Providence

Long before the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, the merchants and mariners of Providence, Rhode Island, were already waging their own war against the British Crown. This compact city at the head of Narragansett Bay was not the largest colonial port, nor the wealthiest, nor the most populous — but it may have been the most defiant. Providence's contributions to the American Revolution span from the earliest acts of violent resistance to the final, reluctant embrace of the new constitutional order, and the city's story illuminates a dimension of the Revolution that is too often overshadowed by the great battles and famous declarations: the war was, in many ways, a merchants' rebellion, driven by men who understood that economic liberty and political liberty were inseparable, and who were willing to risk their fortunes, their ships, and their lives to prove it.