14. Suppressing Tories in Rhode Island

0:00Volume 4, Chapter 14, Suppressing Tories in Rhode Island and Connecticut While the Tories stood disunited and lacking firm British leadership, the revolutionaries in colony after colony struck with keen efficiency and dispatch to disarm the actual and potential traders in their midst. In Massachusetts, support for the revolution was so ardent and widespread that there was little organized Tory opposition, and the local revolutionary committees could work their will on individual Tories, unchecked. Most Massachusetts Tories were concentrated in the West, in the towns of the Upper Connecticut River Valley, including Amherst, Hatfield, and especially Deerfield.

0:54Their concentrations were to be found in the town of Worcester, which was, however, predominantly revolutionary, and among the Baptist of the town of Ashfield. Tories were particularly numerous among the royal judges and bureaucrats, and it has been estimated that fully half the lawyers in western Massachusetts were Tories. However, no special measures had to be taken against the Massachusetts Tories since they were so few in number relative to the total population. Toryism was much more threatening in Rhode Island, where Newport abounded in Loyalist. Particularly embarrassing was Rhode Island's Governor, Joseph Wanton, who became an active Tory and urged the Rhode Island Assembly to seek a separate peace with England.

1:47In June 1775 the powerful assembly, moving toward deposing Wanton, quickly forbade the oath of office from being administered to him and commissioned militia officers without his signature. In November it deposed Wanton as governor and replaced him with the radical Nicholas Cook of Samuel Ward's old faction. Throughout 1775, Rhode Island, particularly Newport, suffered from the plunder of a fleet of British warships in lower Narragansett Bay, commanded by Captain James Wallace. Wallace disrupted and plundered Rhode Island's foreign trade and shipping, and continually threatened Newport with fire and destruction if the citizens did not furnish food and supplies to the British army and fleet.

2:40The U.S. finally did shell the defenseless town of Bristol, and thoroughly plundered and partially burned Jamestown in 1775. Eventually, the months of British terror and imposed starvation took their toll. The people of Newport began to flee the city. By early November, nearly half of its citizens, largely women and children, had fled northward from the city. Most of were rebels, so the revolutionary morale of Newport, never high at best, was weakened still further. With the consent of the Rhode Island government and the Continental Congress, Newport agreed in the autumn of 1775 to supply the British fleet with provisions and to withdraw the colony's militia from the town.

3:31In the meanwhile, however, the Rhode Island Assembly intensified its order to take stern measures against the Tories. Thus, it decreed the punishment of death and confiscation of property for anyone betraying the cause to the enemy or providing him with supplies. The Newport agreement, of course, accepted. In December, Rhode Island authorities alarmed Washington sent down his best man, General Lee, with a handful of troops. Lee heartened the rebels and thoroughly frightened the Tories, enforcing upon them a public oath in support of the Continental Congress and arresting three Tories who refused to take it. His energetic and economic activities at the end of the year, including arrest of Tory leaders and issuance of mass loyalty oaths, succeeded in Cowan, the loyalist in Newport.

4:36Tory opposition to the revolution in New England centered in southwestern Connecticut in sharp contrast to the fierce revolutionary fervor of the bulk of that colony. Indeed, at the end of 1775, Connecticut became the first colony to enact a systematic body of law against Tories, including such severe punishment as forfeiture of all property and three years' imprisonment. For the first time in America, serving the king was officially branded a crime to be severely punished. Connecticut's fervor was such that it was the best place One of the principal prison sites in the colonies was the dank, abandoned copper mine at Simsbury.

5:28The New Haven town meeting opposed taking up arms against Britain, and the meetings of Litchfield and Danbury condemned the Continental Congress. In Redding and New Milford, the majority of the inhabitants went so far as to swear to loyalist oaths. The most acute Tory threat to Connecticut appeared in May 1775, when the bulk of the Waterbury militia, officers and enlisted men alike, declared their refusal to follow the policy advised by the Continental Congress. This threat was swiftly and efficiently countered by a secretly conducted night raid upon southwestern The Tories of the entire area were disarmed by the raiders, and a dozen Tory leaders were taken prisoner.