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Viewing Ships in Narragansett Bay from Prudence Island in the Old Days
4 years ago

Viewing Ships in Narragansett Bay from Prudence Island in the Old Days

[From the editor: This article’s author, Rachel Chase Boynton, was born in December 1894, the daughter of Captain Halsey Chase, the founder and long-time operator of the Prudence Island-Bristol ferry, …
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Prudence Crandall, Sarah Harris Fayerweather and Ann Hammond:  Their Pre-Civil War Struggle for Equality for Black People
4 years ago

Prudence Crandall, Sarah Harris Fayerweather and Ann Hammond: Their Pre-Civil War Struggle for Equality for Black People

In the first half of the nineteenth century, while most white New Englanders opposed slavery in the South, they nonetheless did not believe that their freed Black neighbors should be …
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Rhode Island’s Contributions to the Founding of the United States, Part II
4 years ago

Rhode Island’s Contributions to the Founding of the United States, Part II

[Note from the author: This article is a slightly edited reproduction of my September 2019 welcoming address to the National Conference of the American Speakers of the House held in …
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Rhode Island’s Contributions to the Founding of the United States, Part I
4 years ago

Rhode Island’s Contributions to the Founding of the United States, Part I

Note from the author: This article is a slightly edited reproduction of my September 2019 welcoming address to the National Conference of the American Speakers of the House held in …
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Election Fraud in Rhode Island: Bribery, Intimidation, Ballot-Stuffing, and Other Disreputable Practices
4 years ago

Election Fraud in Rhode Island: Bribery, Intimidation, Ballot-Stuffing, and Other Disreputable Practices

With every election year there is talk of election fraud.[1] The 2020 elections are no different except that this year’s elections will be held in the midst of the COVID-19 …
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Mutiny! The Case of the Fighting Fourth in the Civil War
4 years ago

Mutiny! The Case of the Fighting Fourth in the Civil War

In the beginning of the 1993 movie Gettysburg, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine receives orders assigning 120 men of the Second Maine Regiment who had recently been …
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The “Mustard Seed”:  Providence’s Alfred Niger, Antebellum Black Voting Rights Activist
4 years ago

The “Mustard Seed”: Providence’s Alfred Niger, Antebellum Black Voting Rights Activist

Alfred Niger, a Black voting rights activist from Providence, may have provided the final straw that broke the back of the Dorr Rebellion.  His attempt to vote in an 1841 …
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The Philosopher George Berkeley Visits Rhode Island
4 years ago

The Philosopher George Berkeley Visits Rhode Island

One of the most exciting European visitors to colonial America was the Very Reverend Dr. George Berkeley (1685-1753), who spent most of three years in Rhode Island. The rest of …
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Should They Stay or Should They Go? Rhode Island Black Loyalists after the American Revolution
4 years ago

Should They Stay or Should They Go? Rhode Island Black Loyalists after the American Revolution

Benjamin Quarles once wrote that the loyalty of black Americans during the American Revolution “was not to a place nor to a people, but to a principle, freedom.”[1] In late …
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Rhode Island’s Long Quest for Women’s Suffrage
4 years ago

Rhode Island’s Long Quest for Women’s Suffrage

By  •  Women

This article is derived from a speech intended to be given on Rhode Island Statehood Day, May 29, 2020, in Pawtuxet as part of the Gaspee Days Celebration. This event, …
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