Country Party (Rhode Island)

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The Country Party was a political party in

Rhode Island politics of the period was marked by exceptional favor for state independence. It was the first of the

Ratification by the legislatures of nine states had been required for the Constitution to take effect. Effectively, this requirement represented nine of 12, as Rhode Island had already earned a reputation for poor cooperation in the Congress of the Confederation and had declined to participate in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

While at least five states quickly ratified unconditionally, beginning with Delaware on December 7, 1787, as opponents organized more effectively it became clear that fewer than nine states were projected to ratify without at least an informal guarantee that the proposed new Congress would append key draft amendments, or a Bill of Rights, to the Constitution. Proponents of the Constitution compromised and agreed. As public discussion of these draft amendments progressed and confidence in the compromise grew, more members of remaining state legislatures came to favor ratification. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify^[2] and news quickly reached Rhode Island.

By the end of July 1788, Virginia and New York had ratified, bringing the total to 11, excluding only North Carolina and Rhode Island and making universal ratification subject to adoption of a Bill of Rights virtually inevitable. The Constitution took effect when the First Congress convened on March 4, 1789. George Washington was inaugurated as President in April. The First Congress proposed the Bill of Rights^[4] in September, to be duly ratified by state legislatures and to take effect roughly two years later. In November, North Carolina ratified the Constitution. Its senators were seated in January 1790, and its five representatives beginning in March.

Anti-Federalist opinion in Rhode Island, which retained wide popular support and for which the Country Party was the vehicle, clearly had helped ensure a Bill of Rights. However, by the spring of 1790, months after a finalized Bill of Rights was approved by a smoothly functioning Congress from which only Rhode Island remained awkwardly absent, resistance to ratification seemed absurd rather than principled. Rhode Island resembled not a confidently self-governing republic choosing its own sustainable political and economic destiny, but a state making an inexplicably negative choice to be unrepresented in its own Federal union by stubbornly ignoring it. Exerting informal leverage amid a measure of national public ridicule of the state,^[5] the new Federal Government pressured "Rogue Island" to conform, but also welcomed its eventual accession.^[6]

The Rhode Island legislature had delayed a constitutional convention 11 times, but finally called for one in

Rhode Islanders elected Anti-Federalist Arthur Fenner as governor for the next 15 years. After passage of the Constitution, some Country Party leaders were left bankrupt, such as William West, because the Federal Government refused to recognize the state's paper money as legal tender.

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