Today in History: Maryland was the last of the 13 states to ratify the Articles of Confederation. The first 13 states were: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island.
So what does it mean to ratify the Articles of Confederation? Ratify means to agree on something and vote it in. In November 1777, Congress set up the Articles of the Constitution for the states to vote in. The Articles promised that “Each state retains its sovereignty.” Small states like Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland wanted each state to have one vote, while the bigger states wanted the number of votes from each state to be from how many people lived in that state. Virginia was the only state to ratify the Articles of Confederation by the 1778 deadline. Ten more states voted in the Articles of Confederation over that summer of 1778. Maryland held out the longest and would not agree to the Articles of Confederation until Virginia let go of the land north of the Ohio River. So 3 years later, on January 30, 1781, Maryland ratified the Articles of Confederation!
