First to Leave

The dome of the Rhode Island State House is the fourth-largest self-supporting marble dome in the world, and its proportions make a kind of argument: this is a place that takes itself seriously. The state has always known it was first to something. The question is which thing you count.

On May fourth, seventeen seventy-six, the General Assembly of Rhode Island voted to formally renounce allegiance to the British Crown. This was two months before the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Every schoolchild learns about July fourth, seventeen seventy-six. Rhode Island's date was May fourth.

The colony had reason to act early. Providence merchants had been fighting British customs enforcement for years. The burning of HMS Gaspee in seventeen seventy-two had demonstrated that Rhode Island men were willing to take action before anyone else. The colony had also been among the most independent from the start, founded on the principle that no authority, civil or religious, had unlimited claim on its people.

Rhode Island was characteristically ambivalent at the finish line. The state that had declared independence first was the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the United States Constitution, finally signing on in May of seventeen ninety, and then only after credible threats of trade sanctions from the other states. Independence was one thing. Submitting to a new federal authority was another matter entirely.

Providence has always played the game its own way.