Though Rhode Island’s Quaker population was starting to question slavery and the relatively young colony was looking for ways to differentiate itself from neighboring Massachusetts, the statute ...

The name dates to the 17th century, when the Puritan minister Roger Williams founded plantations on the Providence River that later became the colony — and then the state — of Rhode Island.

The four original Rhode Island towns – Providence, Portsmouth, Newport and Warwick – existed as sovereign political entities prior to the formation of the colony of Rhode Island, and ...

On this day in 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th state to ratify ... Residents of the former British colony rejected the first effort to approve the Constitution by a margin of 10-to-1.

Rhode Island was founded by a guy – Roger Williams – who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for espousing “new and dangerous opinions.” Any Rhode Islander today who tries to ...