Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 53.

Law and Disorder, Rhode Island.

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on the PayPal subscription button. In our last episode, we looked at the creation of the Rhode Island

government in 1647. Three years previously, we looked at the creation of the Rhode Island government in 1647.

Three years previously, Providence had been granted a patent by Parliament, and Roger Williams

had taken his time in setting up a workable system. He had managed to get together the support

of Gorton, at Warwick, and from a quidneck,

to be able to set up a general assembly, which would include all the shareholders in the colony,

and then a board of eight elected officials. Rhode Island was surrounded by potential threats

to her unique way of life, and the townships would be all the safer for uniting together.

This was where we left things last week.

Today, we begin to examine the speed with which things began to go wrong.

First of all, it was very quickly realized that their citizens were unsuited to work

as legislatures. They spent a year at it and got nowhere. It was a failure. Since direct democracy

had failed, they tried a shift towards representative democracy.

The General Assembly voted to transfer its powers to a body of representatives, six from each town,

who tried to include popular democracy into their actions. They experimented with versions of referendums, but none of

...