Product Description

Sons of Providence paints a vivid portrait of Colonial life as we follow these founding brothers in their rise to the heights of American commerce and power and from revolution to nationhood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171015 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Rappleye (All American Mafioso) provides an incisive study of John and Moses Brown, two of four brothers from the Providence banking, import/export and slave-trading family. John spent his life as an unrepentant participant in the business of America's "peculiar institution." But Moses—following the American Revolution, during which all the Browns took up the cause of liberty—discovered Quakerism and abolitionism. He thereafter stood opposed to the business interests of his brother and the balance of his family. (Only Nicholas Brown Jr. joined Moses in his crusade). During 1789, Moses organized an abolitionist group in Providence that was instrumental in achieving passage of the federal Slave Trade Act of 1794 prohibiting ships destined to transport slaves to any foreign country from outfitting in American ports. John Brown—who deemed it improper to deny American citizens "the benefits of a trade permitted by all the European nations"—was the first Rhode Islander tried under that legislation. Convicted, he suffered the forfeiture of his slave ship, ironically named Hope. The tale of the Browns provides unique insight into the festering wound of slavery as manifested, with hard-edged and profitable heartlessness, during the colonial and postcolonial eras. 16 pages of photos, 3 maps. (May 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
In the winter of 1770, the Brown brothers of Providence won a spirited contest among various Rhode Island interests for the honor of establishing the colony's first college. They chose to locate it on Prospect Hill, "with the town of Providence laid out below, and all the broad reach of Narragansett Bay in view to the south." It was called Rhode Island College, and it held its classes in "the largest building in Rhode Island, with dimensions of 150 by 46 feet, five stories high, and all enclosed in brick" -- a considerable feat of construction when one considers that most of Providence at the time consisted of modest single-family wooden houses.

That great building was then called the College Edifice. Now it is University Hall, the principal administrative center of Brown University, the name given to Rhode Island College in 1804 in recognition of the Brown family's support and generosity. It is, of course, a very different institution now, but its indebtedness to the Browns remains great. So, too, does the ambiguity of the Browns' legacy because some of their fortune's roots are less than honorable.

Like many other wealthy New Englanders of their time, the Browns were in the slave trade. That this trade flourished in New England is perhaps the dirtiest secret of a region that has spent much of the past two centuries lecturing the rest of the country about slavery, racial discrimination and other practices of which New England feigns innocence. The Browns were not in the trade as heavily as many of the great families of Newport, 30 miles to the south on Narragansett Bay. But not merely did they deal in slaves, they owned them; their treatment of their human chattel may have been somewhat more humane than that of plantation owners in the South, but their servants were slaves all the same. Though Moses Brown, an enthusiastic convert to Quakerism, freed his own slaves in 1773, his brother John never got over his belief "that the true course to wealth lay through Africa." He "willingly assumed the mantle of spokesman for slaving interests" as abolitionist sentiment began to!

rise in Rhode Island.

All of this is reported by Charles Rappleye, a freelance journalist and editor whose previous book (written with Ed Becker, a private detective) was All-American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story. The leap from the Mafia to colonial New England is a long one, but Rappleye makes it with style. He is a diligent researcher (who has difficulty letting go of what he finds, hence this book's excessive length) and a fair-minded, unjudgmental chronicler of the Browns' complicated story. Unsurprisingly, his sympathies gravitate toward Moses, the brother whose conscience and moral acuity eventually made him one of New England's most ardent and effective opponents of slavery. He also gives full due to John, the rougher and more driven of the two men but, in some ways, the more interesting.

John was born in 1736, Moses two years later. Their father, James, was well established in Providence; indeed, by the time the boys were born, the Browns were the leading family of Providence, chiefly because of their various nautical activities. After James's death in 1751, the boys were raised by their uncle Obadiah. "Records show that between 1748 and 1760, Obadiah and his nephews owned outright or jointly more than sixty vessels. . . . While the slave trade was never its primary concern, the family firm maintained an active interest in that line of business," and the boys came to maturity taking it for granted. In the mid-1760s, when John, Moses and their brother Joseph invested in a slave ship sailing out of Newport called Sally, "each signed on to this venture individually, and as equal partners."

There was nothing unusual about this. What was unusual was that less than a decade later, Moses had a revelation: "I saw my slaves with my spiritual eyes plainly as I see you now, and it was given to me as clearly to understand that the sacrifice that was called for of my hand was to give them their liberty." He offered his slaves generous terms of release, including use of his own land. Rappleye writes:

"As obvious a moral affront as slavery appears today, there was no consensus on the evils inherent to slavery at the time Moses freed his slaves in 1773. Opposition to slavery was, in fact, espoused by a tiny minority, controversial even among the Quakers, and considered heretical by theologians and political thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic. In the West Indies in particular, but also in North and South America, slavery was the engine that drove the mercantile empires of Europe. The institution was as old as time -- finding explicit sanction in the Bible, and in the glory days of Greece and Rome -- and had flourished, in its modern form, for two hundred years. It appeared, in the eighteenth century, as universal and immutable as human nature."

Moses' change of heart, though, was complete. He believed that "given the opportunity, blacks could assimilate into white society," and, "unlike many fellow abolitionists, Moses saw blacks not just as pitiable objects for philanthropy but as equal to whites in every human capacity." He was, for his day and time, a genuine radical, and his views greatly complicated his relationship with his brother John, who had "built his fortune as a smuggler and a privateer" and, during the war with England, "managed to turn the war into a personal bonanza," through profiteering that made him "the richest man in Rhode Island."

John was an odd duck: pugnacious, overbearing, impulsive, greedy, yet "within the circle of his family . . . caring and compassionate, a father who doted over his children and shared their smallest concerns." He "was possessed of a vision acutely tuned to his times and the direction that America was headed. The sheer range of his enterprises, from farming and manufacturing to shipping and finance, was extraordinary. And while he was a man of property, he was never obsessed with his possessions. . . . For John, the pleasure was not in the spoils but in the hunt, and in the stature that came with material wealth."

After Moses' revelation about slavery, the brothers' relationship became testy and underwent sharp swings. The men liked and admired each other, different though they were, but slavery put them on opposite sides of the greatest moral issue ever faced by the country in whose founding they played a part. Once they took opposing stands in public, Moses "knew now -- if he had any doubts before -- that his nemesis was his brother." John "embraced the role of ever-ready alter ego, dogging Moses, even ridiculing him in his quest for spiritual atonement." Still, "Moses never broke with John, never even rebuked him for his public attacks on his character. It was as if John had become the first object in Moses' mission of spiritual atonement: if he could not bring his own brother to share his sense of moral obligation, how could he expect to reform an entire nation?"

That, as we know all too well nearly two and a half centuries later, is a task far too large for any individual, even one as great as Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. The sorrow that seems to have descended on Moses in his later years was unwarranted; he had done his best. But as Rappleye understands, the struggle of brother against brother is deep in the American grain. To call the conflict between the Brown brothers America in microcosm would be far too glib, and to his credit Rappleye resists the temptation, but it is a struggle with which countless Americans have been intimately familiar over the generations, and one that led to the most terrible war in the country's history. So Sons of Providence is more than the story of two privileged and disputatious men, and it should be read with an eye to its larger implications.

Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Rappleye focuses on two of four Brown brothers, John and Moses, from one of the chartered families of Rhode Island, and how their maturation reflected the conflicts and challenges of our nation in foundation. Following an initial joint venture in the international slave trade, the brothers later took opposite positions on slavery; John increased his involvement, while Moses became strongly antislavery. Both became central players in Rhode Island politics through both the political and commercial sphere. John's antitaxation, anticolonial activities helped to spur the move for independence. Although Moses evolved into a conscientious Quaker with the highest ideals, they still worked jointly in family-owned businesses and for the common good in the formation of Rhode Island's first college, now Brown University. Spanning a century, from 1736 to 1836, this work highlights regional issues that became nationwide--slavery, the fight for liberty, and protection from unfairly imposed taxations, religious principles, as well as the new nation's political ideals. The Brown family saga reflects on many issues that remain American dilemmas: the balance between commercial and religious and political ideals. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Remarkable book chronicling the issues, politics and personalities of the Revolutionary period in Rhode Island.
The tiny State of Rhode Island certainly played a significant role during the American Revolution. Few recall that when Roger Williams established Rhode Island in 1644 it was for all practical purposes the first practicing democratic state since the fall of Athens. Rhode Islanders were an exceptionally independent lot. The burning of the two masted British schooner "Gaspee" in June of 1772 by a group of leading citizens of the colony essentially struck the first blow in the nations quest for independence. In "Sons of Providence" author Charles Rappleye recalls the historic events that were unfolding in Rhode Island in those years and focuses on two brothers, John and Moses Brown, who would find themselves on opposite sides of so many of the important questions of their day. It is a compelling story.
Until recently I never realized how important the issue of the slave trade was as the nations march toward independence proceeded. It seems slavery was a highly emotional issue even in the 1770's and 1780's. John and Moses Brown along with brothers James and Nicholas were members of one of the most prominent families in colonial Providence. The Brown family was involved in all manner of commerce and in 1765 they made the decision to enter the slave trade. And so it was that they outfitted a ship they christened "Sally" to make the voyage. In "Sons of Providence" you will discover why the slave trade was such a controversial and dirty business. If you have never read about the conditions that existed on these ships then you are sure to be horrified. It turns out that roughly half the slaves that were picked up on the West Coast of Africa died during the return voyage.
In any event, in the years following the "Sally" debacle John Brown and his brother Moses would pursue entirely different paths. John was first and foremost a businessman and lobbied for laws and policies favorable to the merchant class. For the rest of his life John Brown would continue to oppose any measures that would outlaw slavery and restict commerce in any way. Moses Brown on the other hand would renounce his Baptist heritage (his great grandfather Chad Brown was the first pastor of the First Baptist Church in America)and become a Quaker. Quakers were among the earliest and most vocal opponents of slavery and the simple Quaker lifestyle held much appeal for Moses Brown. Moses Brown would divest himself of much of his fortune and become one of the leading abolitionists of his day.
Although John and Moses Brown would continue to collaborate on a number of projects over the next quarter century they would nonetheless find themselves on opposite sides of any number of important issues.
In his extraordinary book "John Adams" author David McCullough
gets much of his source material from the voluminous letters between John and Abigail Adams. Likewise, much of the material for "Sons of Providence" appears to be culled from letters between John and Moses Brown. As such this book provides tremendous insight into the thought processes of those on both sides of so many of the important issues of that era.
"Sons of Providence" is exceptionally well-written and meticulously researched. This is a must read for history buffs and a great choice for general readers as well. Highly recommended!

eye opening
the north caused and profitted from slavery more than history books tell. this fabulous story shows two brothers who embodied the american quest for liberty while confronting the great question that still haunts our country today. incredible circumstances find the battle between abolition and slavery contained in one family, and details how the north defended slavery during the birth of our nation.

First Rate Popular History
This is the best kind of popular history book. The author has used the tensions within the rising Brown family to highlight the tensions within the rising colonies. Rhode Island is the perfect panorama for a story like this, the home of individual rights and abolition in America, yet built on the proceeds of slavery, rum and piracy.