Rhode Island history books keep flying off the presses! This is not surprising, given the tremendously impressive and diverse history of Rhode Island. It may be the smallest state, but its history is richer than most all other states. (And Rhode Island has kept its two seats in the House of Representatives!). Rhode Island’s history authors are pretty good too.
Here are three books that I strongly recommend.
The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare, A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina. By Sean M. Kelley. University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
In the last year, by far the most read article on our website has been Fred Zilian’s article, “Rhode Island Dominates the North American Slave Trade in 18th Century.” I am also in the finishing stages of preparing a book that deals with Rhode Island and the African slave trade. I have a friend who is writing a book that focuses the same topic.
Given this interest, I thought I would recommend what I consider to be the best book on a single slave trading voyage to Africa and back.
While Sean Kelley focuses on a single slave ship, he addresses large questions. They include: Why was the slave trade so attractive to Rhode Islanders and other New Englanders, who themselves had few enslaved people? How would a captain of a slave ship prepare for the long three-legged voyage, which often could last one year or more? How would a slave captain trade for African captives? Where did the African captives come from and how did they end up in this horrible position? What role did the expansion of the Muslim religion in Africa play? What role did local Africans take in the slave trade? Was slave trading on the African coast dangerous for the white crews? How deadly and miserable was the Middle Passage—the long voyage from the African coast typically to the Caribbean plantations or plantations in the South? Did slave ship captains have an incentive to keep as many captives healthy as possible? How did slave ship captains sell their human cargo once they arrived at a North American port? What must the experience of the captives have been to this horrifying ordeal? All these questions are addressed in Sean Kelley’s excellent book and more.
Fortunately for our Rhode Island readers, Kelley’s voyage starts in Newport. This is fitting, since Rhode Island, and particularly Newport, sent more ships on slave voyages than all other non-Rhode Island ports in mainland North America during the eighteenth century. While North American only sent out 2.6% of all slaving voyages to Africa, Rhode Island dominated the North American slave trade.
The year is 1754. The slave ship is a small one, the fifty-foot sloop Hare. The ship’s owners were Samuel and William Vernon, two prominent Newport merchants who would end their long slave trading careers being among those ending out the most slave ships in Rhode Island’s history. The ship’s captain, whose services would be crucial to the success or failure of the voyage, was Caleb Godfrey. Both the Vernon and Godfrey families had been in Newport for generations. Kelley’s first question is—why Newport? Rhode Island rum was certainly a favorite trading article on the West African coast.
Kelley’s book is, logically, in chronological order. The first chapter focuses on Newport and its slave trading merchants, including the Vernons. The second chapter focuses on Captain Godfrey, his crew and the preparations for the long voyage. Subsequent chapters deal with sailing to West Africa; the task of trading for African captives, mainly from Sierra Leone; explaining how enslaved persons wound up being in a position to be sold to a slave ship captain; and the Middle Passage.
Fittingly, the voyage ends up in Charleston, South Carolina, a city that has long connections to Newport. Kelley explains how the surviving African captives were sold (not at an auction) and where their long journeys ended. Henry Laurens, one of South Carolina’s wealthiest merchants and perhaps the greatest slave trader in American history, purchased nine captives from the Hare, more than any other purchaser.
Kelley is an elegant writer. The book is a pleasure to read. It also has an appendix of defined terms and tables for the reader’s convenience.
Rhode Island Civilian Conservation Corps Camps, History, Memories & Legacy of the CCC. By Martin Podskoch. Podskoch Press, 2020.
This is the newest book. It was released in late 2020. It is available at a number of outlets in Rhode Island, including at Wakefield Books at Wakefield Mall, Savoy Books at Westerly, Island Books at Middletown, and Barrington Books at Barrington.
With over 13 million unemployed during the Great Depression, the country’s new president in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as one of his programs to get people back to work, established the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC, as it became known, grew into one of FDR’s most successful and popular programs. Underfed young men throughout the country enlisted in the CCC and were bused to camps in national and state forests, where they were employed making the forests accessible to visitors.
In Rhode Island, seven camps were established:
- Putnam (Washington) in Glocester, established first in 1931.
- Kent (Nooseneck) in West Greenwich, established in 1933.
- Westerly (Burlingame) in Charlestown, established in 1933.
- Escoheag (Beach Pond) in Exeter, established in 1935.
- Greene (Mount Vernon) in Foster, established in 1935.
- Hope Valley (Arcadia) in Richmond, established in 1935.
- Woonsocket (Primsrose) in North Smithfield, established in 1935.
Podskoch’s book has a separate chapter on each camp.
