On December 7, 1787, 30 delegates met in a tavern in the town of Dover, Delaware, and made history with a single vote. They were the first state in America to ratify, or officially approve, the brand-new United States Constitution. The vote was unanimous, 30 to nothing. By beating the other 12 states to the punch, tiny Delaware earned a nickname it still wears proudly today - "The First State."
Delaware was small even back then, barely 96 miles long, mostly farmland between Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake Bay. But it was eager. The Constitution had been written just three months earlier in Philadelphia after a hot, sweaty summer of arguing among delegates like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison. They needed nine states to say yes before it could become law. Delaware raced to be first, partly to make sure the new country protected small states from being bossed around by big ones.
Five days later, Pennsylvania ratified too. By the next June, nine states had said yes, and the Constitution officially became the rulebook of the United States. Today, every U.S. license plate from Delaware reads "The First State," and schoolkids across the country still memorize the order in which states joined. Delaware never grew very big - fewer than 1 million people live there now - but on a December afternoon in a Dover tavern, a small place did something giant.
