Includes Biographical Essay, Further Readings, Source Citation

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

When Scituate was set off from Providence he was made moderator of the first town meeting. In 1732 he became town clerk and in 1735 president of the town council. From 1732 to 1738 (with the exception of the year 1734) he represented Scituate in the General Assembly, in 1741 was again elected assemblyman, and became speaker in 1742. In 1736 he was chosen one of the justices of the court of common pleas for Providence County, as well as justice of the peace, and in 1741 became clerk of the court of common pleas. About the year 1740 he joined his brother Esek [q.v.] in his commercial ventures and in 1742 moved to Providence, where he continued to live until his death.

Between 1744 and 1752 he served in the General Assembly, from 1747 to 1749 he held the position of assistant justice of the Rhode Island superior court, and he became chief justice in 1751. In 1755 he was elected governor over William Greene [q.v.], by whom he had been defeated the year before. The town of Providence had by this time become a challenge to Newport, and of Providence, Hopkins was the voice. Newport's representative was Samuel Ward, son of Gov. Richard Ward [q.v.], aristocrat, and owner of a large estate in the Narragansett country.

In 1757 he helped defeat Governor Hopkins for reelection, and thenceforth until 1768 there raged between Ward and Hopkins with their followers something not unlike a tribal feud. In this Hopkins had the advantage for he was defeated by Ward but three times. A conclusion of the feud was effected when both men withdrew in favor of Josias Lyndon, who was elected governor on a coalition ticket.

Though Rhode Island was a chartered government and hence under a union must sacrifice some of its independence, Hopkins, its leading representative, favored union. He was sent to the general congresses of 1754, 1755, and 1757. At the Albany Congress of 1754, where Benjamin Franklin was urging his plan of colonial union, Hopkins and Franklin became firm friends. After the passage of the Stamp Act Hopkins was chairman of a committee to draft instructions to the Providence deputies in the General Assembly and in 1768 was again chairman of a committee to consider the circular letter addressed to the colonies by Massachusetts.

In the five years preceding the Revolution he was a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly and chief justice of the superior court of the colony. When the Rhode Islanders--some of them his own kinsmen--burned the schooner Gaspee, Joseph Wanton, governor of the colony, was instructed by the Crown to arrest the destroyers and send them to England for trial, but the Chief Justice frustrated the action by declaring that he would "neither apprehend" any of the offenders "by his own order, nor suffer any Executive Officers in the Colony to do it" (Foster, post, II, 246 and Appendix T).

It was in 1774, the year of the convening of the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia, that Stephen Hopkins in association with his former political foe, Samuel Ward, made formal entry upon the national stage. Although this Congress avoided any declaration looking toward American independence, Hopkins did not hesitate to say, "Powder and ball will decide this question" (Foster, post, II, 131).

In the Second Continental Congress (1775) he was a member of a committee charged with submitting a plan for furnishing the colonies with a navy. He was also a member of the committee for preparing articles of confederation. On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island had on its own account renounced allegiance to the King of Great Britain, and two months thereafter was framed the American Declaration of Independence, which Hopkins signed.

His acts in connection with the Articles of Confederation were the last he performed on the national stage, for in September 1776 he was compelled to return home because of declining health. Between 1776 and 1780 he was locally alert in the cause of independence, serving as delegate to conventions of New England states, and in 1777 serving as a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly.

The tastes of Stephen Hopkins were not only political; they were literary and scientific as well. Although he was without systematic education he had an insatiable relish for reading and was influential in establishing, about 1754, a public subscription library. In 1762 he helped found the Providence Gazette; and Country Journal as a patriotic counterpoise to the Loyalist Newport Mercury, or, the Weekly Aavertiser, and he contributed to its contents through a series of years. In its columns were printed the initial chapters of "An Historical Account of the Planting and Growth of Providence" (Oct. 20, 1762, and Jan. 12 to Mar. 30, 1765; reprinted in Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, vol. II, 1885, and in Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 2 ser., vol. IX, 1822) and "The Rights of Colonies Examined" (Dec. 22, 1764; reprinted in Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, vol. VI, 1861), which was issued as a pamphlet the next year and widely reprinted throughout the American colonies and in England.

In this latter contribution he attacked such measures as the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, then imminent, on the ground that direct taxation of an unconsenting people was tyrannous, and he haltingly expressed the theory of colonial home rule which was later to find its fullest elaboration in the work of John Dickinson. Himself a merchant in private life, he did much to make Rhode Island a manufacturing center.

He was the first chancellor of Rhode Island College (Brown University), founded at Warren in 1764, and was instrumental in obtaining its removal to Providence. He was a member of the Philosophical Society of Newport, having been admitted early as an out-of-town member, and in 1769 was concerned in erecting a telescope in Providence for observing the transit of Venus.

In 1726 he married Sarah Scott, descendant of Richard Scott, Rhode Island's earliest Quaker. Seven children were the result of this marriage. Of his five sons four followed the sea, and three became masters of vessels. His first wife died in 1753, and in 1755 he married Mrs. Anne (Smith) Smith.
-- Irving Berdine Richman--

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