Epilogue

Abstract

This brief epilogue attempts to answer why Rhode Island was so criticized and why it alone refused to attend the Constitutional Convention. It was by far the most democratic colony and state and the most commercially advanced. It had the weakest elite and the most middling elements, which made it an ideal example of what was to come in the wild and disorderly northern economy of antebellum America. Its excessive paper money was a symptom of its advanced commercial character and the source of much of its economic success in the nineteenth century.