Rhode Islanders should be grateful that Connecticut’s Martin Podskoch, one of the nation’s authorities on the CCC, has turned his talents to Rhode Island. In this remarkable and authoritative book, Podskoch rediscovers the wonderful stories of CCC efforts undertaken by Rhode Islanders to make the state’s forests accessible to all visitors. The book is filled with many photographs that bring the period to life. It is remarkable Podsckoch could find so many of the actual camps during their peak years. Maps are also liberally sprinkled throughout the book.
Podskoch writes that African Americans “were also accepted into the CCC because of the law creating it barred discrimination based on race, creed or color. The unemployment rate of Negroes [as Blacks were then called] was twice that of whites. . . . Discrimination, however, led to separate Negro camps with white Army officers in command. Only when there weren’t enough Negroes for a company were the integrated with whites. In Rhode Island, the camps were integrated by in nearby New York there were separate ‘black’ or ‘colored’ camps.” Rhode Island’s camps may have been integrated, but Podskoch’s book does not show many photographs of Black men in the CCC—they might have been discriminated against in the admissions process.
The last chapter in Podskoch’s book is about Rhode Islanders who served in CCC camps outside of Rhode Island. This gives the author the apportunity to address Leo Caisse’s father, who served in CCC camps in the West. Leo Caisse wrote an excellent article for our website, “The Civilian Conservation Corps in Rhode Island, 1933-1942.” (To access Caisse’s article, click on Archives and then in the search box type: Caisse).
Podskoch is generous in his book giving credit for some of his research to the late Albert (“Al”) Klyberg. Klyberg, the executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Society for many years, was a driving force behind many Rhode Island history projects, including the Heritage Harbor Foundation. Before his passing in January 2017, Klyberg had been researching Rhode Island’s CCC camps. Fortunately, Al’s family permitted Podskoch to review Al’s research files. The collaboration was excellent.
One wonderful aspect of the book about the CCC in Rhode Island is that many CCC sites have survived and can be visited today. For example, my wife and I once walked our dog on the beach at Watchaug Pond at Burlingame State Park among log buildings and fireplaces built by the CCC men in the local camp. More recently, my wife and I were hiking in Arcadia Wildlife Management Area on the beautiful Shelter Trail from Frosty Hollow Road in Exeter. Not only was the hiking wonderful, but we came across an abandoned CCC camp. There were about five abandoned structures, including sleeping quarters, a pumping station for water, a water tower still standing, and a large stone fireplace that once served a building that has disappeared. Hopefully, Podskoch’s book will spark a movement to preserve CCC buildings and structures in Rhode Island.
Proceedings of the “Recess” Committee of the Rhode-Island General Assembly 1775–1776 and the Rhode-Island Council of War 1776–1782. By John K. Robertson, PhD. Rhode Island Publications Society, 2018.
This book is recommended for Rhode Island libraries, historical societies and historians of the American Revolutionary War . . . or if you are a Rev War geek. As a historian of Rhode Island’s role in the American Revolutionary War, I love it when original records from the period are published in printed books. This book is a great example of that. I thank the Rhode Island Publications Society for publishing this significant book, which otherwise would have had a difficult time finding a publisher.
The author is John K. Robertson, a native of Texas who somehow has become keenly interested in Rhode Island’s Revolutionary War history. He has another book project in progress that is even more marvelous than this excellent one.
Once war broke out at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Rhode Island officials came to realize that its governmental structure was not well enough organized to supervise Rhode Island’s war effort. First, the governor had relatively little power and a small executive staff. Second, the General Assembly, while it passed an impressive number of acts in support of the war effort, met relatively infrequently, given that the colony was at war. In addition, it was cumbersome for the many members of the General Assembly to address the numerous minute details that needed to be attended to in conducting a war.
This is where John Robertson’s important work comes into play. Rhode Island established a “recess committee” to meet and address war measures when the General Assembly was not in session. Consisting of the governor and often fewer than ten political leaders, the recess committee was able to focus on the details of running a war better than the General Assembly could do.
Thanks to Robertson’s efforts, the Recess Committee Proceedings have been transcribed and are published here for the first time. Indeed, Robertson’s rediscovery of the proceedings is a marvelous story in itself. Through his research, Robertson became aware of snippets of the proceedings that had been uncovered by a few historians over the years. He was convinced that the Rhode Island Historical Society held the manuscripts somewhere in its vast collections but had lost track of them. With persistence, Robertson, with the able assistance of Dana S. K. Munro of the Rhode Island Historical Society, was able to locate them.
Once the British occupied Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island, as well as Conanicut Island (Jamestown), in early December 1776, Rhode Island officials determined that the recess committee was inadequate to the task of defending the state and containing the British army and navy. The General Assembly established the Council of War later that December. Unlike the Recess Committee, it met almost every day in the long periods between the General Assembly’s sessions. With the enemy in control of towns that once held one-quarter of the state’s population, the workload of the Council of War increased tremendously over its predecessor, the Recess Committee. The Council of War continued to meet, though less frequently, once the British evacuated Newport and the rest of its holdings in the state in October 1779. It met until 1782.
