Rhode Island’s role in the drafting and ratification of the US Constitution was unlike other states. Rhode Island was the only state not to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Then, when asked to convene a state convention to ratify the Constitution, Rhode Island instead sent the ratification question to individual towns asking them to vote. Eventually, due to secession threats from Providence, Newport, and Bristol, and fearing reprisals from the other 12 ratifying states, Rhode Island held a convention and ratified the Constitution in 1790.

There were several reasons for Rhode Island’s resistance including its concern that the Constitution gave too much power to the central government at the expense of the states. The Constitution would also have made the state’s practice of printing paper money illegal. The issue best remembered today, however, is that in its original form, the Constitution did not explicitly protect religious freedom, a core Rhode Island principle introduced by Roger Williams and protected in its Royal Charter.

You can learn more about Rhode Island’s ratification of the Constitution from our interactive timeline.