(energetic drum music) - Hello, I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm David Wright.

- We mark the 250th birthday of America with a salute to Rhode Island's role in the Revolution at a time when the population was less than 60,000.

- Along the road to Revolution, the little colony of Rhode Island was known as a feisty powerhouse that punched above its weight.

- Ever defiant, Rhode Islanders fired the first shot igniting the rebellion, but many historians skipped over the episode because it took place out at sea.

And that slight has stirred up a storm of controversy to this very day.

Every schoolchild learns about the Boston Tea Party and the shot heard 'round the world at Lexington and Concord.

(gunfire popping) (upbeat music) But was a small band of Rhode Islanders really responsible for igniting the first fight for freedom?

The city of Warwick annually celebrates Gaspee Days.

It commemorates a naval assault by local colonists taking aim at the British revenue schooner, the HMS Gaspee.

Most history books credit Massachusetts as the cradle of the American Revolution, but- - [Group] Boston's not the first shot.

- [Pamela] That's the motto being engaged in a war of words with neighboring Massachusetts.

It's a campaign to drum up a more accurate historical record.

Bob Burke believes Rhode Island initiated the ire and desire for independence.

Burke is a restaurateur, raconteur, and revolutionary.

- Total revolutionary, absolutely.

We're gonna create a revolution here in Rhode Island, and we're going to take back our rightful claim to history.

So where are you all from?

- [Pamela] Burke is rallying support at his Providence restaurant, where he has added a tavern for tourists to sample chowder and cod.

Also on the menu, a discussion of Burke's bold action to set the record straight.

- And what we have done is that we have actually sent out cease and desist orders to all those folks, Lexington, Concord, Boston, Massachusetts.

- [Pamela] Burke has even sent these legal documents to the Secretary of the Interior in the belief it's a case of identity theft, and Massachusetts is reaping huge economic benefits.

- My gosh, they are earning truly billions of dollars from tourists from around the world who crave to hear the story of freedom.

- Isn't this all just a tempest in a teapot?

- No, no, no.

Boston's a tempest in a teapot.

Rhode Island is the true beginnings of the revolution.

- [Pamela] Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore, a former high school history teacher, agrees with Burke.

This wooden box at the state archives was sent by King George III himself.

- This came across the ocean, 3,000-miles, months-long journey, and delivered this document that asked the royal governor to investigate the Gaspee incident.

- [Pamela] That incident, an act of armed rebellion and bloodshed, took place on the night of June 9th, 1772, 18 months before the Boston Tea Party and three years before the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Rhode Island merchants tricked the Gaspee into running aground on a sandbar at low tide then rode out by moonlight.

- They call the captain out and he comes out in his nightshirt.

Joseph Bucklin takes the shot, hits him.

He goes down, the 29 sailors panic, our sailors clamor aboard, take them prisoner.

We light the ship on fire.

Flames get down to the powder magazine, and kaboom, the first fireworks ever on Narragansett Bay.

- [Pamela] A king's ransom was offered for the names of the raiders, yet even with the huge bounty, no one revealed the identities of the patriot perpetrators.

- I guess the theme is no one saw nothing, right?

It's a maritime colony state.

And they were being impacted by these trade laws.

They had had it.

- All of these different things- - [Pamela] Bob Burke has had it too.

He continues stirring the pot, pitting the minute man against the independent man, lighting up what he hopes will be a battle royale for first dibs in American history books.

- At the same time as that raid, a Rhode Island merchant filed a lawsuit against the commander of the Gaspee, claiming he had illegally confiscated goods aboard his ship, the Fortune.

- That merchant won his case, and he eventually joined the revolutionary war effort.

He became so revered by George Washington that the general chose him as his successor should he ever be captured or killed in battle.

(energetic music) - "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again," and that was a famous quote that he writes to a letter to Washington.

(energetic music continues) - He was this man, Nathanael Greene.

While history often shines its brightest light on George Washington, Rhode Island's native son rose to become Washington's second in command, his right-hand man.

So he was actually very close to George Washington?

- He was.

They were very good friends.

When they had met early on in his military career in Boston, Washington realized that Nathanael was kind of a brilliant man, a logistics master, if you will.

(birds chirping) - [Pamela] Greene's homestead in Coventry still stands today.

Built in 1770, Spell Hall was the sight of the family forge.

The ironworks was once situated along the banks of the Patuxent River, where massive ships' anchors and chains were wrought.