Historians of Rhode Island’s role in the Revolutionary War, including me, have previously worked with the originals of the Council of War Proceedings held at the Rhode Island State Archives. But it can be difficult work, and the general public is unaware of them. Again, thanks to Robertson’s efforts and the Rhode Island Publications Society, the minute books and other records of the Council of War Proceedings have been transcribed and are published in Robertson’s book for the first time.
Each resolution passed by the Council of War has a backstory. Some of them are interesting. Consider the following as an amusing (if obscure) example. On July 24, 1777, the Council of War (at page 2-64) passed the following resolution:
Resolved, that the Sheriff of the County of Providence forthwith take into custody the Soldier who was taken Prisoner upon Rhode-Island [Aquidneck Island] by Lt. Col. Barton & his party, and confine said Soldier in close jail in the County of Providence. And the keeper of [said] Jail is hereby directed to receive him & closely keep him until further Orders.
This resolution related to the brilliant and bold abduction of Major General Richard Prescott, the commander of British troops on Aquidneck Island, by state troops led by Lieutenant Colonel William Barton of Warren and Providence. Barton seized Prescott so that the Americans could have a British officer of the same rank to exchange for Major General Charles Lee, George Washington’s second-in-command, who had been captured by the British in a raid at Basking Ridge, New Jersey, in December 1776. On the night of July 10, 1777, Barton and his party of 48 men rowed their boats at night from Warwick Neck among British warships stationed in Narragansett Bay, quietly making their way for one mile from the coast on British-held Aquidneck Island. They surrounded a farmhouse, captured the sole British army sentry standing guard, snatched General Prescott from his bed, and returned to Warwick Neck safely, all without a shot being fired while they were on the island. As I argue in my book, Kidnapping the Enemy, The Special Operations to Capture Generals Charles Lee & Richard Prescott (Westholme, 2014), Barton’s raid still stands as one of the most impressive special operations in American military history.
Thanks to Don N. Hagist, a historian of the British army during the Revolutionary War, the full name and identity of the captive sentry taken at the farm house is known. He was Walter Graham, a private in the British 22nd Regiment. The resolution quoted above orders Graham’s jailers to “closely keep him,” meaning to affix Graham with iron cuffs firmly attached to his wrists or legs in his jail cell.
On August 7, 1777, the Council of War agreed to exchange Graham for one Samuel Buffum. (See page 2-75). On March 21, 1777, the Council of War had charged Buffum with being a Loyalist who had escaped from the mainland to join the enemy in Newport and ordered that his house at Potowomet in Warwick be seized. (See page 1-125). Buffum must have had second thoughts and desired to return to Warwick. He was imprisoned by the new British commander and had been recently paroled on Aquidneck Island. Buffum was permitted to travel to the mainland in preparation for his formal exchange, which was expected to occur in May 1778.
Graham never returned to the British army. As quoted in the Appendix to Kidnapping the Enemy, Rhode Island Governor Nicholas Cooke wrote to the British commander in Newport, Robert Pigot, “Graham was put on board the cartel vessel, while under the care of our people, in order to be sent [to Newport], but made his escape.” Buffum was then expected to return from the mainland to his old jail cell in British-held Newport, but instead he secretly left the state.
According to Hagist’s study of the records of the 22nd Regiment, Graham never returned to his regiment. As stated in the Appendix to Kidnapping the Enemy, I discovered that Graham briefly joined a Cranston militia unit in June of 1778 and was residing in Adams, Massachusetts, near the Vermont border, by 1790. Lieutenant Abel Potter, one of William Barton’s officers during the Prescott mission, provided information on Graham’s post-war whereabouts in in his application for a military pension from the federal government in 1832. According to Potter, “This same sentinel afterwards taught school in Pownal, Vermont, and claimant sent a member of his family to school to him.”
My point in retelling the stories of Walter Graham and Samuel Buffam is that there are fascinating stories that lie behind many of the entries in the Recess Committee Proceedings and Council of War Proceedings. It takes effort to find them out. Thanks to John Robertson’s work, this task will be much easier.
For some highlights of recent publications by the Rhode Island Publications Society, click on this link: https://www.ripublications.org/selected-titles/. The first item is the latest book by Patrick T. Conley (his 34th!), A Historical Cruise Through the Ocean State.
[Banner image: Former CCC barracks, part of an abandoned CCC camp, on the Shelter Trail from Frosty Hollow Road in Exeter, Arcadia Wildlife Management Area (Christian McBurney)]
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