Ratification of the United States Constitution by Rhode Island the convention instead set about drafting a new Constitution. Rhode Island was the only state to not participate in its proceedings. By April 1, 1789, the new constitution had entered into force after the required nine states had completed their ratification processes. The First United States Congress had already convened, and the Congress had already passed twelve proposed amendments, but Rhode Island still had not ratified the new Constitution and continued to effectively operate outside the new governmental structure. Opposition was chiefly due to the paper money issued in Rhode Island pounds since 1786 by the governing Country Party, intended
French Constitution of 1793 of the need to employ emergency war powers during the French Revolutionary War. Those same emergency powers would permit the Committee of Public Safety to conduct the Reign of Terror, and when that long period of violent political combat was over, the constitution was invalidated by its association with the defeated Robespierre. In the Thermidorian Reaction, it was discarded in favor of a more conservative document, the Constitution of 1795. The National Convention chose Louis Saint-Just and several other deputies to serve on a committee that would draft a new governmental system for the recently established Republic. The new constitution