200 Years Later, Connecticut Town Votes to Ratify U.S. Constitution

Cornwall residents corrected what many considered a 200-year-old mistake Friday by voting to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

About 60 of Cornwall’s 800 registered voters fought their way through a snowstorm to the town’s public school for a meeting called to reconsider Cornwall’s vote against the Constitution.

Those against and those in favor were asked to stand. No tally was made, but Monte Dunn, a local newspaper columnist who has run for Congress twice as a Libertarian, was the only person to vote against ratification.

Explains No Vote

“Without the Bill of Rights, I viewed it as a recipe for way too much central government,” Dunn said, adding he also was concerned about a lack of guarantees for the rights of women and minorities.

The vote was on the Constitution as it was presented to Connecticut’s ratifying convention in 1788, before the Bill of Rights or other amendments were adopted.

The vote was strictly symbolic. “We’ll send the results to the secretary of state in Hartford. And as far as we’re concerned, it’s over,” said First Selectman Richard Dakin.

“Not many people in the country have had a chance to vote on the Constitution, you know,” said Dakin, who described the hourlong meeting as “very exciting.”

On Jan. 9, 1788, Matthew Patterson, the only Cornwall delegate present at Connecticut’s ratifying convention in Hartford, voted against the Constitution drafted a year earlier in Philadelphia. The town’s second delegate, Edward Rogers, was absent.