North Carolina Ratifies the Constitution
On November 21, 1789, North Carolina ratified the United States Constitution, becoming the 12th state to join the new union. Initially, North Carolina had resisted ratification, rejecting the proposed framework for government in 1788 due to concerns about a strong national government and the absence of a bill of rights. Influential figures like James Iredell argued for ratification, citing the disarray under the Articles of Confederation. The first ratification convention was marked by intense debate between Federalists and Antifederalists, ultimately leading to a refusal to ratify without further guarantees for individual liberties.
Following a subsequent campaign to educate voters about the benefits of the Constitution, North Carolina held a second ratification convention in November 1789. This time, the Federalists succeeded, leading to a decisive vote of 194 to 77 in favor of ratification. The election of George Washington and the proposal of the Bill of Rights played significant roles in shifting public opinion. Thus, North Carolina's eventual ratification signified a crucial step in the integration of the original states into the United States, reflecting the evolving political landscape of the late 18th century.
North Carolina Ratifies the Constitution
North Carolina Ratifies the Constitution
On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution, leaving only Rhode Island still outside the continental union. More than a year earlier, North Carolina had been the first state to refuse to accept the new frame of government.
Early in January 1787 in the final days of the North Carolina legislative session, Governor Richard Caswell presented a letter from the governor of Virginia urging North Carolina's “zealous attention to the present American crisis.” Prodded by men like Caswell, William R. Davie, Richard Dobbs Spaight, William Hooper, John Gray Blount, and Archibald Maclaine, the legislators decided to send a delegation to the Constitutional Convention that was to open in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in May 1787. They selected two leaders of the conservative faction, William R. Davie and Richard Dobbs Spaight; two political moderates, Richard Caswell and Alexander Martin; and the acknowledged radical spokesman, Willie Jones. Governor Caswell, unable to participate because of ill health, appointed William Blount in his stead and replaced Willie Jones with Hugh Williamson, the former having refused to serve without giving a reason.
According to contemporary accounts, North Carolina's representatives were among the less prominent members of the convention. Davie, an attorney and planter, was in his early thirties and was popular but not prominent. Spaight, a wealthy planter, was less than 30 years old. Blount, a merchant and planter, was regarded as “plain, honest and sincere.” Martin, a lawyer, planter, and former governor, had been dismissed from the army for cowardice at the battle of Germantown. Williamson had been a preacher and professor of mathematics at the College of Philadelphia before he became a medical doctor; he was fond of debate but was not a good speaker. All five had served in the American Revolution; all except Alexander Martin sat in the Congress of the Confederation. Davie, Martin, and Williamson were also college graduates.
Blount and Martin were silent and inactive at the convention, and neither made a speech nor served on a committee. Davie was a member of the committee that devised the Great Compromise authorizing each state to send a number of representatives proportional to its population to the lower house of the new Congress and to have equal representation (later defined as two senators per state) in the upper house. Spaight opposed the Great Compromise but suggested the election of senators by the state legislatures. Williamson, who made 73 speeches, proposed the six-year term for senators and acted as spokesman for the North Carolina contingent.
North Carolina was the fourth most populous state in 1787, but on the critical question of the distribution of seats in the Congress it voted with the smaller states in favor of equal representation in the Senate. Members of the delegation, all of whom owned slaves except for Williamson, supported the three-fifths compromise under which five slaves counted as three freemen for purposes of apportioning representation and taxation. They also agreed with the decision to permit the continuation of the international slave trade for 20 years and to forbid the taxation of exports. At the conclusion of the convention, Blount, Spaight, and Williamson signed the Constitution on behalf of their state.
Governor Caswell presented the proposed Constitution to the state legislature on November 21, 1787, the second day of its new session. On December 5, the day set aside for discussion of the document, the lawmakers debated. On December 6 both houses requested all taxpayers to select, at the March 1788 elections, delegates for a ratifying convention that met on July 21, 1788, at Hillsboro.
Federalists and Antifederalists waged spirited and occasionally vicious campaigns in the months before the March elections. Supporters of the Constitution from Pennsylvania sent masses of literature into North Carolina, but North Carolinian James Iredell, who later served for nine years as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, provided the most cogent arguments for ratification. He described the “disordered and distracted” state of the country under the Articles of Confederation and suggested that only a “united, vigorous government” could solve the country's problems.
Antifederalists claimed that the establishment of a strong national government would lead to the disintegration of the states, that the spirit of the Constitution favored industry and commerce rather than agriculture, and that the absence of a bill of rights could have grave consequences for individual liberties-claims that were rather far-fetched. Timothy Bloodworth insisted that the new government would be an “autocratic tyranny, or monarchial monarchy,” and the Baptist preacher Lemuel Burkitt of Hertford County predicted that the national capital would be a walled city housing a standing army of at least 50,000 men who would be at liberty to plunder and pillage.
Opponents of the Constitution won a massive victory in the March 1788 election. Although 11 states had already ratified the proposed frame of government, the Antifederalists were sure of success in North Carolina. When the ratification convention met on July 21, 1788, Willie Jones suggested that the meeting vote and adjourn on the first day, because to delay the inevitable outcome was to waste public money. The Federalists managed to prolong the convention for 11 days, but then by a vote of 184 to 84 delegates declared that North Carolina would not ratify the Continental Constitution until a bill of rights had been presented to the Congress and to a second Constitutional Convention. On August 4, 1788, the North Carolina ratification convention adjourned without setting a date to meet again.
North Carolina Federalists were undaunted by the defeat and immediately began circulating petitions for a second ratifying convention. The state senate in November 1788 called for another convention and, although the lower house concurred, the Antifederalists in that body managed to postpone the date of the proposed gathering for a year. The legislators chose to convene in Fayetteville in November 1789.
While North Carolina remained aloof, the new federal government began functioning in the spring of 1789. George Washington, who enjoyed great popularity in North Carolina, became the first president that April and the national authorities engaged in none of the tyrannical practices predicted by the vehement Antifederalists. The United States Congress even proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution, designed to safeguard individual liberties. Ten of those amendments eventually formed the Bill of Rights.
Supporters of the Constitution in North Carolina used the months before the August 1789 elections to educate the public about the advantages of the new government. They succeeded and defeated the Antifederalists in the August canvass, which selected representatives to the November 1789 ratifying convention. Of the 102 delegates chosen in 1789 who had also served at the Hillsboro convention of 1788, 39 were reelected as Federalists and 20 converted to the support of the Constitution in the interim, while the Antifederalists reelected 43 men. Of the 169 new delegates, 135 were Federalists.
North Carolina's second convention opened on November 16, 1789. The caucus lasted only five days, and on November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the Constitution. The final vote was by the decisive margin of 194 to 77. No doubt the election of George Washington, the proposal of the Bill of Rights, and the state's sense of isolation from the rest of the country strongly influenced the final decision.
North Carolina and the other 12 colonies that formed the original Union under the Articles of Confederation became states when they declared their independence from Great Britain in July 1776. However, historians typically determine the chronology of the entrance of these states by the order in which they ratified the Constitution. Thus North Carolina is said to be the 12th state to join the United States of America.