Much of the beautiful city of Newport, famous for its Brick Market and elegant houses, was reduced to dust and rubble. In a systematic campaign of demoralization, the British turned the Colony House (the Rhode Island government seat) into a barracks and desecrated the churches that were identified with the Patriot cause, including the First Church. Turning it into a barracks and hospital, they tore down the parsonage, broke the windows, and ripped out the pulpit and the pews. “The inside is almost wholly ruined,” Samuel Hopkins lamented.27 Sarah rarely attended church anymore because of her difficulty walking, but after cherishing it as her spiritual home for more than thirty years, she was heartbroken by its ruin. “Many distressing things passed before us,” she remembered later, especially “the destruction of the house of the Lord’s.” Hopkins fled to the safety of Connecticut, where he spent the war preaching to different congregations. Sarah tried to be stoic, but she admitted that his absence was “very trying.”28
The Colony House, finished in 1739, was Rhode Island’s statehouse. People gathered near the front steps in 1776 to hear the Declaration of Independence read aloud. During the Revolution the British used it as a barracks. Courtesy of the Newport Historical Society.
Sarah and Henry had endured the ravages of war before, but this time they may have felt especially vulnerable: she was sixty-three and he was ninety-two when the British stormed into town, and both of them were ill and frail. Although Sally and Daniel were with them, each day brought frightening stories of drunken soldiers and looted houses.
After the war Sarah claimed that she had suffered little during the British occupation, and although Samuel Hopkins never explicitly claimed that God had especially watched over her, he implied it. She “had a constant supply of the necessaries of life; and received no abuse from the British officers or soldiers, as most others did,” he testified. Although soldiers were quartered near her, “it was remarked by her and others, that they made less disturbance and noise, than they did elsewhere; and were particularly careful not to do anything on the Sabbath to disturb that good woman, as they called her. And they took care to avoid all profane words when near her.”29
It would not have been surprising if at least a few British soldiers had been in awe of Sarah’s piety, and this is what Sarah liked to remember in later years. But Hopkins had not been with her in Newport, and her true situation seems to have been more perilous. In a letter to a friend written during the war, Susanna Anthony reported that Sarah was “sick; destitute; and in affliction,” and she was “in very different circumstances, from any she ever saw before.—Refuge, and helpers fail;—and she does not seem to possess that confidence, and joy, which was usual in difficulties.” It was an “extremely cold” winter, but there was almost no wood for sale. Once again it seemed as if God had hidden his face. As Susa exclaimed, “Everything in Providence appears dark, respecting her!”30
Whether because of their concerns about their safety or their inability to pay rent, Sarah and Henry moved into John Tanner’s house during the war. John and his wife, Mary, were Seventh-day Baptists, but they may have belonged to the First Church at some point, and Mary seems to have been a member of the women’s society. The Tanners had been friends of the Osborns for at least twenty years, and when they decided to flee Newport, leaving behind John’s successful goldsmith business, they allowed Sarah, Henry, and fifteen other people to move into their house. As one of the deacons of his church, John Tanner was responsible for the welfare of the poor, and he had a reputation for generosity.31 Although we do not know the names of the others who sought refuge under his roof, they were probably like Henry and Sarah: poor people with nowhere else to go. Sally, Daniel, and Susanna, now one, were probably among them.32
In later years Tanner described his house as a “large mansion,” but with seventeen people crowded into four rooms, living there must have been anything but luxurious. Sarah and Henry were grateful to have a roof over their heads, but with the lack of privacy, the shortage of basic necessities like flour and wood, and the fear of British troops, they must have often prayed for relief.33
Henry spent his last days at the Tanner’s house. He died in 1778 at the age of ninety-three. Sarah had written little about him over the years, perhaps because he had access to her diaries, but even though she may not have loved him with the same passion she felt for her first husband, their bond had been strong. He had given her freedoms that many other men begrudged their wives, supporting her even when others had accused her of going beyond her line. She never referred to him in her diaries without using the adjective dear: he was never simply her “consort,” but her “dear consort.”34
Soon after Henry’s death, Sally and Daniel decided they could no longer endure the strain of rearing a child in a war zone. They do not seem to have moved far, probably only across the bay to South Kingstown, but as Samuel Hopkins commented, their departure meant that Sarah, ill and “destitute,” was “left alone.”35 Perhaps she was invited to go with them, but if so she refused. She was too devoted to her religious community to leave Newport, even if it meant enduring the violence of the British. Many of her closest friends were still in the city, including Deacon Coggeshall, and they gathered together for prayer whenever possible on Wednesday evenings.36
Sarah and other Patriots had much to pray for during the winter of 1777–78. The Continental Army was near starvation at Valley Forge, and because white men were so reluctant to enlist, Rhode Island’s General Assembly decided to offer freedom to any male slave willing to fight. In February 1778 the Assembly passed a law promising to reimburse masters as much as 120 pounds for each slave who joined the army. Although many blacks had already enlisted to fight for the British, who had promised to emancipate anyone willing to become a redcoat, the Continental Army was nervous about arming slaves or former slaves. As many as 250 joined Rhode Island’s “black battalion” before the General Assembly stopped the program in May, frightened by the possibility of a rebellion. Perhaps because of the resistance of their masters, only a few slaves from Newport seem to have enlisted.37
