Delaware Ratifies First, Then Refuses Everything Else

Delaware ratified the United States Constitution on December seventh, seventeen eighty-seven, within weeks of it being submitted to the states for consideration. It was the first state to do so, which is how Delaware acquired its official nickname: the First State. That nickname is on the license plates and the welcome signs.

The speed was not idealism. Delaware's three-county delegation understood the political arithmetic of the moment with unusual clarity. The new Constitution would be adopted only if enough states ratified it. Delaware was small; it had three counties and a tiny population compared to Virginia or Massachusetts. In the existing Confederation Congress, Delaware had the same one-vote-per-state representation as every other state. The Constitution, once ratified, would preserve that arrangement. Delaware's power in the Senate would remain equal to Virginia's. If large states organized opposition and the Constitution was modified before passage, that leverage might be traded away. Delaware ratified fast to ratify first, before the negotiation opened.

What Delaware did not ratify, for the next thirty-four years, were the amendments that followed the Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, was adopted by the required number of states in December of eighteen sixty-five. Delaware did not ratify it. The Fourteenth Amendment, granting citizenship and equal protection, was ratified nationally in eighteen sixty-eight. Delaware did not ratify it. The Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, was adopted in eighteen seventy. Delaware did not ratify it.

Delaware ratified all three in nineteen oh one, three decades after each had already been added to the Constitution without Delaware's agreement. The First State was first to join. It was among the last to agree with what joining was supposed to mean.