Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations - American Revolutionary Period

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.