RHODE ISLAND HISTORY - Rhode Island Historical Society

48 SAMUEL HOPKINSster."UUndeterred by local hostility, Hopkins notonly continued but expanded his reform activitiesin the last decade of his life. In 1801, two years beforehis death, for example, he founded the MissionarySociety of Rhode Island "to promote thegospel in any part of the State where there maybe opportunity for it and to assist Africans in comingto a knowledge of the truth in any way whichmay consist with our means and advantages."> Atage eighty Hopkins was installed as the society'sfirst president.Although the Revolutionary antislavery movementfell far short of its goal to end slavery andthe slave trade in America, it did lay much of thegroundwork for nineteenth century abolitionism.Samuel Hopkins was a major link between thesetwo phases of the antislavery movement in America.In the 18405and 18505 New England reformersrecalled (sometimes romantically) Hopkins'santislavery efforts. William Ellery Channingcredited Hopkins with awakening him to theslave trade's evils. "I am grateful to this sternteacher: ' Channing wrote in 1840, "for turningmy thoughts and heart to the claim and majestyof impartial universal benevolence." John GreenleafWhittier in 1847 published a vignette of Hopkinsthat memorialized the theologian as anantislavery reformer and hailed the Newport minister"as the friend of all mankind - the generousdefender of the poor and the oppressed." Similarly,Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her historical novelTht!' Ministt!'r's Wooing (1859), saluted Hopkinsfor his contributions to the antislavery cause."The only mistake made by the good man," sheobserved, "was that of supposing that the elaborationof theology was preaching the gospel. Thegospel he was preaching constantly, by his pureunwordly living . . . and by the grand humanity,outrunning his age, in which he protested againstthe then admitted system of slavery and the slavetrade."]l In the midst of this "rediscovery " ofHopkins by New England abolitionists, his antislaverywritings were reissued in a volume entitledTimely Articles on Slavt!'ty by the ReverendSamuel Hopkins. Through his doctrine of disinterestedbenevolence, through personal example,and through his writings, Hopkins bequeathed animportant religious legacy to nineteenth-centuryantislavery crusaders.II,-' -JRIHSUbnryWilliam EIl.ry Channing (l7tJ(J../fU2) ........ on. ofHv.ral nin.­tHmh-c.mury ,..,form.,.. in flu. n