Rogue Island

Joanne Freeman: There’s even a word for that bad luck monster, that fear of Friday the 13th, [Frigga Triskaidekaphobia 00:05:52].

Brian Balogh: Frigga Triskaidekaphobia. You say that, Nathan.

Nathan Connolly: Frigga Triskaidekaphobia.

Joanne Freeman: Yeah, I knew he was just going to whiz right through that.

Brian Balogh: Yeah. So disappointing.

Nathan Connolly: So today on the show, we’ll have some fun of our own with Friday the 13th. We have an assortment of stories connected to the number 13, from Bar Mitzvahs to the invention of the PG 13 movie rating, and the missing 13th floor in so many Manhattan high rises.

Joanne Freeman: But first it turns out that the number 13 had a special importance in early American history. Just look at our flag with its 13 stripes. Those stripes represent the 13 colonies that rebelled against Britain and became our first 13 states. But here’s the thing. For a few years it looked like the new United States might only have 12 states. That 13th state wanted to go its own way.

Brian Balogh: You mean they were going to have to Redo all those flags, Joanne?

Joanne Freeman: Such expense. In 1787, delegates from across the country gathered in Philadelphia to revise their plan of government and ended up writing the Constitution.

Nathan Connolly: I remember this from my history textbook, people in that room, each state sending delegates.

Brian Balogh: Yeah, Philadelphia. It’s a good time.

Joanne Freeman: Right, but 12 states sent representatives. The 13th state refused, much to the annoyance of those who did attend. Now, does anyone want to guess what state was the spoil sport state?

Brian Balogh: I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Hawaii.

Joanne Freeman: It was not Hawaii.

Nathan Connolly: Georgia.

Joanne Freeman: Not Georgia, definitely not Alaska. Come on. Try again.

Brian Balogh: Rhode Island.

Joanne Freeman: You got it. Or as it was known in the 1780s by some, Rogue Island. Patrick Conley, historian laureate of Rhode Island, since the founding fathers could barely contain their contempt.

Patrick Conley: James Madison, for example, blasted Rhode Island. A wicked little state he called it. All sense of honor has been obliterated there.

Joanne Freeman: Even as a colony, Rhode Island had earned a reputation as being, shall we say, independent-minded. It was especially militant in guaranteeing the separation of church and state in its charter, and Rhode Islanders were particularly democratic. Even under British rule, they managed to elect their own governor, legislature and other officials.

Brian Balogh: Pesky.

Joanne Freeman: Definitely pesky. And not like in many other states. And as the revolution approached, Rhode Islanders were more than ready to fight.

Patrick Conley: Rhode Island actually was in the vanguard of the movement towards independence, probably the first major act of defiance against the crown. We burned a British custom ship to the water line and a shot the commander in the groin in June of 1772, about a year and a half before the Boston Tea Party. But unfortunately, Rhode Island doesn’t have very good publicists, and we’re guilty sometimes in Rhode Island of hyperbole, but here in Rhode Island we sometimes call it the first a blow for freedom.

Nathan Connolly: So clearly there proudly democratic and were the first in line to fight in the American Revolution. So I’m confused. Why would they refuse to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention?

Joanne Freeman: Well, good question, Nathan.

Patrick Conley: Rhode Island was called a downright democracy in a pejorative way, and did not want to surrender sovereignty to a remote and what might be an impersonal central government.

Joanne Freeman: And things went downhill from there. When the Constitution was sent out to be ratified, Rhode Island put it up to a popular vote.

Patrick Conley: The final vote on the constitution was 2,714 against ratification, 238 in favor. So Rhode Island rejected the Constitution in a popular referendum by a vote of about 11 to 1.

Nathan Connolly: Oh, that democracy is troublesome.

Joanne Freeman: And this is actually where the story gets really interesting because Rhode Island held out against signing the Constitution for nearly three years. By the end of 1789, it was the only state that hadn’t ratified. Patrick Conley says Rhode Islanders had multiple objections to the Constitution.

Patrick Conley: Number one, it did not contain a Bill of Rights. In Rhode Island, religious liberty, very, very much rights-oriented, very much of an independent spirit. We can’t ratify this document. We’re creating a stronger central government without any specific protections for individual liberty. Also, the Constitution, in three different places, compromised with slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise, Fugitive Slave Clause, and the moratorium on legislation banning the foreign slave trade for 20 years. And the Rhode Island Quakers had assumed a great deal of influence in Rhode Island politics at that time. They were the abolitionists of the late 18th century, and so they regarded the Constitution as a compromise with the slave power and the very influential Quaker community opposed it for that purpose.

