Sovereignty's Orphan States

When New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution in June 1788, it triggered a quiet constitutional earthquake. The old framework under the Articles of Confederation was effectively over, and the new federal republic officially began. Yet one state simply declined to come along for the ride.

North Carolina looked at the newly drafted Constitution and decided it had some serious reservations. Specifically, lawmakers worried about the sheer strength of the proposed national government and the glaring absence of a bill of rights. Rather than rubber-stamping the document at the 1788 convention, they voted against ratification.

This created a peculiar political geography. For nearly a year and a half, the U.S. Constitution was the law of the land for twelve states, while North Carolina sat in a strange sort of geopolitical limbo. It was entirely outside the new federal Union, existing as a self-governing entity unmoored from the very republic it had helped birth a decade earlier.

We tend to picture the birth of the United States as a synchronized march toward statehood, but the ratification process was far more tentative. States were genuinely free to accept or reject the framework, and for many months, the map of the new nation remained profoundly uncertain. North Carolina eventually returned to the fold in November 1789, but only after the Bill of Rights had been successfully introduced. For a brief window in American history, however, sovereignty was an orphan state.