.allthingsliberty.com]

In July 1780, after three and half months at sea, nearly 6,000 thousand men[1] and supplies crammed …
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This essay, on the character of Bishop Harkins and his career as an administrator, and on the bishop’s social apostolate, were written in 1978 for the projected second volume of …
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In light of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, I thought it might be somewhat of a mildly amusing diversion to tell a few stories of my …
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On May 2, 1935, the Boston Traveler published an article comparing the career of two professionals: the first, Rhode Island-born James Howard McGrath, represented moral certitude and industry, a model …
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