Rhode Island

One of the original thirteen states of the United States of America; its full style being, “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.’* Its territory lies between Massachusetts and Consituated at the head and along both shores of the Narragansett Bay, comprising the islands in the same, the principal of which is Rhode Island, placed at the mouth of the bay. The settlement was commenced as early as June, 1630, on the present site of the city of Providence, by five men under Roger Williams. Williams founded his colony upon a compact -which bound the settlers to obedience to the major part “only in civil things”; leaving to each perfect freedom in matters of religious concernment, so that he did not, by his religious practices, encroach upon the public order and peace. A portion of the Massachusetts colonists, who were of the antinomian party, after their defeat in that colony, settled on the island of Aquetnet, now Rhode Island, where they associated themselves as a colony on March 7, 1638. These settlements, together with one “at Shawomet, now Warwick, ma^le by another sect of religious outcasts, under Gorton, in 1612-3, remained under separate voluntary governments until 1647, when they were united under one government, styled “The Incorporation of Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay In New England,” by virtue of a charter granted in 1643. This colony remained under this charter, which, upon some provisions, was confirmed by Cromwell in 1655, until after the restoration, when a new charter was procured from Charles II., in the fifteenth year of his reign, under which a new colonial government was formed on the 24th of November, 1663, which continued, with the short interruption of the colonial administration of Sir Edmund Andros, down to the period of the American revolution. In the general assembly of the colony, on the first Wednesday of May, 1776, in anticipation of the declaration of independence, an act was passed which absolved the colonists from their allegiance to the king of Great Britain, and which ordered that In future all writs and processes should issue in the charter name of “The Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” instead of the name of the king. The old colonial charter, together with a bill of rights adopted by the general assembly, remained the sole constitution of state government until the first Tuesday in May, 1843, when a state constitution framed by a convention assembled in November, 1842, and adopted by the people of the state, went into operation. Sundry amendments have been made.