American Revolutionary Period
Leading figures in the colony such as former royal governors Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward as well as John Brown, Nicholas Brown, William Ellery, the Reverend James Manning, and the Reverend Ezra Stiles who had played an influential role in founding Brown University in Providence in 1764 as a sanctuary for religious and intellectual freedom were involved only twelve years later in the 1776 launch of the American Revolutionary War which delivered American independence from the British Empire.
Rhode Island was the first of the thirteen colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown, on May 4, 1776. It was also the last colony of the thirteen colonies to ratify the United States Constitution on May 29, 1790 once assurances that a Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution. It had boycotted the convention which had drawn up the proposed constitution.
Read more about this topic: Colony Of Rhode Island And Providence Plantations
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or period:
“Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)