On this day 250 years ago in Providence, Nicholas Cooke, the Governor of Rhode Island, wrote to General Washington that the Rhode Island Assembly

took into Possession the Estates of several of the most active Tories, and also passed an Act making it Death and Confiscation of Estate to supply the Enemy’s Navy, or Army, with Provisions, or naval or warlike Stores, or to hold a traiterous Correspondence with them, or to pilot any of their Ships, with an Exception in Favour of the Town of Newport, who may, under the Direction of the Commander of the Forces on Rhode Island, supply the Ships in that Harbor with a stipulated Quantity of Provisions, upon Condition that the Wood-Boats, Ferry-Boats, and Boats with Provisions pass and repass unmolested.

Source: “Nicholas Cooke to George Washington, 25 November 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0390. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 426–427.]