On the morning of August 17th, 1790 George Washington arrived in Newport, Rhode Island. He was accompanied by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Governor George Clinton of New York, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Blair of Virginia, and U.S. Congressman William Loughton Smith of South Carolina. The President had visited the New England states the previous fall “to acquire knowledge of the face of the Country the growth and Agriculture thereof and the temper and disposition of the Inhabitants towards the new government.”

Washington deliberately bypassed Rhode Island, which had refused to call a state convention to ratify the federal Constitution at that time. He decided to make a public trip to the state only after May 1790 when Rhode Island ratified the Constitution. Such a special visit would not only focus the goodwill that Rhode Islanders felt toward him as the hero of the Revolution, it would lend his personal prestige to the state’s leaders.