Joanne Freeman: Here’s my next question then. What is then the reaction of the other states when they discover that Rhode Island has refused to ratify the Constitution?

Patrick Conley: Well, they’re very, very hostile, let’s put it that way. We were referred to as Rogues Island, the home of the dishonest debtor. Another group called Rhode Island the quintessential example of villainy. The most eloquent censure came from neighboring Connecticut in the form of a poem called The Anarchiad, penned by a group of literati who styled themselves The Connecticut Wits. “Hail realm of rogues, renowned for fraud and guile, all hail ye knav’ries of yon little isle. The wiser race, the snares of a war to shun, like a lot from Sodom from Rhode Island run.” So on those days, political critics a played real hardball.

Joanne Freeman: So how did Rhode Island respond to all of these nasty epithets being tossed around?

Patrick Conley: Well, the more, the more the outsiders criticized them, I guess the more some hardened against ratification. So basically, the name calling promoted, they use the term, a contemporary term, resistance.

Joanne Freeman: So there is this fight going on, there’s the epithets being tossed around. There’s Rhode Island that feels even more opposed given all of the insults. So how do we get to a point that Rhode Island actually does ratify? When did they ratify it and how do they get there?

Patrick Conley: Well, they get there because they’re alone and in the meantime, the government had organized, and George Washington was inaugurated on April 30th of 1789. And I wrote an essay once in one of my books, and it was called the Republic of Rhode Island, because for all intents and purposes, Rhode Island was at that time, an independent state, independent country really. So the founding fathers, so enraged at this, started to exert economic and political pressure on Rhode Island, threatening to put tariffs on goods that came from Rhode Island into the other states and demanding that Rhode Island pay the balance on its Revolutionary War debt and making other threats and pressure.

Joanne Freeman: Okay. Well, I’m actually very curious about this. So I have heard a story that early in his presidency, George Washington made a northern tour to sort of show himself as new President of the United States and that he didn’t go to Rhode Island because at that point Rhode Island was not part of the United States. Did that happen?

Patrick Conley: Yes, that happened. He went to Connecticut and then went up before he got as far east as Rhode Island, he turned a northward up into Massachusetts and he snubbed Rhode Island. And Rhode Island smarted that snub. And of course the fact that Washington was the president, it helped to break down a little bit of the opposition to the Constitution. Some Rhode Islanders said, “Well, if this system can produce a great hero and a great patriot like George Washington, then maybe it’s not quite as bad as we as we feel it could be.”
But above and beyond that, the federalists in Rhode Island were getting fed up and so you have internal pressure and pressure from Congress, and the combined pressures forced Rhode Island to take a vote on May the 29th of 1790. Benjamin Bourne of Providence and Bristol made the motion to ratify at 5:20 PM. Ironically, it was in the second Baptist Church because the State House in Newport couldn’t handle the crowd. So for all the separation of church and state, we ratified the Constitution by a vote of 34 to 32, the narrowest of any state, in a Baptist meeting house.

Joanne Freeman: Wow. So Rhode Island finally becomes our 13th state, if only by a narrow margin, and some of its criticisms of the Constitution did get addressed. Like for example, the Bill of Rights, which helps protect religious liberties. But some other objections, like the protection of slavery, didn’t get addressed. So in the end, do you think it was worth it for Rhode Island to put up that fight?

Patrick Conley: You know, you can lambaste them for their position, but there’s a very, very strong spirit of foot in America today, individuals that want to take power away and out of Washington, or as some call it the swamp, and return it to the states. There’s an overriding concern for individual rights and individual liberties and freedom of expression and freedom of religion. And of course the issue of slavery, certainly no one would defend that today. So Rhode Island’s position opposing those provisions in the Constitution were commendable. So some people from Rhode Island say that we should ask not why it took Rhode Island so long to join the union, but why it took the union so long to join Rhode Island.

Joanne Freeman: Well put.

Nathan Connolly: Patrick Conley is historian laureate of Rhode Island. We also heard from Cara Giaimo, a writer from Atlas Obscura.