Thus month followed month. New assemblies and new town meetings came together and fought over the same ground. In all the other states of the old thirteen the Constitution had been accepted, and was in successful operation. It was clear that Rhode Island could not long preserve her insulation. She was already compelled to ask vital favors of the Union, and petition Congress to exempt her commerce from paying duties in Union ports. For a while Congress bore with her and granted her prayer. Slowly but surely the decisive day drew nigh. All the artifices of parliamentary tactics were brought into play. In the midst of intense excitement and by the casting vote of Governor Collins, it was decided on the Sabbath morning of January 17th, 1790, to call a convention. But even in the convention the friends of the Constitution were in a minority. The familiar ground was to be fought over again with no less bitterness than in the beginning. Loud murmurs came from Congress. Shall this little strip of land prevent us from completing a union so full of promise? Louder still were the murmurs from the seats of commerce--Providence and Newport. We will break away from these impracticable men and go into the Union alone with our ships and our spinning-jennies. A coalition ticket was formed. So great was the eager crowd, in which each man had his opinion, that the State House was found too small to hold them, and the convention was compelled to adjourn to the Second Baptist Church. It still took three days more before a vote was reached; and then, at five o'clock of Saturday afternoon, on the 29th of May, 1790, Rhode Island declared her adhesion to the Union. CHAPTER XXIX. MODE OF LIFE IN OUR FOREFATHERS' DAYS. We have followed with as much detail as our limits would permit, the history of Rhode Island through the various phases of her colonial life. Before we enter upon the story of her development as a member of a great Union, we propose to bring together a few facts from the imperfect record of her social and domestic life, and endeavor to form for ourselves some idea of what manner of men and women our fathers and mothers were, and what kind of lives they led. Incomplete as our materials for such a picture are, there is still enough to be found in those sources from which history loves to draw to bring us very near to the life of those days.