- [Josh] We believe 70% of the actual house itself to be original.

- [Pamela] Josh Wojnar is trustee and caretaker of the colonial estate, filled with many of Greene's personal effects.

- It was said he liked to do impressions of people, crack a lot of jokes, but at the same time, he was a very stern and brilliant man.

(energetic music) - Greene is credited with a masterful strategy that outmaneuvered the British in the Carolinas and Georgia, leading to the English defeat.

Turns out, Greene was an unlikely revolutionary war hero, yet he looms large here on the South Portico of the Rhode Island State House, cast as a 10-foot bronze.

He was nicknamed the Fighting Quaker because Greene was born into a Quaker community, a pacifist faith.

How did he reconcile being Quaker and then becoming this brilliant military strategist?

- He actually does get banished from his meeting house for joining a war effort.

He realizes that, you know, we need certain freedoms in the colonies at the time, and he was willing to give up his religious beliefs to help everyone kind of acquire those freedoms.

- [Squad Leader] Take aim.

Fire.

(gunfire popping) - [Pamela] Putting his faith, family, and fortune on the line, Greene, along with his East Greenwich lawyer, James Mitchell Varnum, founded a local militia, the Kentish Guards, an historic regiment that still exists.

- Fire.

(gunfire popping) - General Greene had a way of understanding a problem.

He sought to figure out what was it that actually made a difference, made an army win in battle.

(energetic music) - [Pamela] Later, Greene would enter the ranks of the Kentish Guards as a private because he walked with a limp, a disability at the time considered unfit for an officer.

Undaunted, Greene was promoted to brigadier general of the Continental Army.

(gunfire popping) Following his pivotal introduction to General George Washington, Greene went from running the family forge to being quartermaster at Valley Forge.

- We actually think that his experience here at the house is what gives him that knowledge, that hands-on knowledge, of being able to be the quartermaster.

You know, when he's here running the business, he has 100 paid employees, so he's worried about their comfort, their well-being, you know, and then that gives him an idea of how to logistically manage people, materials, and supplies in a realistic manner.

- [Pamela] Washington promoted Greene to the rank of major general and gave him a significant order, "Take command of the southern forces and wear down British General Lord Cornwallis.

Greene accomplished the mission by introducing a new strategy, guerrilla warfare.

- And he realized that if we were going to have any chance of winning this war against the greatest military in the world, we had to bring them to our playing field.

- [Pamela] In a game of cat and mouse, Greene split his small troops, forcing Cornwallis to do the same, and Greene exhausted the Redcoats with his mobile, evasive army.

- [Squad Leader] Fire.

(gunfire popping) - It was common in the day because of the muskets that they used that you would have to stand in those long lines just to be able to kind of shoot a volley of lead into your opponents.

(gunfire exploding) And Nathanael realized, "Nope, there's too many of them.

There's not enough of us.

And if we do these kind of guerrilla tactics and take some pop shots, we're a little better off."

- It was a success and led to Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown, Virginia.

Why is it that someone who played such a significant role in the Revolution from Little Rhode Island does not get more credit or is not more famous?

- You think a lot of the revolution is New England, but it really wasn't.

It was down South, and he doesn't get the credit up here because they didn't see the action.

- [Pamela] Major General Nathanael Greene's action earned him another nickname, Savior of the South.

- If it wasn't for this man, who not many of us know about, we might not live in the America we live in today.

- Greene's attorney James Mitchell Varnum also became a prominent general in the Continental Army.

And when Rhode Island couldn't muster up enough men to join the fight, he made a bold and unpopular move.

- Varnum proposed a company comprised of men of color and Indigenous people.

They would fight in exchange for their freedom.

It became the 1st Rhode Island Regiment.

- An uncommon company- - Fire.

(gunfire popping) - of uncommon valor.

- Fire.

(gunfire popping) - [Pamela] When Rhode Island couldn't meet its quota of recruitments in the Revolution, General James Mitchell Varnum made a daring suggestion, one George Washington didn't favor.

Varnum asked the Rhode Island legislature to pioneer a company of enslaved Black and Indigenous men.

The Slave Enlistment Act granted immediate freedom in exchange for their service.

- Think of the fortitude of these folks whose country really didn't love them, but they were fighting on behalf of a country that was fighting for ideals that are articulated in the Declaration of Independence that, you know, we didn't always live up to, but the ideals were there, and that takes tremendous courage.

- Secretary of State Gregg Amore says by all accounts, members of what became the 1st Rhode Island Regiment were disciplined and dedicated.

