Politics

[From the editor: The most famous article ever written about Rhode Island is almost certainly the article below by the legendary muckraker Lincoln Steffens, which ran in the February 1905 …
Read More

This essay was published as a Providence Journal commentary on December 6, 2012 in the aftermath of the Obama-McCain presidential contest. It was prompted by continuing speculation that population …
Read More

Peter Gerry, a former U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, is back in the news. This is surprising because he is now almost forgotten in Rhode Island’s history, despite his being …
Read More

It was, the Providence News reported in its May 13, 1924, edition, “[t]he greatest political battle in the State of Rhode Island since the Dorr Rebellion.” Not surprisingly, …
Read More

Providence was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, and in 1643 Williams obtained a patent from the British crown giving powers of self-government to the towns of Providence, Portsmouth, and …
Read More

Life, as anyone who has lived for a time can tell you, is fraught with irony. And sometimes, so it would appear, is death. A case in point is that …
Read More