Presentation on Rhode Island's Strange Relationship with Democracy - July 27, 2022

When HistoryCamp was first conceived circa 2013-2014, I had heard about it somehow. I don't remember exactly where or how anymore, but I remember hearing it was going to be an "unconference." At the time I was intrigued, though since I have sat through so many unconference PD's at work they have kind of lost their luster. 

For those of you that may not know, an unconference is 

"a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid hierarchical aspects of a conventional conference, such as sponsored presentations and top-down organization." (Wikipedia)

When I learned they were looking for people to come do presentations about a historical topic they were passionate about, with none of the gatekeeping typical of an academic history conference, it sounded like fun. Well imho, presenting at an actual conference is fun too, but this sounded like great day of people discussing history stuff, not so they could ramp up their academic paper count but because they really wanted to. 

The T-shirt from the very first History Camp. I still have this!

In the beginning, HistoryCamp was under the aegis of BarCamp, which is where founder Lee Wright first got the idea for it. It has since become it's own thing with it's own website and 501(c)(3) with HistoryCamps taking place all around the US.

What is History Camp?

History Camp is a casual conference for adults from all walks of life—students, teachers, professors, authors, bloggers, reenactors, interpreters, museum and historical society directors and board members, genealogists, and everyone else—regardless of profession or degree—who is interested in and wants to learn more about history. (historycamp.org/about)

In any event, I decided to do my presentation about a topic I found to be a bit ironic  -- Rhode Island had been so democratic it was condemned as overly so by other colonies. The seizure of the General Assembly by the farmers in the mid-1780s and their ensuing antics with paper money was one of the incentives for the Constitutional Convention and the drafting of a stronger central government that would curb such excesses of populism and democracy. 

Yet by the nineteenth century the refusal of Rhode Island's ruling elite to abandon the Charter of 1663 -- a government established by BRITISH KING that continued to be state's system of government nearly SEVENTY YEARS AFTER THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION -- made Rhode Island more than an anachronism. The landowners refused to open up the franchise to non-landholders, something every other state had done by 1840. This led to a revolution known as the Dorr Rebellion, which resulted in an actual constitution being drafted to replace the royal charter that only partly addressed the lack of democracy and voting rights for propertyless workers in the state. 

So in a general way, that was what my first HistoryCamp presentation, on March 8, 2014, was about.

A flyer for the very first History Camp!

I have not given that particular presentation since, though I took elements from it to create a "History of the General Assembly" slideshow that I review each year with at the first leadership meeting for students in RI Model Legislature. 

This spring when the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society took a poll of its members for what they wanted the society to do this year, there was a "great interest in history lectures." As the Society's historian, I was asked if I could do some history lectures for the members and the interested public. So I am dusting off this presentation from 2014 for the first lecture of the summer, which I am giving it next week.

Facebook promo

This evening I met with one of the organizers of the "Movie Night" that the society is hosting, so we could figure out the best place to set up the presentation. It had been mentioned at the last meeting that maybe I could deliver out on the lawn. That would be fine if this were only a lecture, but the images from the slideshow are intrinsic to the talk. 

My first thought was to give the presentation outside on the east wall of the Paine House Museum, when the sun would shining on the direct opposite side of the building, but it was fairly obvious that it would still be way too bright at 6:30 PM when my talk is scheduled to begin. (Note: the images below were all taken in the morning, circa 10 AM)

The first thought was on east side of the building on the windowless span at the top of the stairs to nowhere... but at 6:30 PM it would still be too bright here.

The slope of the east lawn would be problematic as well. The projector would
need to be on some kind of a platform at least five feet off the ground so the projection would not be trapezoidal...

After looking at the other options inside the museum, we settled on using the "tavern room" (images below). 

The entrance to the Tavern Room following "the loop" from the front door.
The light-filtering shades are drawn in this photo and with the camera lens "zoomed"
all the way out, the lowness of the ceilings are emphasized. 
This section of the house likely dates to the early-to-mid 1700s

We will need to rearrange the chairs and tables. The wall in the top center will
make a great surface to project onto

 The right-hand area directly ahead is where I will set up a folding table for my
laptop and projector. 

See you all a week from tomorrow!