The ratification of the United States Constitution by Rhode Island was the 1790 decision by the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations ("Rhode Island") to accede to the United States Constitution. It was a controversial process which occurred only after the United States threatened a trade embargo against Rhode Island for non-compliance.
Rhode Island acquired a reputation for opposing a closer union with the other former British colonies that had formed the United States of America. [1] [2] It vetoed an act of the Congress of the Confederation which earned it a number of deprecatory nicknames, including "Rogue Island" and "the Perverse Sister". [1]
One provision of the Articles of Confederation stated that an amendment to the Articles could only be made with the approval of all the states, and this gave any state a functional veto power over amendments. Other states opposed amendments that might harm their own interests, but Rhode Island was particularly ready to use its veto power. The Confederation Congress called a convention to discuss amendments that would address this and other perceived shortcomings in the Articles, to be convened in Philadelphia in May 1787. But Rhode Island refused to send a delegation, and the convention instead set about drafting a new Constitution. [1] [2] Rhode Island was the only state that did not participate in its proceedings. [2]
The new Constitution took effect on March 4, 1789, since the required nine states had completed their ratification process, and the First United States Congress proposed 12 amendments on September 25. Rhode Island still had not ratified the Constitution and continued to effectively operate outside the new governmental structure. [2]
Rhode Island's opposition was chiefly due to the paper money issued in Rhode Island pounds since 1786 by the governing Country Party, intended to pay off the state's burdensome Revolutionary War debt. Other issues included fear of direct federal taxes and aversion to the lengthy terms for members of Congress. The state's large Quaker population was offended by provisions on the slave trade, while the Federalists' scorn for the state's "excess of democracy" made its residents see the Constitution as a threat. The handful of federalist supporters in Rhode Island were chiefly among the mercantile classes of Providence and Newport. [3]
Nearly a dozen conventions that had been called in Rhode Island to ratify the constitution failed to do so, often by wide margins; in one instance, 92 percent of the delegates voted against ratification. A force of 1,000 Country Party supporters descended on Providence on July 4, 1788, to break up celebrations of New Hampshire's ratification, and armed confrontation was averted only after organizers agreed that the celebrations would commemorate only Independence Day and not New Hampshire's ratification. [1] [2] [4] [5]
On May 18, 1790, the United States Senate passed a bill that would ban all trade with Rhode Island if enacted, effectively isolating the diminutive state from the Union. The Rhode Island General Assembly capitulated 11 days later and ratified the Constitution, before the proposed embargo could be acted on by the United States House of Representatives. [1] [6] However, the General Assembly's ratification included a lengthy list of caveats, including that "the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary." The ratification also contained a list of proposed amendments to the Constitution that Rhode Island wished to see taken up, such as abolition of the slave trade. [1] [6] [7] [8]
Rhode Island Congressman Benjamin Bourne took his seat that year on August 31. [9]
Rhode Island took 101 years to call a vote on ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which began the direct election of senators. The measure came into force in 1913, but the Rhode Island General Assembly did not take up debate on it until 2013, finally passing it the following year. [10] [11]
Rhode Island earlier rejected the Sixteenth Amendment establishing a federal income tax, which came into force in 1913 despite its opposition. [12]
Rhode Island did not ratify the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol. [13]
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 states of the United States, formerly the Thirteen Colonies, that served as the nation's first frame of government. It was debated by the Second Continental Congress at Independence Hall in Philadelphia between July 1776 and November 1777, and finalized by the Congress on November 15, 1777. It came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 colonial states. A guiding principle of the Articles was the establishment and preservation of the independence and sovereignty of the states. The Articles consciously established a weak confederal government, affording it only those powers the former colonies had recognized as belonging to king and parliament. The document provided clearly written rules for how the states' league of friendship, known as the Perpetual Union, would be organized.
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the federal government. The Constitution's first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ; the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world.
The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution places restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, forbidding the practice in peacetime. The amendment was a response to the Quartering Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the buildup to the American Revolutionary War, which had allowed the British Army to lodge soldiers in public buildings.
The 1st United States Congress, comprising the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, met from March 4, 1789, to March 4, 1791, during the first two years of George Washington's presidency, first at Federal Hall in New York City and later at Congress Hall in Philadelphia. With the initial meeting of the First Congress, the United States federal government officially began operations under the new frame of government established by the 1787 Constitution. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the provisions of Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, of the Constitution. Both chambers had a Pro-Administration majority. Twelve articles of amendment to the Constitution were passed by this Congress and sent to the states for ratification; the ten ratified as additions to the Constitution on December 15, 1791, are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, with an additional amendment ratified more than two centuries later to become the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Anti-Federalism was a late-18th-century political movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the 1787 Constitution. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, gave state governments more authority. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried, among other things, that the position of president, then a novelty, might evolve into a monarchy. Though the Constitution was ratified and supplanted the Articles of Confederation, Anti-Federalist influence helped lead to the passage of the Bill of Rights.
