Page 234 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

234 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

standing significantly damaged. All churches in town save one (the Anglican Trinity Church)
were heavily damaged having been used at times as barracks, hospitals and even an indoor
riding academy for officers. The colonial state house was also heavily damaged so the when
the state legislature returned after the British had left town, it was forced to temporarily meet
in the nearby Jewish synagogue for a short time.
The island’s landscape had been totally altered by the removal of nearly every tree on the
24 mile long island. Hardly a wooden fence had been left standing. Farms had been used as
soldier camp grounds and much of the livestock and vegetables had been taken by the depart-
ing regiments. Its wharves and commerce at a complete standstill, the winter of 1779-1780
proved to be as harsh as the previous one. even with the British and Hessian troops gone,
there was still a chronic shortage of firewood and foodstuffs for another year.
One of the most noticeable effects of the occupation was the failure of much of the popu-
lation to return to the town following the British troop pull-out. Only about 35 percent of
Newport’s 1774 residents could still be found in town by the end of the war. Concomitant to
the loss of population was the nearly entire destruction of the town’s trade. Before the war,
Newport had been a maritime center of commerce. Most people in town were connected to
or actively engaged in the seafaring industry. And even with the British gone from town, the
seas were still largely controlled by the Royal Navy. The importation of molasses from the
West Indies, long a staple of the rum industry in town had totally dried up. Moreover, even
if a ship got through the British blockade, the town’s wharves remained unusable. And while
the legislature quickly seized the homes and estates of Tories who had fled with the British,
these were not nearly enough to offset the destitute situation of those residents still living in
town.
Some residents who had stayed in town during the occupation, although they professed
loyalty to the American cause, were still declared persona non grata and banished from the
state of Rhode Island altogether. The state legislature passed laws to identify and banish To-
ries and collaborators. However, the definition of who was called a collaborator, as Newport
resident Thomas Robinson found out, could be quite broad. Robinson wrote, “the vote…to
have the Inhabitants banished, was more of a Mob than the Sence of the Town, not a solid
Character amongst them, not scarsely any to be called reputable amongst men.” Being de-
prived of the right to vote in his own defense Robinson and others who had remained in town
were driven beyond the state borders and had their homes and property confiscated.
37
During the course of the war and especially during its occupation, Newport not only lost
its principal market, the West Indies, but also saw an exodus of most of its powerful merchant
class. Businessman Aaron Lopez was one of the first to leave. Many others followed him out
of town taking their capital and businesses with them leaving Newport, as one Bostonian
noted, “a town of Tories and beggars.” Once these merchants left town, most never returned
and established themselves elsewhere leaving a commercial leadership vacuum that was hard
to replicate. However and ironically, Aaron Lopez was one of the few who planned to return
after the evacuation but he died enroute to his former home in 1782.
In the end, Newport resembled, as Benjamin Waterhouse termed it, “an old battered

37 Withey, 216.