Rhode Island was the last of the thirteen original states to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
Rhode Island approved the Constitution on May 29, 1790, by a narrow convention vote of 34–32. It had declined to send delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and remained outside the new constitutional system after the required ninth state had ratified.
Rhode Island’s late decision came after the federal government had begun operating under President George Washington. Pressure from economic and political circumstances, including concern about being treated as a foreign state by the Union, helped lead to eventual ratification.
North Carolina was the eleventh state to ratify, in November 1789. Rhode Island’s 1790 vote therefore completed the original thirteen-state ratification sequence. The event belongs to the post-independence constitutional story that followed the 1776 declaration commemorated by America250.