Rhode Island creates the first colonial standing army
- When
- April 22, 1775
- Where
- Colony of Rhode Island
On April 22, 1775, the Rhode Island General Assembly created the first standing army in the colonies, numbering 1,500 men.
Months before renouncing allegiance, the Rhode Island General Assembly acted on April 22, 1775 to create the first standing army in the colonies, a force of 1,500 men. A separate passage records that on June 15, 1775, the first naval engagement of the American Revolution took place, involving an American sloop commanded by a captain; the source text is truncated and does not identify the opposing vessel or the engagement's location.
Sources
- Rhode Island Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-24
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.