Providence Athenaeum

• They knew each other, were both supporters of libraries with successful legal careers, and were politically active.
• Both men claimed that they felt truly British – but from their shared identity they arrived at violently opposing conclusions.

Parallel paths

• The stories of Martin Howard and Stephen Hopkins begin as mirror images of each other, including growing up in Rhode Island.
• He served as Overseer of the Poor, Smallpox Inspector, and in the Rhode Island General Assembly.
• In the early 1760s, their paths might have seemed closely aligned.
• Howard’s and Hopkins’ reactions to these laws marked a key phase of division between them, and across colonial North America.

Dueling pamphlets

• Hopkins supported the loose coalition of organizations collectively known as the Sons of Liberty who campaigned against imperial taxation.
• A close read of the pamphlets published by Howard and Hopkins in the mid-1760s shows they both invoke their common Anglo-American heritage – but only one would eventually come to the conclusion that it was necessary to sever that link.

• To him, that included the right to have a voice in Parliamentary deliberations about colonial taxation, because he lived in Britain’s North American colonies.
• But in Howard’s view, this did not include a right to vote in Parliamentary elections: Not all British people could vote, even if they lived in Britain.

A split based on shared identity and values

• It was a revolution, but those who sought to break from Britain did so as a way of preserving their British identity.
• This seeming contradiction helps illustrate why groups of people who shared Anglo-American identity and heritage fought on both sides of a violent war to preserve their divergent views of that identity and heritage.

Abby Chandler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.