Since records are fragmentary, we do not know the exact date of either Henry’s death or Sally and Daniel’s decision to leave Newport, but if Sarah was alone in August during the Battle of Rhode Island, she probably counted it as a mercy. She would not have wanted them to experience the terrors she did—the screaming outside her door, the sound of gunfire, the sight of wounded soldiers dying in the streets. Like other Patriots, she may have been elated when Admiral d’Estaing arrived with the French fleet (the Treaty of Alliance between the French and the Continental Army had been ratified earlier in the year), but as the harbor filled with smoke from the constant barrage of gunfire, the mood of celebration turned to panic. Anticipating that the French would soon come ashore, the British burned down buildings to prevent them from being used as barracks, forcing many to flee. Mary Almy, a Loyalist, remembered gathering up a few bundles and running out of the city with her children. “All this time the ships were firing continually, women were shrieking, children falling down, crying,” she wrote to her husband. It seemed as though the shells would never stop exploding, but then, in an event that Sarah surely saw as providential, a hurricane sent the soldiers scurrying for shelter. For two days the city was buffeted by a violent storm that toppled trees and ripped tents to shreds. Admiral d’Estaing retreated in order to repair his damaged ships, but the battle had not yet ended, and after fierce fighting between British and Continental troops on land near Quaker Hill, several miles outside the city, the British managed to keep possession of Newport. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Mary Almy witnessed “cartloads of wretched men brought in, their wives screaming at the foot of the carts, in consort with their groans—fine youths with their arms taken off in a moment.” On the Sunday after the battle, every hospital was “crowded with wounded men, no church, nothing but horror and distress.”38
If Sarah was as frightened as everyone else, she did not admit it afterward. Inste
ad she emphasized her submission to God’s will. Certain that “every shot was directed by unerring wisdom,” she resigned herself to her fate. The worst that could happen was that she would finally go to God.39
The British sent reinforcements to Newport after the Battle of Rhode Island, tightening their stranglehold on the city. The conditions were miserable. In December 1778 the weather turned so cold that soldiers froze to death at their posts, and because of a severe shortage of flour, millers began grinding rice for bread. British ships could not deliver more provisions because of the frozen harbor. According to Solomon Southwick, the former editor of the Newport Mercury (which had been shut down by the British), “The enemy at Newport are so greatly distressed that unless they have a speedy supply of provisions they must surrender, having neither shipping nor provisions to carry them off. The town goes to destruction at last.” The people of Newport were on the brink of starvation, with “several who cannot get a small mouthful of bread for several days together.”40
The British did not surrender in Newport, nor did Sarah starve. But that winter was one of the worst of her life. Perhaps it is no wonder that later she remembered her willingness to die if it had been God’s will.
Sarah prayed that God would have mercy on the Americans, but despite several victories in the South, each month brought more terror. Besides defeating the Americans at Brier Creek in Georgia, the British burned down Fairfield and Norwalk in Connecticut and massacred dozens of soldiers in New Jersey with bayonets. It seemed as if God’s wrath would never be sated.
As Sarah knew, God did not always answer her prayers in the way that she wanted. In the fall of 1779 she heard the devastating news that John Quamine had been killed on board a privateer during his first battle. His violent death was a terrible loss to his family, who would always remember the sacrifice he had made in the hope of earning enough money to free them. His wife, Duchess, and their three children, the youngest only two, remained slaves.41
Though Sarah believed that everything happened for a reason, she may have struggled to understand why God had brought Quamine from Africa, saved him from sin, and then sent him to Princeton only to shatter his missionary dream with a bullet. She would never forget him.
British troops finally evacuated Newport in October 1779 as the center of the fighting moved to the South. Before their departure they destroyed buildings, filled wells, burned Long Wharf, and took most of the church bells to sell in England, leaving only Trinity Church’s behind. “The Town is in Ruins,” mourned Ezra Stiles after a visit. Another resident described Newport as “a barren city, with shuttered houses, a pillaged library, books burned, and commerce practically at a standstill.”42
When Sarah wrote to Joseph Fish in December, she was frank about what she had lost, but grateful for what still remained. “I have been stripped of my dearest enjoyments on earth, attendance on public worship, reading, writing, my dear and worthy pastor, Christian friends, Grandchildren, my dear aged Companion,” she admitted, “yet have upheld under all, and in every apparent danger throughout the Captivity God mercifully granted me renewed strength and courage.” John Tanner had returned after the British evacuation, and she now lived with a “kind neighbor” who read the Bible to her every night. Her friends generously continued to supply her needs. “Blessed be God,” she wrote, “I have lacked for nothing.” Eager to emphasize God’s particular kindness to her, she claimed that even during the worst of the fighting she had been as safe as Noah in the ark, Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three men in the fiery furnace. While many “righteous” people had been subjected to “the hateful din and profane swearing” of British soldiers, she had been spared “the filthy Conversation of the wicked,” and even though the British had threatened to leave the entire city “in devouring flames,” they had boarded their ships “as Gentle as Lambs.” Comparing the people of Newport to the Israelites who had been enslaved in Babylon (and echoing Psalm 118:23), she rejoiced, “This was the Lord’s doing and marvelous in our Eyes. Thus ends the captivity.”43
As Sarah must have known, the British hardly left Newport as “Gentle as Lambs,” and the fact that the she had not heard any “filthy” profanity was hardly a strong proof of God’s mercy. Perhaps her life had been so bleak that this was the most positive thing she could say. As always, however, she was determined to find evidence of God’s compassion in the midst of his wrath.
