THE FIRST WHISTLEBLOWERS

In 1777, during the third year of the Revolutionary War, a group of American sailors alleged that Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander in chief of the Continental Navy, the forerunner of the U.S. Navy, had tortured captured British sailors. In a petition to the Continental Congress, 10 officers of the frigate Warren accused Hopkins of treating the prisoners “in the most inhuman and barbarous manner” and asked lawmakers to “inquire into his character & conduct.” Congress did so and voted to remove Hopkins from his position. Hopkins then retaliated by accusing two of the whistleblowing naval officers of libel and having them arrested.

The sailors, 3rd Lieutenant Richard Marven and Midshipman Samuel Shaw, asked Congress to secure their release from prison. Congress not only ruled in their favor but on July 30, 1778, passed the nation’s—and the world’s—first legislation to protect whistleblowers.

But Congress didn’t stop there. Although the new nation was at war and strapped for resources, Congress paid Marven and Shaw’s legal fees—$1,418 in Continental dollars, a substantial sum in that era. Congress also passed legislation to ensure that, like Marven and Shaw, future whistleblowers would have legal counsel to fight libel charges. In a final demonstration of their convictions, the lawmakers authorized that all records related to Hopkins’s removal be made public—thus acknowledging, even before the Constitution became America’s basic law, the importance of whistleblowing as a means of exposing important truths.

Hopkins, the catalyst for the passage of America’s first whistleblower law, had acquired his maritime skills as a slave runner in Rhode Island. The state is known for its celebration of religious tolerance, but not so much for its tolerance of slavery. Rhode Island passed the first colonial antislavery statute in 1652, abolishing African slavery and stating that “black mankinde,” like white mankinde, could not be indentured for