Article Seven of the United States Constitution sets the number of state ratifications necessary for the Constitution to take effect and prescribes the method through which the states may ratify it. Under the terms of Article VII, constitutional ratification conventions were held in each of the thirteen states, with the ratification of nine states required for the Constitution to take effect. Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, doing so on December 7, 1787. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, ensuring that the Constitution would take effect. Rhode Island was the last state to ratify the Constitution under Article VII, doing so on May 29, 1790.
Peleg Arnold (1751–1820) was a lawyer, tavern-keeper, jurist, and statesman from Smithfield, Rhode Island. He represented Rhode Island as a delegate to the Continental Congress in the 1787–1788 session. He later served as the chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court from June 1795 to June 1809, and from May 1810 to May 1812.
The United States Constitution has served as the supreme law of the United States since taking effect in 1789. The document was written at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and was ratified through a series of state conventions held in 1787 and 1788. Since 1789, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; particularly important amendments include the ten amendments of the United States Bill of Rights and the three Reconstruction Amendments.
John Collins, was an American politician and a Founding Father of the United States who, as a member of the Continental Congress, signed the Articles of Confederation. He was the third governor of the U.S. state of Rhode Island from 1786 to 1790.
Joseph Stanton Jr. was a military officer, a United States senator of the Anti-Federalist faction and a United States Representative of the Democratic-Republican party.
Jonathan J. Hazard was an American statesman and anti-federalist who served as a delegate for Rhode Island in the Continental Congress.
A convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution, also referred to as an Article V Convention, state convention, or amendatory convention is one of two methods authorized by Article Five of the United States Constitution whereby amendments to the United States Constitution may be proposed: on the Application of two thirds of the State legislatures the Congress shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which become law only after ratification by three-fourths of the states. The Article V convention method has never been used; but 33 amendments have been proposed by the other method, a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress; and 27 of these have been ratified by three-fourths of the States. Although there has never been a federal constitutional convention since the original one, at the state level more than 230 constitutional conventions have assembled in the United States.
The 1788–89 United States House of Representatives elections were the first U.S. House of Representatives elections following the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Each state set its own date for its congressional elections, ranging from November 24, 1788, to March 5, 1789, before or after the first session of the 1st United States Congress convened on March 4, 1789. They coincided with the election of George Washington as the first president of the United States.
William West was an American militia general in the American Revolutionary War, Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, Deputy Governor of Rhode Island, and anti-federalist leader. West also was a party in the first U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1791, West v. Barnes.
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and Magna Carta (1215).
The drafting of the Constitution of the United States began on May 25, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention met for the first time with a quorum at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to revise the Articles of Confederation. It ended on September 17, 1787, the day the Frame of Government drafted by the convention's delegates to replace the Articles was adopted and signed. The ratification process for the Constitution began that day, and ended when the final state, Rhode Island, ratified it on May 29, 1790.
The Congressional Apportionment Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that addresses the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, but was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states. As of 2024, it is one of six unratified amendments.
The Country Party was a political party in Rhode Island in the Confederation and early Federal periods, from about March 1781 until the death in office of its leader, Governor Arthur Fenner, in October 1805. At its peak of influence, it controlled the Rhode Island General Assembly and dominated state politics from 1785 to 1790. A stridently Anti-Federalist party, it was instrumental in resisting ratification of the Constitution and was the organized vehicle for political expression of popular views that led to Rhode Island both disrupting consensus among states under the Articles of Confederation and being the last of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution.
The Confederation period was the era of the United States' history in the 1780s after the American Revolution and prior to the ratification of the United States Constitution. In 1781, the United States ratified the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union and prevailed in the Battle of Yorktown, the last major land battle between British and American Continental forces in the American Revolutionary War. American independence was confirmed with the 1783 signing of the Treaty of Paris. The fledgling United States faced several challenges, many of which stemmed from the lack of an effective central government and unified political culture. The period ended in 1789 following the ratification of the United States Constitution, which established a new, more effective, federal government.
Since the Great Depression, Rhode Island politics have been dominated by the Rhode Island Democratic Party, and the state is considered part of the Democrats' "Blue Wall." Democrats have won all but four presidential elections since 1928, with the exceptions being 1952, 1956, 1972, and 1984. The Rhode Island Republican Party, although virtually non-existent in the Rhode Island General Assembly, has remained competitive in gubernatorial elections, having won one as recently as 2006. Until 2014, Democrats had not won a gubernatorial election in the state since 1992, and it was not until 2018 that they won one by double digits. The Rhode Island General Assembly has continuously been under Democratic control since 1959.
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