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James Manning was born on October 22, 1738 in Piscataway, Middlesex County, New Jersey. He was the son of James and Grace (Fitz-Randolph) Manning, and great-grandson of Jeffrey Manning, one of the earliest settlers in Piscataway township. His father was a prosperous farmer, and James had good educational advantages.
At eighteen he became a pupil in the Latin Grammar School conducted by Rev. Isaac Eaton at Hopewell, New Jersey. In 1758 he entered the College of New Jersey, from which he graduated in 1762, second in a class of twenty-one.
For the first time, he was licensed to preach by the Scotch Plains Baptist Church on February 6, 1763. He was ordained April 19, 1763, and proceeded to travel through the colonies with a view to informing himself regarding religious conditions. About this time the Philadelphia Association of Baptist Churches was discussing the advisability of establishing a college to be principally under the direction of the Baptists. It finally decided that it was practicable to found such an institution in Rhode Island, and Manning was put in charge of the project. Accordingly, in July 1763, on his way to Halifax, he stopped at Newport and laid the matter before a number of influential gentlemen, who gave it their active support. Manning prepared a rough plan for the constitution of the college, and, leaving it in the hands of a committee, who, with the assistance of Ezra Stiles, were to draft a charter, went on his way. After considerable delay and friction, in March 1764 the Rhode Island Assembly granted a charter, which was signed and sealed by the governor and secretary October 24, 1765. In the meantime, April 1764, Manning had settled in Warren, R. I, opened a Latin School, and become the first pastor of a Baptist church, organized in November 1764. In September 1765 he was elected president of the new college. He conducted both school and college in Warren until 1770, when they were moved to Providence, where the first college building, now known as University Hall, was soon erected. That Manning should have been chosen by the Baptists when he was but twenty-five years old to lead their movement in behalf of higher education indicates that thus early he had impressive characteristics. They seem to have been both physical and mental. In 1786 he represented Rhode Island in the Congress of the Confederation, and his letters contain strong arraignments of the states for not better supporting that body. He was chairman of a committee appointed by Providence in 1789 to draft a petition to Congress praying that since Rhode Island would probably soon join the Union, her ships be exempted from foreign tonnage and her goods from foreign duties. With Benjamin Bourne he went to New York to present the same. He strongly advocated the adoption of the Constitution. Interested in public education and long a member of the Providence school committee, in the summer of 1791 he drew up a report recommending the establishment of free public schools. This was one of the last acts of his career. While offering prayer in his home, Sunday morning, July 24, he suffered a stroke of apoplexy, and died five days later in his fifty-third year.
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He was remarkable for his dexterity in athletic exercises, for the symmetry of his body, and gracefulness of his person. In his later years he was about three hundred pounds in weight. Among his principal diversions were mowing and laying stone walls. He was invariably cheerful and genial, and was a good conversationalist. His direction of the college through the first twenty-six years of its history reveals that he had administrative ability of a high order. All that had been accomplished previously was well-nigh destroyed by the Revolution, but at his death the institution was in a thriving condition. He was a good all-round scholar, but too busy to be a thorough student. In addition to his college duties, he assumed charge of the First Baptist Church, Providence, in connection with which for years he carried a heavy load of pastoral work. Although Ezra Stiles, speaking from the Congregational point of view, called Manning a "bigotted Baptist, " among Baptists themselves he was regarded as tolerant and broad-minded. He was one of their acknowledged leaders, and with Isaac Backus and others took a firm stand against the oppression suffered by Baptists under the "Standing Order" in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He was the moving spirit in the organization of the Warren Association, 1767, for the promotion of harmony and concerted effort among the New England Baptist churches. In 1774, at a conference with members of the Continental Congress, Philadelphia, he presented a memorial citing acts of oppression in Massachusetts and pleading for both civil and religious liberty. His influence in public affairs was considerable. Some apparently thought him not over-enthusiastic in his support of the Revolution.
On March 23, 1763 he was married to Margaret, daughter of John Stites of Elizabethtown.
