The meticulous nature of the principles drafted by the Rhode Island Anti-slavery Society underscore the great precedent Rhode Islanders set to reform the American national landscape. By dividing their appeals into three sections—”Emancipation of the West Indies,” “Power of Congress over the District of Columbia,” and “The Narrative of Jane Williams”—all of which pertained to the perils of slavery, the Rhode Island Anti-slavery Society put forth arguments that would come to be adopted by other contemporary abolitionists.

Courtesy of the Brown Digital Repository

This draft of an emancipation act, written by Thomas Wilson Dorr, begins to outline the conditions and principles under which all slaves should be freed in Rhode Island. Before emancipation, Rhode Island Stranger Laws termed African Americans a "charge" upon the state. Although Dorr writes of abolition, his maintenance of African Americans' ability to be charged shows the complexities in the different positions held on emancipation.

Transcription:

An Act to emancipate all Persons held as Slaves in Rhode Island by the inhabitants thereof--

Be it enacted as follows: Sect. 1. All persons who are held as Slaves in this State by any of the inhabitants thereof are hereby declared and made free.

Sect. 2. The persons thus made free shall deemed to be legally settled in the town where they respectively reside; and they shall become chargeable, they shall be supported by the town in the same manner as other persons chargeable, according to law.

Courtesy of the Brown Digital Repository

One female suffragist and abolitionist of Rhode Island, Elizabeth Buffum Chace, wrote many letters to her sons before and during the Civil War. Chace was a prominent figure in the abolitionist movement; she was known to have harbored fugitive slaves and established a Female Anti-slavery Society in 1835. In her letters to her sons, Chace expressed her strong solidarity with the movement to free African Americans from slavery.

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

Although Chace’s main objective in this letter was to instill a sense of moral virtue in her son, the mention of the Anti-slavery Society meeting at the beginning of the letter provides a window into her daily life. Her writings point to her devoted nature to the abolitionist movement, nurtured in part by a longstanding family history with the abolitionist movement. 

Read more of Chace's letters, with full transcriptions, here. 

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

When the Civil War was underway, Chace sent her sons this letter showing her position on the actions of the Northern army as well as her deep devotion to the goal of equality for African Americans. General Henry disbanded black soldiers in observation of a 1792 act that did not allow African Americans to serve in the U.S. Army. By expressing such hostile rejection of General Hunter’s complicity with the law decision, and of the 1792 act itself, Chace puts forth her conviction that black men should be regarded as holding the same capacity as white men, that they are all equal.

Read more of Chace's letters, with full transcriptions, here. 

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

Chace was also noted to be the abolitionist who owned this collection box, which primarily served as a place to collect funds for printing abolitionist literature. However, these funds were also, on occasion, used to help a fugitive slave make his or her way up to Canada.

Courtesy of Rebecca Soules and the John Hay Library, Brown University

This photo from the First Rhode Island Regiment Army shows the faces of white soldiers who fought to grant freedom to black Americans, including the young boy at their feet. With the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, this goal of freedom became a reality that eventually added more Northern forces to the Civil War. African Americans were able to enlist in the U.S. Army, and about 179,000 would serve in the regiments by the end of the Civil War. Indeed, Rhode Island’s regiments would take many of these new enlisters; The Fourteenth Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, for instance, had entirely black units, headed by all white officers.

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

Rhode Island residents enlisted in the Civil War in droves. This image of Providence’s Exchange Plaza was taken on the day of the second detachment of the First Rhode Island Regiment. The streets are congested with soldiers and their loved ones, who line up to watch the troops board steamships that will take them to the sites of combat further south. 

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

After the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War’s end, African Americans experienced varying degrees of freedom in their daily lives. Nonetheless, many freed slaves and other free persons of color sought to demonstrate their improved status after the Civil War by having portraits taken to indicate their higher standards of living, as exemplified in this photograph of Rhode Island resident John Spurlock. 

Original photo by Theodore F. Chase, 69 Westminster St., Providence. Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Inscription: "For 49 years and still a faithful servant in the family of Mr. C.N. Talbot"

Mary Johnson’s portrait signals the perpetuation of prior conceptions of African American life. Both this photograph and the portrait of John Spurlock demonstrate the reality of the post-Civil War era in Rhode Island, where the emancipation process was made even more complex through the enactment of “Stranger Laws.” These ordinances were meant to track the activities and movements of non-residents, though they were widely interpreted as policing people primarily on the basis of skin color. Indeed, these ongoing problems of the Reconstruction era would set the stage for the struggles of the civil rights movement, nearly one hundred years later.

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

African Americans started attending Brown University, in the city of Providence, in the 1870s; Brown’s first black graduates were Inman Page and George Washington Milford Brown, both in the class of 1877. Elizabeth Buffum Chace was one of the first to advocate for African American students to be admitted to the university, writing in Anti-slavery Reminisces that “a lad of rare excellence and attainments was refused an examination for admission, by the authorities of Brown University, on account of the color of his skin.” The university’s eventual inclusion of African Americans extended beyond the academic realm. This image of the 1879 Baseball team features an African American student named W.E. White, Class of 1882.

Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society