Rhode Island was the first of the thirteen colonies to renounce allegiance to Britain in 1776.
On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island’s General Assembly declared that the colony was no longer bound by its allegiance to King George III. This occurred two months before the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4.
Rhode Island had already taken a strongly resistant position toward British authority. In 1772, local colonists attacked the British customs schooner Gaspee, an event often described as one of the first acts of armed resistance leading to the Revolution.
The colony’s early independence declaration did not by itself create the United States. It was a separate colonial action, while the Continental Congress’s Declaration represented the collective independence claim of the thirteen colonies.