Civics
5
In 1787 the Golden Fleece Tavern, owned by Elizabeth Battell, stood facing Court House Square on a property that included this site, and there Delaware ratified the Constitution of the United States on 7 December 1787, fully, freely, and entirely approving, assenting to, ratifying, and confirming it. The ratification document, done in convention at Dover, declared that the deputies of the people of Delaware state had seriously considered the Federal Constitution proposed and agreed upon at Philadelphia on 17 September 1787 and, by the authority given to them, approved and confirmed it on behalf of themselves and their constituents. The text also invokes Article IV, Section 3, under which new states may be admitted by Congress into the Union, and lists the states admitted from Vermont in 1791 through Hawaii in 1959. It includes the Constitution’s preamble, beginning “We the people of the United States,” and identifies Delaware signers to the Constitution at Philadelphia as Geo. Read, Gunning Bedford, Jun, John Dickinson, Richard Bassett, and Jaco. Broom.
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Dover, Delaware · United States
