A Federalist cartoon show Rhode Island, the last of the thirteen pillars of the new union, teetering on the edge of a fall.
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Always contrarian Rhode
Island had stamped its tiny foot and threatened to hold its breath until it
turned blue. No, they would absolutely
not ratify the tyrannical document
known as the Constitution of the United
States.
Sure, the moneyed
interests in big states were for it—Virginia.
New York, Pennsylvania. And
not-quite-so-big Massachusetts and Connecticut had voted for ratification—but that was all the more reason to be
suspicious. The big bullies were likely
to swamp the sovereignty of the
pipsqueak. And Massachusetts had been
literally threatening the existence of the former Colony since Baptist Roger
Williams and his followers escaped the clutches of Puritans and set up a refuge of religious toleration.
Connecticut on the other side was now even more firmly in the hands of
the highly orthodox Black Legion of Congregational ministers deeply
suspicious of loose religious practices next door which included a thriving Jewish congregation, Quakers, and even—horror of horrors—Catholics.
Rhode Island, heavily dependent economically on its ports and merchants, had been such a hot bed of opposition to heavy handed British taxation and trade restriction policies that a mob of locals had done the faux Indians at the Boston Tea Party one better and
burned the grounded revenue schooner
Gaspee to the water line back in 1772. And it became the first colony, a mouse roaring at a lion, to sever its ties to the mother
land, declaring its independence
on May 4, 1776, two months before the Continental
Congress got around to it. Its
delegates at the Congress, Stephen
Hopkins and William Ellery
naturally cast Rhode Island’s single vote for Independence.
The Black 1st Rhode Island Regiment of Militia helped Continental General John Sullivan and the French recapture Newport during the American Revolution.
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During the war the British easily occupied Newport, which became a major Royal Navy Base. Yet the tiny colony still managed to provide
one of the most important and reliable Regiments
of the Line for George Washington’s often
beleaguered Continental Army. When the French entered the war as allies,
American troops under General John
Sullivan, including the all Black
1st Rhode Island Regiment of state
militia in their smart and distinctive all white uniforms, in somewhat
uneasy cooperation with French forces
under Admiral the Comte d’Estaing dislodged the British.
Ruined Newport became the principle base of operations for
the French and General Washington took up residence there planning to go on the
offensive when their combined forces could be brought to bear in unison. It was from there that the General launched
his long march to Yorktown to trap Lord Cornwallis’s army on a peninsula bottled up by the French
fleet. You probably recall how that
worked out.
But having played a critical role in the Revolution, Rhode Island’s post war economy was more devastated
than most of the other colonies. Its
merchant traders had trouble re-establishing old trade routes as the British cut off lucrative trade with
the sugar and spice islands of the Caribbean. Instead
they used their ships to turn increasingly to the Slave Trade and within a few years Rhode Island dominated between
60 to as much as 90% of that trade, tying its economy to the slave holding South.
When the Articles of
Confederation failed to provide enough centralized
government to retire war debt
and facilitate trade, Rhode Island
suspicious of the undertaking, never even sent delegates to what became the Constitutional Convention.
In the years following the adoption of the Constitution by
the convention in 1787 there was a vigorous national debate aimed at
encouraging the former colonies to ratify the Constitution and officially join
the new Federal Union. The eloquent and elegant arguments of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay were countered by dire
warnings of tyranny and the re-imposition of monarchy by wily political leaders like Edmund Randolph, George Mason, and New York Governor George Clinton who styled themselves Anti-Federalists. Rhode Island was firmly in the
Anti-Federalist camp.
To
assuage those fears, ten new Amendments to
the Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights were added to the original document. Rhode Island, however, was still suspicious.
Rhode
Island voters—property owning white men—rejected
ratification in a popular referendum on
March 27, 1778 by the lopsided margin of 237 to 2,708 after neighboring
Massachusetts and Connecticut had affirmed it.
One
by one all of the other 12 former colonies fell into line isolating and
surrounded the littlest state, which seemed determined to hold on to its own
independence.
It
is said that no state was forced to ratify the Constitution, but that might be
a stretch in the case of Rhode Island.
With her ports becoming havens for smugglers,
gunboats began cruising menacingly
off shore. Annual muster days of Massachusetts militia were marked by drills that
hinted that a march against its neighbor might be in the offing.
George
Washington had already been elected first President
of the United States under the Constitution, and had taken the oath of office in New York City where Congress was also meeting. A new national government had become a
reality.
Old Kings County
Court House–now a public library in Kingston—where the ratification was
defeated by a special Convention in March 1790.
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On
May 29, 1790 after the Constitution was again defeated at a special convention in March and a bruising
debate in the legislature members
finally ratified the Constitution by the narrowest of margins—34 for to 32
against.
Rhode
Island became the last of the Original
13 to join the union.
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