Rhode Island was the first of the 13 colonies to renounce allegiance to the British Crown, doing so on May 4, 1776.
The colony’s legislature passed an act removing references to King George III from Rhode Island’s governing documents and ending its allegiance to the Crown. This happened two months before the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Rhode Island’s action was therefore an important early step toward the wider movement for independence commemorated by America250.
The fact is sometimes confused with North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves of April 12, 1776. The Halifax Resolves were the first formal authorization for a colony’s delegates to vote for independence in Congress. Rhode Island’s May 4 act was instead the first colonial legislative renunciation of allegiance to the British Crown.
Rhode Island also had a distinctive revolutionary record. It was associated with the 1772 burning of the British revenue schooner HMS Gaspee and later became the last former colony to ratify the United States Constitution, in 1790.