Interviewees:
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C. Morgan Grefe
- Executive Director, Rhode Island Historical Society
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Richard Ring
- Senior Director for Library & Museum Collections, Rhode Island Historical Society
Rhode Island distributed the Declaration by printing a copy for each of its thirty-nine town clerks and directing them to read it aloud at the next town meeting—a method reflecting the colony's deep tradition of local self-government. It was also proclaimed publicly from the state houses of both Providence and Newport, and likely from the other state houses in South Kingstown, East Greenwich, and Bristol (until the 1850s, there was an active state house in each of the state’s five counties). A detailed account in the Providence Gazette of July 27, 1776, described a formal procession to the State House led by the governor, thirteen volleys of musket fire, thirteen cannon shots—including new cannon cast at John Brown's Hope Furnace—and salutes from the ships Alfred and Columbus. A celebratory dinner at Hacker's Hall followed, with thirteen toasts drunk, including toasts to: the free states, Congress, the army and navy, General Washington, and the memory of those fallen in liberty's cause. As evening fell, the King's coat of arms and the sign from the Crown Coffee House were taken down and burned.