Some 140 men of color answered the call to arms and went from slaves to soldiers.

Jason Roome is a reenactor and a direct descendant of Caesar Roome, a private in the company.

What is that like for you when you discovered that?

- I mean, that's incredible, you know?

And it's like now I can tell the story, I can share this with kids of color and everybody.

The first time I marched was in East Greenwich.

I came around the corner and I saw kids of color, and I was in tears.

- [Pamela] Secretary Amore says, "In the Rhode Island archive resides the original handwritten muster roll."

- It's a list of the members of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, Cato Varnum.

And that's not his real name.

He was Cato Vernon, but because Colonel Varnum was such an integral part of the Kentish Guards and the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, he took the name of the commander.

- That teenager, Cato Varnum, is depicted as a lifelike soldier at the US Army Museum in Virginia, from his white frontier jacket to unique helmet with the anchor insignia.

Also on display, the tattered company flag depicting the anchor and Rhode Island motto "hope."

They could have joined just to get their own freedom, but they fought with uncommon courage for a country that had enslaved them.

- Yeah.

- Where does that come from?

- I guess they were, I guess they were hoping that when this is over that they will have a part of this country also.

You know, it will be their homelands.

- [Pamela] The regiment fought on many fronts throughout all seven years of the war, including the Battle of Rhode Island, where they valiantly withstood three furious charges of German Hessian troops.

And while they didn't win the battle, they won the respect of their commanders and other soldiers.

- [Squadron Leader] Fire.

(gunfire popping) - [Pamela] The unit eventually became the first integrated company in the fledgling country when white indentured servants of European descent joined the ranks.

There is a granite memorial in Portsmouth's Patriots Park dedicated to the heroics of the enslaved and free Black men and Indigenous soldiers.

And currently, legislation pending in Congress to award a congressional gold medal honoring their devout service during the Revolutionary War.

- I'm grateful for what they've done to get me where I am today.

- The 1st Rhode Island Regiment first saw action in Newport County, a place where sentiment was divided.

- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Those are the opening lines of one of the greatest revolution stories of all times.

Of course, Dickens was writing about London and Paris during the French Revolution.

But had he set his story here just a few years earlier during the American Revolution, he might well have been talking about two of Rhode Island's most important cities.

250 years ago, Providence was just starting to come into its own.

The very first brick on the Brown University campus, laid in 1770 at University Hall on the college green.

The oldest house still standing from that time belonged to Governor Stephen Hopkins, whose John Hancock was right there beneath John Hancock's on the Declaration of Independence.

George Washington slept here in April 1776 as he rode up to Boston to take command of the Continental Army.

But in 1776, Providence wasn't Rhode Island's capital.

The American Revolution didn't just create a country, it also shifted the center of gravity of Rhode Island itself.

Up until 1776, the colony had one major metropolis, Newport.

A deep waterport rivaling Boston, New York, and Charleston, South Carolina.

Keep in mind the state's official name until quite recently was Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations.

Aquidneck Island was Rhode Island, Newport its capital.

During the 1700s, Newport wasn't just an economic powerhouse, it was also the seat of government.

Here at the Colony House, it's the original state house.

This is where lawmakers would debate the issues, the governor would sign the bills.

Then came the revolution, and everything changed.

- In December 1776, Newport was the fifth largest city in North America.

- So this was the most important city in the colony of Rhode Island.

- Oh, absolutely.

And again, the fifth most important in all of North America.

- But the Revolution changed that.

- The Revolution changed that.

- [David] That's the focus of an exhibition now on display at the Newport Historical Society.

It was a difficult time for Newport.

- Really was, yeah.

Yeah, so this exhibition occupied Newport in the fight for independence, really explores Newport's journey even before the Revolution officially begins on July 4th, 1776.

- [David] The Redcoats seized control of Newport shortly thereafter.

How long did they occupy it?

- For three years or just under.

They came in December 1776, and they left in, ooh, I believe it was also late 1779.

- [David] Our guide, Jenny Sullivan, says about half the residents fled.

The ones who stayed hoped for the best.

- And a lot of Newporters were actually pretty excited when the British first arrived because their first goal was to preserve their merchant status, and many of them saw themselves as British citizens still.

So they thought they could just kind of say, "Hey, that's not us.

Just let us keep doing business.

Like we can make this peaceful."

- [David] That turned out to be wishful thinking.

