Delaware was the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
Delaware’s state convention approved ratification unanimously on December 7, 1787. Because it acted first, Delaware earned the nickname “The First State,” a designation still used officially and popularly.
The ratification occurred more than a decade after the Declaration of Independence and belongs to the next stage of the founding story remembered during America250. The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the framework for the federal government after the required number of states approved it.
Delaware’s ratification is sometimes confused with its role in independence-era events. Caesar Rodney, a Delaware leader, famously traveled to Philadelphia in 1776 to vote for independence, but the state’s first-place ranking in this question comes from its 1787 constitutional ratification, not from the Declaration.