Delaware first to ratify Constitution

On December 7, 1787, delegates meeting at the Golden Fleece Tavern in Dover unanimously made Delaware the first state to ratify the United States Constitution. Figures such as John Dickinson, Richard Bassett, and Gunning Bedford Jr. supported swift approval at the Delaware ratifying convention. The vote gave the proposed Constitution an early public victory only weeks after the Philadelphia convention had sent the document to the states.

Delaware's decision mattered politically because a small state openly embraced a new frame of government that had balanced state equality in the Senate against population representation in the House. The unanimous vote signaled that the Great Compromise had reassured at least one small state that the new Union would not simply become a system dominated by Virginia and Pennsylvania. Delaware's action also increased pressure on neighboring states to hold conventions quickly rather than delay the ratification struggle.

The Delaware convention's vote helped create early momentum for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut to ratify before the end of 1787 and the beginning of 1788. That first approval also strengthened Federalist arguments that the Constitution could move from theory to law through state conventions rather than through Congress alone.