New Hampshire Ratifies the Constitution (1788)
On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution — crossing the threshold of nine of thirteen states required by Article VII for the Constitution to take effect. The ratification was not inevitable: New Hampshire's first convention had adjourned in February without voting, its delegates deeply divided. When the convention reassembled in June and finally voted 57–47 in favor, the United States officially had a new frame of government. The Constitution, written in Philadelphia the previous summer, was now the law of the land.
The Road to Ratification
The Constitution drafted at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 was a radical document — it replaced the loose Articles of Confederation with a strong central government, created a powerful executive presidency, established a federal judiciary, and gave Congress broad powers over taxation and commerce. Its ratification was far from certain. Anti-Federalists — who included powerful figures like Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Richard Henry Lee — argued that the Constitution created a tyrannical central government, lacked a bill of rights, and threatened the sovereignty of the states. The debate was fierce in every state convention. Delaware ratified first, on December 7, 1787; Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut followed quickly. Massachusetts ratified in February 1788 only after Federalists agreed to support the addition of a bill of rights as amendments. Maryland and South Carolina ratified in April and May. By June 1788, eight states had ratified. The ninth would make the Constitution operative.
Did You Know?
The two most important states — Virginia and New York — had not yet ratified when New Hampshire voted on June 21. Virginia ratified four days later, on June 25, after an incredibly close and bitter debate in which Patrick Henry argued passionately against the Constitution. New York ratified on July 26, also very narrowly. Rhode Island, which had refused to even send delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, didn't ratify until May 29, 1790 — more than a year after George Washington was inaugurated as the first president. North Carolina ratified in November 1789, after the Bill of Rights had been proposed by Congress.
Federalists and Anti-Federalists
The ratification debates produced the most sophisticated political writing in American history. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote 85 essays — published under the pseudonym "Publius" and collectively known as The Federalist Papers — defending every aspect of the proposed Constitution in meticulous detail. These essays remain the most authoritative guide to the original meaning of the Constitution and are regularly cited by the Supreme Court. The Anti-Federalists produced equally important (if less read) responses: essays by "Brutus," "Centinel," and "the Federal Farmer" identified precisely the dangers — an expansive federal judiciary, an unchecked executive, the erosion of state power — that constitutional scholars have debated ever since. The Anti-Federalists lost the ratification battle but won an important concession: the Bill of Rights, proposed by the First Congress and ratified in 1791, addressed many of their core concerns.
The Founding Document
New Hampshire's ratification on June 21, 1788, set in motion the machinery of the new government. Congress under the Articles of Confederation set March 4, 1789, as the date for the new government to begin; elections were held in the fall of 1788; and George Washington was unanimously elected as the first president. He was inaugurated on April 30, 1789 — in New York City, the first capital under the new Constitution. The Constitution that New Hampshire ratified in June 1788 has been amended 27 times but has never been replaced; at 237 years old, it is the world's oldest written national constitution still in force. Its survival through civil war, depression, and global conflict — and its interpretation across vastly changed circumstances — remains the central ongoing project of American political life.