TARIFFS in AMERICAN HISTORY

Rhode Island was the first colony to foreswear allegiance to Great Britain on May 4, 1776, two months before the Declaration of Independence. It was also the only state not to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, fearing that a strong federal government, empowered to tax, would suppress smuggling. And it was the last state to ratify the Constitution on May 29, 1790, more than a year after the federal government had come into existence. It did so then only under the threat of having its exports taxed as if from a foreign nation.