I had a different post planned for today, but think I’ll go this way instead.

Yesterday, I thought I was done with my research in Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition. I had all my chapters lined-out, all my source text found and entered in a Word document. Well, almost all, as the source text for one chapter eluded me. Yesterday I found an alternative (actually, two) and that’s now in the document. I even wrote my commentary on a chapter yesterday. Now up to nine chapters complete out of a probably thirty-one.

I started work on the next chapter, editing the source text. It’s a letter from Thomas Jefferson, while he was in Paris in 1787, to Edward Carrington. TJ made some very good points and I’m happy to have that in my book. I figured writing the chapter around it would be somewhat easy.

But, I wanted to see what Carrington had written to TJ to prompt this letter. I went to the Library of Congress website, which has been my source for so much. It didn’t take too long to learn Carrington hadn’t written to TJ in six years. TJ had re-initiated the correspondence. I decided then to see how Carrington responded.

That was easy to find with the tools on the LOC site. Jefferson wrote Jan 16, 1787; Carrington responded April 24, 1787, a reasonable lag given the time for a letter to sail across the ocean. So last night I began reading the April 24 letter, and enjoyed it until I came to this sentence.

Rhode Island is at all points so anti-federal, and contemptible, that her neglecting the invitation, will probably occasion no demur whatever in the proceedings. 

I kept reading, however, as a good researcher should do. I next went to Carrington’s June 9, 1787 letter to TJ, written before Jefferson had responded. It this letter I found the following.

All the States have elected representatives except Rhode Island, whose apostasy from every moral, as well as political, obligation, has placed her perfectly without the views of her confederates; nor will her absence, or nonconcurrence, occasion the least impediment in any stage of the intended business.

And I though, them’s fightin’ word mister! How dare you bash my home state like that. I suppose, however, he’s correct. He’s talking about choosing and sending delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. This followed the failed Annapolis convention in 1786. Rhode Island didn’t attend that one, though they did appoint delegates who simply didn’t arrive on time.

Now, however, as the Constitutional Convention drew near, Little Rhody was the only State to boycott it. They liked the ineffective Articles of Confederation just fine, thank, and didn’t want them changed. They liked doing things their way, even if they wound up being a tiny, independent nation.

I think it was the word “contemptible” that rankled me. Yes, Rhode Island is a different kind of state. The top of our statehouse has a statue titled the Independent Man.  We have our quirks and love having our quirks.

Then the word “apostasy” also rankled. Carrington didn’t mean this in the religious sense, but rather in terms of politics, that we had fallen away from the sense of cooperation that pervaded during the Revolutionary War. We had ceased looking at ourselves as part of a larger union. Still, the word hurt.

It also hurt that he said it didn’t matter if Rhode Island showed up or not. He said that twice, once in each letter. Was that because of our size and relatively small population? Most likely.

I’ve been away from Rhode Island now for 45 years. I still visit from time to time, and keep in touch with relatives and friends there. I may live in Arkansas, but I still feel like a Rhode Islander.

And I love this research I’m doing for the book. I need to be careful, however. I could research for days and days, enjoying it so much that I’d never get the book written. I need to cut it off and just stick with the writing.

And I will, just as soon as I absorb these Carrington letters.