The American Revolution didn’t just create a country. It shifted Rhode Island’s center of gravity.
The developments that came rapid fire after 1776 brought the colony’s most powerful city to its knees and turned a much smaller rival into the capital of a new industrial age.
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” That’s how Dickens famously opened his story about London and Paris during the French Revolution.
Had Dickens set his story a dozen years earlier in North America, he could just as easily have been writing about two of Rhode Island’s most important cities.
When Newport Ruled Rhode Island
In 1776, Newport was the fifth-largest city in North America. Not fifth in New England. Fifth on the continent.
“It was a hub for shipping and trade, which were vitally important for the colonial economy,” says historian Don Hagist, editor of the Journal of the American Revolution. Newport’s deep-water port rivaled Boston, New York and Charleston, South Carolina.
Providence, meanwhile, was a backwater.
It’s worth remembering that the state’s official name until 2020 was “Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations.” Aquidneck was Rhode Island, and Newport its capital. Providence was almost an afterthought.
Occupation Changes Everything
In December 1776, that abruptly changed. More than 7,000 British and Hessian troops sailed into Newport Harbor to occupy the city. They didn’t leave for three years.
The most powerful army of the time commandeered homes to quarter soldiers. They seized provisions, especially firewood. Over the course of two especially cold winters, they chopped down all the trees on Aquidneck Island, including the Liberty Tree.
Then they tore down empty buildings and burned those too. More than 500 structures in all.
“Citizens were under threat at all times,” said Jenny Sullivan of the Newport Historical Society, which is running an exhibition on the occupation. “There was one time that for 24 hours the British fired continually over the city, just to really terrify the residents. Many people did flee Newport and never returned.”
About half the population sought safety elsewhere, including a man you might call the Elon Musk of colonial Newport.
Aaron Lopez was a Portuguese immigrant who had built a small empire on whale oil candles, rum and the slave trade. He was the wealthiest man in Newport by twice the margin of the next wealthiest citizen.
“When the war came, it devastated his business concerns,” Hagist says. “He was one of the ones who moved out.”
Providence Rises
Providence, meanwhile, got busy. Not only did the city see an influx of people fleeing Newport, but it was also better positioned to lead the fight against the British outpost in Newport.
The British on Aquidneck were surrounded. Privateers constantly challenged their efforts to control access to the Atlantic. The patriots built fortifications in Point Judith, Warwick, North Kingstown, Tiverton, Little Compton and elsewhere to contain the British.
The two sides mounted raids across the water in both directions, day after day. One of the most brazen, according to Hagist, came in July 1777.
Colonel William Barton loaded a small team into whale boats and rowed through the night from Warwick Neck over to the Newport side. Barton and his men dragged General Richard Prescott, commander of British forces in Rhode Island, out of his bed and spirited him over to Warwick.
The sword Barton carried that night is still on display at the John Brown House in Providence, part of the Rhode Island Historical Society.
Despite the challenges of war, Providence thrived. The city was just starting to come into its own as the Revolution approached. Brown University broke ground on its first major building in 1770.
In April 1776, George Washington slept at the home of former Governor Stephen Hopkins as he traveled north to assume command of the Continental Army. Hopkins was a member of the Continental Congress and one of the two Rhode Island men who signed the Declaration of Independence. His home is the oldest building still standing in Providence.
Providence also had something Newport’s island geography could never offer. Its inland location made it easier to connect with the interior, where access to rivers powered the mills that would start America’s Industrial Revolution. Slater Mill opened in Pawtucket in 1793, not in Newport’s harbor, but in Providence’s backyard.
Rhode Island got a new capital and a new center of gravity. Two hundred and fifty years later, that hasn’t changed. But Newport was a shadow of its former self.
Newport’s Fall
Many of the so-called Loyalists who remained during the occupation were eventually seen as collaborators. Many of them fled as soon as the British pulled out.
“Some ended up moving to Canada,” said Hagist.
Meanwhile, a lot of the people who might have rebuilt Newport’s commercial activities never returned.
In 1782, the wealthy entrepreneur Aaron Lopez tried to return to rekindle his business empire. But when his carriage stopped to water the horses during his journey, one of his horses bolted, and Lopez drowned. His business interests never fully recovered.
Newport went from boom town to ghost town in a few short years.
Even the historic Touro Synagogue was abandoned for decades. In 1852, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a famous poem about “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” where Lopez is buried among the other founders of Touro.
“Gone are the living, but the dead remain,” Longfellow writes. Ultimately, he concludes: “But ah! what once has been shall be no more!”
A New Identity Emerges
Newport’s abandonment spared many of its charming colonial buildings from the wrecking ball. Eventually, wealthy tourists discovered Newport’s charms and turned the city into a summer playground. That transformation began in the 1840s and culminated during the Gilded Age, with all those glitzy mansions on Bellevue Avenue.
Many of the more modest colonial gems were still well preserved when 20th-century homeowners finally gave them some TLC.
The American Revolution was the best of times and the worst of times for these two Rhode Island cities. But, for both, it all turned out well in the end.
Providence became the new hub of Rhode Island.
“And,” said Hagist, “in a way, we have the Revolution to thank for the fact that Newport is not just a container port now.”