Evangelicals were often accused of being pessimists who saw humans as too sinful to create a better world, but despite their suspicion of human nature they had a deep faith in God’s power to triumph over evil. The American Revolution was brutal and bloody, but evangelicals saw it as the fulfillment of their hopes, the dawning of a more glorious age. They were cosmic optimists who lived in constant anticipation of the millennium.44
The Heavenly City
Evangelicals were not alone in their hopes for the future. Many Enlightenment thinkers and liberal-leaning Protestants also dreamed of a more perfect world, but they thought humans had the power to create it on their own without divine assistance.
The Christian belief in the second coming and the Enlightenment ideal of progress were so intertwined during the Revolutionary years that it is hard to disentangle them. As the historian Carl Becker noted, Enlightenment philosophers placed their faith in “nature’s God” rather than the God of revelation, but they “demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials.” Despite their criticism of traditional Christian doctrines like original sin and eternal punishment, they crafted a secular version of the Christian narrative of salvation, substituting natural law for biblical revelation, the love of humanity for the love of God, and human perfectibility for divine redemption.45 Their fervent utopianism was virtually a religion of its own.
Not all Enlightenment thinkers (Rousseau and Voltaire among them) believed that progress was either possible or inevitable, but the dominant mood of the eighteenth century was optimistic. In addition to technological and scientific advances like the invention of the microscope and the discovery of electricity, the spread of commerce and the rising standard of living seemed to be harbingers of a more perfect society. In France, the philosopher Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot imagined the human race marching “towards still higher perfection,” and in England, Adam Smith argued that if people were free to pursue their own economic interests, they would create a more prosperous and peaceful world. Edward Gibbon’s famous History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ended with the promise that “every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.”46 Although the past was filled with violence, poverty, and ignorance, “enlightenment” was coming.
Revolutionary leaders like John Adams and James Madison tended to be less starry-eyed about the future than the most optimistic Enlightenment thinkers, and perhaps because of their Protestant heritage they greeted claims of human goodness with ambivalence. (This is why they and other Founders created checks and balances on constitutional power.) But like Locke and Helvétius, they saw human nature as malleable, and they firmly believed in the possibility of designing laws and institutions that would give rise to a virtuous citizenry.47 As Adams explained in his Thoughts on Government (1776), a republican form of government “introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming Freemen. A general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.” Although Adams admitted that people could be selfish and power-hungry, he thought they could be transformed—reborn, in a sense—by the right form of government. As Abbé Raynal proclaimed, “the human race is what we wish to make it.”48
Evangelicals argued that the human race was what God wished to make
it, but they, too, believed that humans stood on the brink of a new era in history. Although millennialism has always been part of the Christian tradition, it has been particularly intense during times of crisis, and eighteenth-century America was rife with speculation about the end times. After Lexington and Concord, ministers explicitly linked the coming of the millennium to political events, portraying the Revolution as a step toward Christ’s return to earth. The Reverend Sylvanus Conant, for example, claimed that Isaiah’s prophetic question—“Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day, or shall a nation be born at once?”—was answered by the American Revolution. Searching for evidence of America’s destiny in the Bible, he confidently declared to his congregation, “It is a question whether anything has happened for these 1700 years past, that doth so literally and extensively answer this query, as when these thirteen united States, by voice of their deputies in Congress assembled, were led to declare themselves free and independent of the jurisdiction of Great-Britain, and of all other powers on earth.”49 While some believed that Jesus would literally return to rule on Israel’s throne, others claimed that he would not reign in the flesh, but in the hearts of believers.50
These optimistic visions of the future were always mixed with undercurrents of violence. Even though both Enlightenment thinkers and evangelicals deplored the bloodshed of the past, they also assumed that violence and suffering might be a necessary stage in the emergence of a new age. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers imagined that the cataclysm of war could be a way of wiping the slate clean so that a new story could be written, evangelicals insisted that redemption always involved suffering. In a sermon preached in 1774, the Reverend Joseph Lyman reminded his congregation that God always afflicted his chosen, sending the “fire of affliction and persecution to purge away the sins of his people.” Echoing this rhetoric, John Adams feared that it was the “Will of Heaven” for Americans to “suffer Calamities.” In a letter to his wife, Abigail, he wrote: “The Furnace of Affliction produces Refinement, in states as well as Individuals.”51
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