America’s first constitutional crisis was caused by its smallest state.
With the first republic created by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union on the verge of falling apart, Founding Fathers, soldiers, statesmen, and patriots gathered together in a desperate effort to unite the thirteen states under one great Constitution—or see it all end.
But one radical state almost stopped the Constitution in its tracks, risk ing a civil war.
The first secessionists were not Southerners; they were New England radicals. And the Founding Fathers had to decide whether the new Constitution would unite only twelve states or whether to take on the socialist class warriors who had seized power in Rhode Island.
The crisis that almost undid the Constitution was not slavery: it was money.
“Nothing can exceed the wickedness and folly which continue to reign there,” Madison had written well before the Constitutional Convention had even opened. “All sense of character as well as of Rights is obliterated. Paper money is still their idol, though it is debased to 8 to 1.”
“Rhode Island continues in a state of phrenzy & division on account of their paper currency. A useful example to such of their neighbours as wish to profit by it,” George Washington had observed.
The tiny state—despite being a fraction of the size of New York— had printed twice as much paper money, making inflation inevitable and predictable.
Like modern socialist inflationary schemes, the ruling Country Party blamed the refusal to accept its money for the inflation and remained convinced that its economic model would work if everyone were forced to take part in it.
The Forcing Act imposed an initial fine with half the proceeds going to the government and the other half to “the Person who shall inform” on those who rejected the paper money.
By the summer of 1788, eleven states—including, finally, New York— had ratified the Constitution. In November 1789, North Carolina, the penultimate holdout, joined to make it twelve
In 1789, George Washington had already been sworn in as the nation’s first president, and the House and the Senate had held their first sessions. That same year, the Country Party had blocked four attempts at convening a state convention to ratify the Constitution.
“Enemies they must be or fellow citizens, and that in a very short time,” John Adams warned.
Learn more about how Socialists in Rhode Island rejected the Constitution and brought America to the brink of war in Chapter 2 of 'Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers' Fight Against the Left'
