Rhode Island: A History (States and the Nation)

Rhode Island: A History (States and the Nation)
Author: William McLoughlin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1986-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780393302714

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With a Historical Guide prepared by the editors of the American Association for State and Local History. High atop the Rhode Island capitol in Providence, a bronze likeness of "The Independent Man" keeps watch over a state that historically has put the ideal of individual liberty before all others. Like many ideals, this one was freighted with many meanings. As the colony grew in the seventeenth century, the belief in religious liberty and freedom of conscience espoused by its founder, Roger Williams, led to the development of political liberty and practical democracy. In the eighteenth century, that dedication to individualism made Rhode Islanders into businessmen of the first order, willing to take the big risk in hope of a bigger reward. Their land being poor in natural resources, Rhode Islanders turned to trade; accumulating wealth from traffic in rum and slaves, they built in Newport and Providence small but elegant copies of Georgian England, and worried more about taxes and currency than about religion. When they felt poorly served by British policies, they became ready revolutionaries and led in the founding of a new nation. After the Civil War, their children took individual liberty to mean economic laissez-faire, ushering in the state's golden age when Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich became known as the "general manager" of the United States. Through countless changes in the twentieth century, the ideal still survives and asks old questions of new generations of Rhode Islanders from many ethnic backgrounds: How best to reconcile the rights of minorities with the rule of the majority, and how best to secure the individual liberty and economic opportunity that Roger Williams and Moses Brown would have understood so well?


Rhode Island: A History (States and the Nation)
Language: en
Pages: 276
Authors: William McLoughlin
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1986-06-17 - Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

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With a Historical Guide prepared by the editors of the American Association for State and Local History. High atop the Rhode Island capitol in Providence, a bro
Rhode Island History
Language: en
Pages:
Authors:
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: - Publisher:

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The Rhode Island Office of the Secretary of State offers information on the early history of the state, as well as facts about the state emblems. The office als
Hidden History of Rhode Island
Language: en
Pages: 174
Authors: Glenn V. Laxton
Categories: Photography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-11-27 - Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

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Hidden History of Rhode Island delivers the best Ocean State stories you've never heard before. Surprising tales and unexpected anecdotes color Rhode Island's l
Rhode Island. A bicentennial history
Language: en
Pages: 240
Authors: William Gerald MacLoughlin
Categories: Rhode Island
Type: BOOK - Published: 1978 - Publisher:

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Rhode Island
Language: en
Pages: 240
Authors: William Gerald McLoughlin
Categories: Rhode Island
Type: BOOK - Published: 1978 - Publisher:

GET EBOOK