- The British Army and the Hessians, when they arrived- - Germans.

- The Germans, yeah, brought 7,000 troops with them.

So again, Newport's population was about 9,000, and you're adding 7,000 to that.

- [David] Not only did the British commandeer people's homes to quarter their troops, they seized provisions too, especially firewood.

They chopped down all the trees on Aquidneck Island, including the Liberty Tree.

Then they took down empty houses and burned them too.

More than 500 buildings in all.

- Citizens were under threat at all times.

You know, there were reports of, there was one time that for 24 hours, the British fired continually over the city just to sort of really terrify the residents.

So I think that was a very big portion of the collective memory of the time.

And, as we know, many people did flee Newport and never returned.

- [David] Among the people who fled during the occupation was a man you might call the Elon Musk of colonial Newport.

- Aaron Lopez was a Portuguese immigrant who was one of the economic drivers of the economy in Newport throughout the 1760s and early 1770s.

He developed the spermaceti candle business, the whale oil candles.

He was extremely influential in developing the rum business and a lot of other trade.

He was the wealthiest man in Newport by twice as much as the next wealthiest citizen.

When the war came, it devastated his business concerns, so he was one of the ones who moved out.

- [David] Across Narragansett Bay, this British outpost was surrounded.

- There are fortifications in Point Judith and in Warwick and in North Kingstown and all the way around to Tiverton and as far as Little Compton.

There's soldiers all around this whole time, and day after day there's raids going back and forth, landing parties.

- [David] One of the most famous raids was led by this man, Colonel William Barton.

That's his sword.

- He led a raid in a couple of whaleboats that rode in the night from Warwick Neck over to the shore in Portsmouth, walked over land during the night, and captured General Richard Prescott, the commander of the British garrison, during the night in July of 1777.

Kidnapped him and his aide-de-camp, and one British soldier put them in boats and rode them back to Warwick.

- [David] Providence, meanwhile, was a boom town.

Compare this 1777 map of Providence with another map from 1790.

Providence was better positioned to become the hub of the new industrial economy that emerged shortly after the war.

Slater's Mill, constructed in 1793 in Pawtucket, is considered the birthplace of America's industrial revolution.

Newport never recovered.

Remember that Elon Musk figure, Aaron Lopez?

After the war, he headed back to try and rebuild his business empire, but he didn't survive the journey.

- They stopped to get water for the horse at a pond, and the horse bolted into the pond, and Lopez drowned.

- Wow.

- And this was one of the most prominent business people in the entire nation, who could have rekindled this economic engine in Newport, and he had this remarkable untimely death.

- [David] As this walking tour guide explains, Newport became a bit of a ghost town for half a century.

- Newport really only sort of restarted itself in the middle 19th century when it became a vacation home for the wealthy.

So what is good fortune for us today partly starts with the bad fortune of post-revolutionary Newport.

- One thing we could argue is that the American Revolution saved Newport from becoming a container port.

- Sometimes there's a silver lining to a tragic circumstance.

- You can make an argument that Newport today owes part of its great existence to the fact that it went through this period of economic impoverishment during and after the revolution when, instead of things being torn down and redeveloped, they were preserved.

- "The worst of times and the best of times."

For Rhode Island, as for America, a time of revolutionary change.

- And there's one more first for Rhode Island's fierce belief in independence.

(bell tolling) On the 4th of May, 1776, not the 4th of July, two months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Rhode Island colonists sent this letter to King George III, an act of renunciation, branding Britain's detestable tyranny.

- And it was incredibly brave for a general assembly to make this statement at that time because it does break chains.

- [Pamela] Secretary of State Gregg Amore says this historic document, Breaking Ties with Britain, is one of the treasures kept in Rhode Island's archive.

- They know they're the smallest state, but they had an oversized impact.

And so it's something to be proud of as a Rhode Islander, and Rhode Islanders should know this history.

- [Pamela] In 1663, English minister and theologian Roger Williams founded Rhode Island based on a revolutionary and radical charter.

- Because it included in it a promise of religious freedom, a promise of soul liberty, as Williams called it, people operating under their conscience, and self-government.

- It was that intensely independent spirit, born with Roger Williams, tested in the revolution, that helped define Rhode Island's role in the founding of a nation.

- The first colony to challenge the crown, but the last to ratify the Constitution, a small state determined to defend the freedoms it fought so hard to secure.

- We wanna thank you for joining us on this "Rhode to Independence."

(energetic music) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues)