James Manning (October 22, 1738 – July 29, 1791) was an American Baptist minister, educator and legislator from Providence, Rhode Island.

At Princeton, Manning studied under president Samuel Finley who served under a board of trustees that declared, "Our idea is to send into the World good Scholars and useful members of Society."

[1] He married Margaret Stites in the year of his graduation from Princeton and a few weeks after the marriage he was publicly ordained by Scotch Plains' Baptist Church.

[3][4] Reverend Manning gave the library of the college its first book, Valentin Schindler's Lexicon Pentaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum & Arabicum, which was printed in Hanover, Germany in 1612.

In 1774, Dr. Manning reportedly presented an argument in favor of religious freedom in an address at Philadelphia's Carpenter's Hall to leading figures from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other colonies:It has been said by a celebrated writer in politics, that but two things are worth contending for--Religion and Liberty.

For the latter we are at present nobly exerting ourselves through all this extensive continent; and surely no one whose bosom feels the patriotic glow in behalf of civil liberty can remain torpid to the more ennobling flame of RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

These allied troops were based in Rhode Island for a year before they embarked on a 600-mile (970 km) march in 1781 from Rhode Island to Virginia, where they fought and defeated British forces sent by King George III of the United Kingdom on the Yorktown, Virginia peninsula in the Siege of Yorktown and the Battle of the Chesapeake.

[8] In 1786, the Rhode Island General Assembly unanimously elected James Manning to serve as its delegate in the 7th Congress of the Confederation.

There were 187 yeas and 168 nays on the last day of the session, and "before the final question was taken, Governor Hancock, the president, invited Dr. Manning to close the solemn invocation with prayer.