Rhode Islanders are ornery. We get our inferiority complex because our beloved state is constantly being compared to the size of icebergs or wildfires. We are tired of people from rectangle states telling us to merge with Connecticut because for them, size matters.
We get it. Rhode Island is small, at just over 1,200 square miles.
Small but mighty. Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams, who, in 1636, got kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for not having the right religious views. Williams bought the land from the Narragansett Indians and voila! Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was born. Soon after, Anne Hutchinson settled on one of the islands with her band of merry heretics. Rhode Island became the land of religious tolerance in colonial America.
Hence the nickname Rogue’s Island. Like Australia, Rhode Island has some checkers in its past, and its orneriness is deep-seated in history.
Take Independence Day, for example. On July 4, many of us will have a barbeque or travel or picnic and say “Hallelujah!” for the day off. Few of us will remember that the Declaration of Independence was ratified that day and that the original thirteen colonies gave King George III the proverbial middle finger in their quest for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But Rhode Island couldn’t wait until summer. Oh no. On May 4, 1776, the Rhode Island General Assembly declared its independence from Great Britain and gave up its allegiance to that tyrant King George III. George was apparently going beyond the “taxation without representation” problem and burning ships and confiscating property and putting the Rhode Island colonists in danger. So the Rhode Island General Assembly repealed the act whereby the good people of Rhode Island gave up certain freedoms in order to be protected by the King. A social contract, if you will, that fell right in line with the spirit of the Enlightenment and with folks like Rousseau, Paine, and later, Jefferson.
Since the King and his Court weren’t holding up their end of the social contract of protecting its people, the neo-natives of the American colonies were getting restless, and they started printing pamphlets and fomenting rebellion.
But Rhode Islanders are impatient. We hate lines, we hate waiting, and we love donuts. Hence the Dunkin Donuts in our fair state are spaced just less than a mile apart so there’s no waiting and wasting of time. Same goes for revolutions. Rhode Islanders had read Paine’s Common Sense and were itchin’ for freedom. So two months before ratification of the big Declaration of Independence, they repealed the act that said Rhode Island colonists were British subjects. It was the first official move toward independence for the colonies. Rhode Island had just moved to the front of the line.
Rhode Islanders are also a very thorough breed and have the time to be so meticulous because we won’t travel more than 20 minutes to do anything. Anything over 20 minutes is considered a road trip. With all this extra time, the General Assembly of 1776 ensured it covered its logistical bases, further stating that any and all mentions of the king on all documents and correspondence would herewith carry the nomenclature of “the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”
It takes a band of colonies to declare independence and make it stick. But it only takes one to make it official. Thank you, Rogue Rhode Islanders of 1776, for hurrying to the head of the line.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm