The Fight over Ratification

What "ratify" means, and the rule in Article VII

Chapter 3 ended on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia. After four months of argument, thirty-nine of the delegates signed the Constitution. Three delegates who were still there refused to sign: George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. Mason had written his own state's Declaration of Rights in 1776. He would not sign, he said, because the new plan had no bill of rights: no written list of the freedoms that the new government could not take away. Keep Mason in mind. His objection is where this chapter's story ends, too.

A signed paper is not yet a government. The men in Philadelphia had no power to put their plan into effect. They had been sent only to suggest changes to the Articles of Confederation (Chapter 2 tells that story). Now the plan had to be ratified.

What ratify means

To ratify means to formally approve. When a union contract is negotiated, the bargaining committee agrees on the terms, but the contract does not take effect until the members vote to ratify it. The committee can argue for the contract, and members can argue against it, but the vote of the members decides. The Constitution was in the same position in the fall of 1787. The delegates had written it. Now someone else had to approve it.

Article VII in its own words

The last article of the Constitution says who that someone would be. It is one sentence long.

In plain words: When special meetings called conventions in nine states have approved this Constitution, that is enough for it to take effect among those nine states. ("Sufficient" means enough. "Establishment" means setting it up and putting it into force.)

Two things in that sentence matter a great deal. The first is the word conventions. The second is the number nine.

Why conventions, and not the state legislatures

A convention, in this sense, is a meeting of delegates elected for one special purpose, which ends when that job is done. Each state already had a legislature, the elected body that makes the state's laws. It would have been simple to let the state legislatures vote on the Constitution. The delegates in Philadelphia chose not to. They asked each state to hold an election for a special convention, whose only job would be to vote on the Constitution.

They had two reasons. The first was a matter of principle. The Constitution begins with the words "We the People." Its writers wanted it to rest on the consent of the people themselves, not on the approval of state governments. (Consent means agreement. Chapter 1 explains why the idea of "the consent of the governed" mattered so much.) A convention elected by the voters for this one purpose could speak for the people more directly than a legislature that had been elected to deal with roads, taxes, and courts. A plan approved that way would also stand above ordinary state laws, because the people had approved it directly.

The second reason was practical. The Constitution would take power away from the state governments. Many state legislators would be unwilling to vote away their own power. A convention elected for this purpose was more likely to judge the plan on its merits.

On September 28, 1787, the Congress of the Confederation, which was meeting in New York City, voted to send the Constitution to the state legislatures, so that each legislature could call a convention "chosen in each state by the people thereof." Congress did not say whether it liked the plan. It simply passed it along.

Why nine states, and not thirteen

Recall the rule from Chapter 2. Under Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation, any change to the Articles needed the agreement of all thirteen state legislatures. That rule had already stopped the first plan for a national import tax, when Rhode Island said no in 1782, and New York's conditions had blocked the second plan by 1786. Rhode Island had not even sent delegates to Philadelphia. If the new plan needed all thirteen states, Rhode Island alone could stop it.

So the writers of the Constitution set a lower bar: nine states out of thirteen, which is a little more than two-thirds. And they made the Constitution take effect only "between the States so ratifying the Same," that is, only among the states that said yes. A state that said no would not be forced in. But it would be left outside the new union, on its own.

Strictly speaking, this was a way around the Articles' own rule. The Articles said changes needed every state legislature. The Constitution said nine state conventions would be enough. Opponents of the Constitution pointed this out. Supporters answered that the people themselves, meeting in conventions, had the right to replace a government that was not working. That is the same argument the Declaration of Independence had made in 1776.

Federalists and Anti-Federalists

As soon as the Constitution was printed in the newspapers, in late September 1787, people began to argue about it. They argued in letters, in pamphlets, in sermons, in taverns, and in the streets. Newspapers printed long essays for and against it, many of them signed with made-up names. Many of those names came from ancient Rome, such as "Publius," "Brutus," and "Cato." This was a common custom at the time. A writer who used such a name, called a pen name, wanted readers to judge the argument and not the person making it. A pen name also protected the writer from personal attacks.

Two sides formed quickly.

Who the Federalists were

The Federalists supported the Constitution and wanted it ratified as written. Their leaders included James Madison of Virginia, who had done more than anyone to shape the plan in Philadelphia; Alexander Hamilton of New York City; John Jay, also of New York; and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. George Washington did not write for the newspapers, but everyone knew he supported the Constitution, and his support counted for a great deal.

Federalists tended to be strongest in the cities and towns along the coast and the rivers, among merchants, lawyers, craftsmen, and many people whose living depended on trade. New York City was strongly Federalist. So was Philadelphia. Many veterans of the Continental Army, who remembered going unpaid, also supported a stronger national government.

The Federalists' main argument was simple. The Articles of Confederation had failed. The national government could not pay its debts, could not pay its soldiers, could not control trade, and could not keep order, as Shays' Rebellion had shown (Chapter 2). The country needed a national government strong enough to act, and the Constitution was carefully built so that this stronger government could not become a tyranny. A tyranny is a government that uses its power cruelly or unjustly, without regard for the rights of the people.

Who the Anti-Federalists were

The Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution as written. Some wanted it rejected entirely. Many more would accept it only if it were changed first, and especially if a bill of rights were added. Their leaders included George Mason and Patrick Henry of Virginia; George Clinton, the governor of New York; Melancton Smith, a New York City merchant; and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, who had been a leader of the Revolution. (Adams had serious doubts at first, but in the end he voted to ratify.) Mercy Otis Warren of Massachusetts, a playwright and historian, wrote one of the pamphlets against the Constitution, signed "A Columbian Patriot." In an age when women could not vote, she took part in the argument through her writing.

Anti-Federalists tended to be strongest among small farmers in the countryside and in the backcountry, far from the coast, where people had less cash and more debts, and where the state government felt close and the national government felt very far away. But that is a general pattern, not a rule. There were wealthy Anti-Federalists, such as Mason, and poor Federalists.

The Anti-Federalists' main argument was also simple. Americans had just fought a long war against a powerful government that taxed them and kept soldiers among them without their consent. The Constitution would create a new powerful government, far from most people, with the power to tax, to keep an army, and to make laws that would rank above the laws of the states. Its powers were described in broad words that could be stretched. And it had no bill of rights. Liberty, they believed, was safest in small republics close to the people.

The names were part of the argument

The names of the two sides were not neutral. They were themselves part of the fight.

Before 1787, the word federal usually described a league of independent states, like the confederation under the Articles. A "federal" government, in that older sense, was a government in which the states kept most of the power. That was exactly what the opponents of the Constitution wanted to keep. The supporters of the Constitution wanted something new: a stronger national government. Yet they took the name "Federalists" for themselves. It sounded reassuring, and it suggested that the states would remain important under the new plan.

That left their opponents with the name "Anti-Federalists," which made them sound as if they were simply against things, and against a federal union. Many of them disliked the name. They said that they were the true federalists, the people who wanted to keep a union of states, and that their opponents wanted a consolidated government, meaning a single government that swallowed up the states. Some opponents called themselves "Federal Republicans" instead. The names that stuck, and the names the GED test uses, are "Federalists" and "Anti-Federalists."

The two sides, side by side

This table is the most useful thing in this chapter for the test. Read it across, one row at a time. Each row is a question that people argued about in 1787 and 1788, with the Federalist answer on the left and the Anti-Federalist answer on the right.

Notice that the two sides agreed on a great deal. Both believed in a republic, a government in which the people elect representatives (Chapter 1). Both feared tyranny. Both had supported the Revolution. Their disagreement was over where the danger to liberty lay. The Federalists saw the greater danger in a national government too weak to act, and in state majorities that could trample the rights of others. The Anti-Federalists saw the greater danger in a national government too strong and too far away.

Drills for this part: II.10 Federalist or Anti-Federalist?. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

The Federalist Papers

The most famous writing from the whole argument began in New York City, in late October 1787.

Written to persuade New York

New York was a difficult state for the Constitution. New York City and its merchants were for it. But most of the rest of the state, up the Hudson River and out to the farms of the Mohawk Valley, was against it. The governor, George Clinton, was against it. New York collected a large tax on goods that came into the port of New York City, and that tax paid many of the state's bills. Under the Constitution, only Congress could tax imports, and New York would lose that money. New York was also large and sat in the middle of the country, between New England and the states to the south. A union without New York would be split in two.

Alexander Hamilton, a New York City lawyer who had been one of New York's delegates in Philadelphia, decided to answer the Constitution's critics in the city's newspapers. He asked John Jay and James Madison to help. Madison was in New York City at the time, serving in the Congress of the Confederation, which met there.

Between October 1787 and the summer of 1788, the three men wrote 85 essays. Each one was addressed "To the People of the State of New York." They were printed first in New York City newspapers, such as the Independent Journal, and they were collected as a book in 1788, called The Federalist. Today we usually call them the Federalist Papers. All of them were signed with the same pen name: "Publius." (Publius was one of the founders of the ancient Roman republic.) Hamilton wrote about fifty-one of the essays, Madison about twenty-nine, and Jay five. Jay fell ill after his first few essays and wrote only one more.

The essays explain, one part at a time, why the Union matters, why the Articles failed, and how each part of the Constitution works and why it is safe. They were written quickly, for newspapers, to win a political fight. It is not clear how many voters they changed. But they became the most famous explanation of the Constitution ever written, and judges and lawmakers still quote them today.

The first essay, by Hamilton, set out what he believed was at stake:

In plain words: The question in front of Americans is whether people can create a good government by thinking it through and choosing it, or whether governments must always come from luck and from violence, such as wars and conquests. (Reflection means careful thought. Destined means fated, certain to happen.) Hamilton is saying that Americans had a chance to show whether a people could choose its own government by careful thought, instead of having one forced on it.

Two of the essays, both by Madison, are the ones the GED test is most likely to use. They are worth reading slowly.

Federalist No. 10: factions, and a large republic

Madison's Federalist No. 10, first printed in November 1787, answered the strongest argument the Anti-Federalists had: that a republic as large as the United States could not survive. Madison argued the opposite: that a large size would make the republic stronger, not weaker. He began by explaining what he called faction.

In plain words: A faction is a group of citizens, large or small, who are moved by a shared strong feeling or a shared interest that goes against the rights of other citizens or against the good of the whole community. (Actuated means moved to act. Adverse to means against. Aggregate means taken all together.) Notice that a faction can be a majority. Madison was worried not only about small groups of plotters, but about the larger number of people ganging up on the smaller number.

Where do factions come from? Madison said they grow out of human nature. People will always have different opinions, different loyalties, and, above all, different amounts of property.

In plain words: The most common and longest-lasting cause of factions is that people own different amounts of property. People who own property and people who do not have always had different interests. (Durable means long-lasting. Distinct means separate.) Madison goes on to name more: creditors (people who are owed money) and debtors (people who owe it), landowners, manufacturers, merchants, and bankers.

Madison said there were two ways to deal with factions. One way is to remove their causes, by taking away people's liberty or by making everyone think alike. He rejected both. Taking away liberty to stop factions, he wrote, would be like taking away air to stop fires. The other way is to control their effects. And that, he argued, is where a large republic does better than a small one.

In plain words: Make the republic larger, and it will hold many more groups with many more different interests. Then it becomes less likely that a majority of all the people will share one aim that tramples on the rights of the others. (Extend the sphere means make the area larger. Invade here means to violate or attack.)

Here is a way to picture Madison's idea. Imagine one apartment building where most tenants work for the same company. If the company and those tenants want something, they can easily outvote the few tenants who disagree. Now imagine the whole of New York City, with more than eight million people: nurses and bus drivers, landlords and tenants, store owners and street vendors, people from every country and every religion. No single group is a majority of the city. To get anything done, groups have to bargain with one another, and none of them can simply run over the rest. Madison believed that a nation the size of the United States would work like the city and not like the one building.

In the same essay, Madison named the kind of thing he feared a faction might do in a small state. Among his examples were "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property." Those were the very demands of indebted farmers and their state legislatures in the 1780s, which Chapter 2 described. Remember that. It returns in Part 8.

Federalist No. 51: "If men were angels"

Federalist No. 51, first printed in February 1788, explains why the Constitution divides power among separate branches and lets each branch check the others. For many years it was not certain whether Hamilton or Madison wrote it. Most historians today agree it was Madison. The essay contains two of the most quoted sentences in American government.

In plain words: The way to stop one ambitious official from grabbing too much power is to give other officials their own ambitions and the means to resist. (Ambition is a strong wish for power or success. Counteract means work against.) Each official's personal interest should be tied to the powers of his office. A member of Congress will want to protect the powers of Congress, a president will want to protect the powers of the presidency, and each will push back when another branch reaches too far. This is the idea behind checks and balances, the system in which each branch of government can limit the others. Chapter 5 shows how the checks work.

In plain words: If people were perfectly good, we would not need government at all. If perfectly good beings ran the government, we would not need any limits on it. But government is made up of ordinary people ruling over other ordinary people. So the hard part of designing a government is that it must be strong enough to keep order among the people, and it must also be forced to keep itself in line. (Framing means building or designing. Administered means run. Oblige means force or require.)

Notice that both sides shared this view of human nature. The Anti-Federalists also believed that people in power would be tempted to abuse it. The difference was in the cure. Madison's cure was to divide power inside the national government so that each part checks the others. The Anti-Federalists' cure was to keep most power in the states, close to the people, and to write the people's rights down.

The Federalist answer on a bill of rights

Near the end of the series, in Federalist No. 84, Hamilton answered the demand for a bill of rights. He argued that it was not needed, and could even be dangerous:

In plain words: Why write "Congress shall not do this" about something Congress was never given the power to do in the first place? Hamilton's point was that the national government could use only the powers the Constitution listed, and no listed power allowed it to control the press or religion. He warned that a list of things Congress may not do might suggest that Congress had other powers, not written down, which the list was needed to hold back. Federalists also worried that any right left off such a list might seem unprotected. As Chapter 7 explains, Madison answered that second worry with the Ninth Amendment.

The Anti-Federalists in their own words

The Federalist Papers are famous, but they were an answer. The Anti-Federalists wrote first, and they wrote a great deal. For a long time, many schoolbooks described them only as the side that lost. But they made serious arguments, and their main demand, a bill of rights, became part of the Constitution. Here are four of them in their own words.

Brutus: a republic cannot be this large

On October 18, 1787, nine days before the first Federalist essay, a New York City newspaper, the New-York Journal, printed a long letter addressed "To the Citizens of the State of New-York." It was signed "Brutus," most likely after the Roman who helped kill Julius Caesar to stop him from becoming a king. The writer's real name was never given. Many historians think he was Robert Yates, a New York judge who had been one of New York's delegates in Philadelphia and had gone home in early July 1787, believing the convention was going far beyond what it had been asked to do (Chapter 3). Brutus wrote sixteen essays in all. The first asked whether the thirteen states should be turned into "one great republic." His answer was no.

In plain words: In a republic, the people should share similar ways of life, similar feelings, and similar interests. If they do not, they will never stop arguing. (Manners here means customs and ways of living. Sentiments means feelings and opinions.) Brutus went on to say that the representatives from one part of the country would always be working against those from another, and nothing good would get done.

In plain words: History gives us no example of a free republic anywhere near as large as the United States. (Furnishes means provides. Extent means size.) Brutus pointed out that the ancient republics of Greece and Rome were small. When Rome grew large, it lost its freedom and was ruled by emperors. He was following the French thinker Montesquieu, whom you met in Chapter 1. Montesquieu had written that a republic must be small to survive.

Put this beside Federalist No. 10, and you have the central disagreement of the whole debate. Brutus said a large republic would fail because the people were too different. Madison said a large republic would succeed because the people were so different. They were looking at the same fact and drawing opposite conclusions.

Brutus also feared the army:

In plain words: A truly free government will never use a permanent army to make people obey its laws. It must rely on the people's willing support. (A standing army is a permanent, paid army kept in peacetime as well as war. Execute here means carry out or enforce.) Brutus feared that a government too distant to win the people's trust would end up ruling them by force. Americans remembered British soldiers stationed in Boston and New York before the Revolution.

George Mason: "There is no Declaration of Rights"

In September 1787, George Mason wrote down his reasons for refusing to sign the Constitution. Copies were passed from hand to hand, and the objections were soon printed in newspapers in several states. His first objection was the one that would matter most:

In plain words: The Constitution has no bill of rights. And because the laws of the national government will rank above the laws and constitutions of the states, the bills of rights that the states already have will give people no protection against the national government. (The general government means the national government. Paramount means highest, ranking above all others. Security here means protection.)

Mason's reasoning went like this. Many states, including his own Virginia, already had declarations of rights in their state constitutions. But the Constitution says that national law is "the supreme Law of the Land" (Article VI). If a national law and a state bill of rights conflicted, the national law would win. So the state lists could not protect anyone from the national government. Only a national bill of rights could do that.

Mason also warned about the courts:

In plain words: The national courts are built to take over and destroy the state courts. That will make the law slow, complicated, and expensive, as it was in England, so that many ordinary people will never get justice, and the rich will be able to crush the poor. (The judiciary is the system of courts. Tedious means slow and tiresome. Intricate means complicated. Unattainable means out of reach.) Here is the kind of case opponents of the Constitution feared: a farmer forced to travel a long way to defend himself in a distant federal court, against a wealthy man who could afford the trip and the lawyers.

One more of Mason's objections deserves to be read honestly. He complained that the Constitution stopped Congress from banning the importation of enslaved people for "twenty odd years," until 1808 (Chapter 3 explains that bargain). Mason called the slave trade dangerous to the country. Yet Mason himself held many people in slavery on his Virginia plantation all his life. Both things are true. Many founders, on both sides, criticized slavery in words while living by it.

Patrick Henry: "We, the People" or "We, the States"?

Patrick Henry of Virginia was the most famous speaker of his time. In 1775 he had urged Virginia toward revolution. He had refused to go to Philadelphia in 1787. In June 1788 he led the opposition at the Virginia ratifying convention, speaking day after day, sometimes for hours. On his first day he went straight to the first words of the Constitution:

In plain words: Who gave the men in Philadelphia the right to write "We the People" instead of "We the States"? A confederation is made up of states; the states are its very soul. ("Authorised" is the old spelling of "authorized.") Henry believed those three words made a very large change. Under the Articles, the states had made an agreement with each other. Under the Constitution, the people of the whole nation were creating a government that would act on them directly. To Henry, that meant the states, and the liberty they protected, would be swallowed up by a consolidated national government.

The next day he told the delegates what their first question ought to be:

In plain words: The question you should be asking is not how to grow trade or how to become a great and powerful nation. The question is how to keep your freedoms safe, because protecting liberty should be the whole purpose of government. (Inquire means ask. Secured means made safe. End here means goal or purpose.) This is the Anti-Federalist point of view in one sentence. The Federalists talked about trade, debts, defense, and national strength. Henry said none of that mattered as much as liberty.

Henry also warned Virginia's slaveholders that a strong national government might someday use its powers to free the people they enslaved. That fear, that national power could threaten slavery, would run through Southern politics until the Civil War.

Melancton Smith: representatives who resemble the people

Melancton Smith was a merchant who lived in New York City. He was elected to the New York ratifying convention from Dutchess County, up the Hudson, and he became the Anti-Federalists' leading speaker there. In June 1788 he argued that the House of Representatives was far too small. At the start it would have only sixty-five members for the whole country, so each member would speak for tens of thousands of people. (The Constitution allowed no more than one representative for every thirty thousand people.)

In plain words: When we say "representatives," we naturally mean people who are like the people they represent. They should be a true picture of the people. They should understand the people's lives and needs, feel for them in their hardships, and want what is truly good for them. (Resemble means be like. Disposed means inclined, willing.) Smith warned that with so few seats, each representing so many people, only the wealthy and the well-known would win elections. Ordinary farmers and working people, whom he called the "middling class," would be left out.

Federalist or Anti-Federalist? How to tell

The GED test often gives you a short quotation or a description of an argument and asks which side it came from, or what point of view it shows. This part teaches a way to answer those questions every time. The quotations on the test may be ones you have never seen. That is fine. You do not need to recognize the quotation. You need to recognize the argument.

The one question to ask first

Ask: does this writer want the national government to have more power, or less?

The Federalists wanted a stronger national government than the one under the Articles, and they defended the Constitution as written. The Anti-Federalists wanted power kept mostly in the states, close to the people, and they wanted the Constitution changed or rejected. Almost every argument on either side comes back to that difference. If a writer is worried about what the national government might do, the writer is probably an Anti-Federalist. If a writer is worried about what happens when the national government cannot act, the writer is probably a Federalist.

Clues in the words

Certain words and ideas show up again and again on each side. They are clues, not proof, but they are good clues.

Traps to watch for

Both sides talked about liberty. A quotation that praises liberty could come from either side. Ask instead where the writer thinks the danger to liberty comes from. If the danger is a powerful national government, it is an Anti-Federalist. If the danger is disorder, or a majority in one state trampling on others, or a weak government that cannot protect anyone, it is a Federalist.

Both sides feared tyranny. Madison's Federalist No. 51 is about preventing tyranny. So is Brutus. The difference is the cure. A Federalist says the Constitution's design, with its separate branches and checks, will prevent tyranny. An Anti-Federalist says the Constitution will cause it.

Federalists also praised the states. To calm people's fears, Federalists often said that the states would keep most of their powers. So a sentence that mentions the states kindly is not automatically Anti-Federalist. Look at the conclusion: is the writer saying "so the Constitution is safe," or "so the Constitution must be stopped"?

The Anti-Federalists were not against all government, and most were not against the Union. They had supported the Revolution, and most agreed the Articles needed repair. A choice that says "Anti-Federalists wanted no national government at all" is usually wrong.

Do not judge by the name alone. Remember from Part 2 that "federal" once meant a league of states. A writer in 1788 who says he wants a truly "federal" government, meaning a league of states, is an Anti-Federalist.

Practice: sort eight statements

Each statement below is written in plain modern words, in the spirit of one side. Choose Federalist or Anti-Federalist for each one, then press "Check these." The reasons appear below.

Drills for this part: II.10 Federalist or Anti-Federalist?. All the drills are on the Social Studies Drills page.

State by state

Each state held an election for its convention, and each convention met, argued, and voted. Some states voted within weeks. Others argued for months. Who could vote for convention delegates was decided by each state, and in most states it was men who owned some property or paid taxes. Women, with very rare exceptions, could not vote. Enslaved people, nearly seven hundred thousand of them by the first census in 1790, had no voice at all, though the Constitution being argued over counted three-fifths of them when dividing seats in the House, which gave the states that held them in slavery more seats (Chapter 3). The Native nations were not asked either, though the Constitution gave Congress power over trade with them, and the new government would make treaties about their lands.

The first five: quick, and mostly easy

Delaware was the first state to ratify, on December 7, 1787, by a vote of 30 to 0. Delaware is still called "the First State." Small states like Delaware, New Jersey, and Georgia had good reasons to say yes quickly. They had won equal votes in the Senate (Chapter 3). New Jersey and Delaware also paid import taxes to their bigger neighbors, because many goods they bought came through the ports of New York City and Philadelphia; under the Constitution, only Congress could tax imports. Georgia, on the frontier, wanted a national army to help it in its wars with the Creek Nation, whose land Georgians were moving onto.

Pennsylvania came second, on December 12, 1787, by 46 to 23, but the way it got there left bad feelings. In September, the Federalists in the Pennsylvania legislature moved to call a convention right away, before opponents in the western counties could organize. Some Anti-Federalist members stayed away so that the legislature would not have enough members present to vote. A crowd found two of them and forced them back into the hall, and the vote went ahead. After the convention ratified, the losing side published its objections in the newspapers.

New Jersey ratified on December 18, 1787 (38 to 0), Georgia at the very end of 1787 (26 to 0; its delegates signed the document on January 2, 1788, the date many books give), and Connecticut on January 9, 1788 (128 to 40). Five states had said yes. Four more were needed.

Massachusetts: ratify, and recommend amendments

Massachusetts was the first truly hard fight. Shays' Rebellion had ended only a year before, and many of the convention's delegates came from the same western farm towns where the rebellion had started. When the convention met in Boston in January 1788, the Anti-Federalists probably had a majority.

The Federalists found a way through. They turned to the governor, John Hancock, who was popular and had not taken a side. Hancock came to the convention and proposed a compromise. Massachusetts would ratify the Constitution as it was, and at the same time send along a list of nine recommended amendments, changes it asked the new Congress to make. The state's future members of Congress would be expected to work for them.

This was a new idea, and an important one. It let delegates who wanted changes vote yes without voting for the Constitution exactly as written. On February 6, 1788, Massachusetts ratified by 187 to 168, a margin of only nineteen votes. Most of the states that ratified after Massachusetts followed its example and sent recommended amendments of their own.

Notice the difference between two kinds of approval. Recommended amendments meant "we approve, and we ask for these changes." Conditional ratification would have meant "we approve only if these changes are made." The Federalists accepted the first and fought hard against the second. They argued that a state could not join the Union on its own special terms.

Maryland, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, the ninth

Maryland ratified on April 28, 1788 (63 to 11), and South Carolina on May 23, 1788 (149 to 73). That made eight.

New Hampshire's convention had met in February, but the Federalists saw that they did not have the votes, so they had the convention adjourn (stop and plan to meet again later). When it met again in June, the Federalists had won over enough delegates. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire ratified by 57 to 47. It was the ninth state. Under Article VII, the Constitution could now take effect.

Virginia

Nine states were enough under the rules. In practice, they were not enough. Virginia was the largest and richest state, and the home of Washington, Madison, and Jefferson. New York held the country's most important port, and sat between New England and the South. A union without Virginia and New York could hardly survive.

The Virginia convention met in Richmond in June 1788. It was the most famous of all the debates. Patrick Henry and George Mason led the opposition. Madison led the defense, and he was joined by Edmund Randolph, the governor, who had refused to sign the Constitution in Philadelphia but now argued that Virginia must not be left out of the Union. Nobody in Richmond knew that New Hampshire had already ratified. News traveled by horse and by ship, and it took days.

On June 25, 1788, Virginia ratified by 89 to 79. Like Massachusetts, it also sent a long list of recommended amendments, including a full declaration of rights. Madison, who had once thought a bill of rights unnecessary, now understood that the promise of one had carried the vote.

New York: the fight at Poughkeepsie

New York's convention met on June 17, 1788, in Poughkeepsie, a town on the Hudson River about seventy-five miles north of New York City, just across and up the river from Newburgh. The voters had elected more than two Anti-Federalist delegates for every Federalist. Governor George Clinton, the leader of the Anti-Federalists, presided over the convention. If the vote had been held on the first day, the Constitution would have lost.

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Robert R. Livingston led the Federalists. Hamilton spoke again and again, for hours at a time. Melancton Smith led the Anti-Federalists, and the two men argued about the size of the House, the power to tax, and who the new government would really serve (Part 8 reads them side by side).

Then the news arrived. Word reached Poughkeepsie in late June that New Hampshire had ratified, and on July 2 that Virginia had too. The question in front of New York was no longer whether there would be a new government. There would be one. The question was whether New York would be inside it or outside it. New York City Federalists even talked of breaking away from the rest of the state and joining the Union on their own if the convention said no.

Melancton Smith changed course. He had wanted to ratify only on condition that amendments be made. Now he concluded that a conditional ratification would not be accepted, and that staying out of the Union would be worse. He and a few other Anti-Federalists agreed to ratify "in full confidence" that amendments would be made, rather than "on condition" that they would. Several other Anti-Federalists stayed away from the final vote. On July 26, 1788, New York ratified by 30 to 27, the second-closest vote of any state. The convention also sent a long list of proposed amendments, and a letter to the other states calling for a second national convention to consider them.

Three days before the vote, on July 23, New York City held a great parade to celebrate the Constitution. Thousands of working people marched down Broadway by trade: bakers, butchers, coopers (barrel makers), printers, shipbuilders, and many more, each group with its banner. In the middle of the parade came a model warship, with sailors aboard, drawn through the streets on wheels. It was named the Hamilton.

North Carolina and Rhode Island, last

Two states stayed out. North Carolina's convention met at Hillsborough in the summer of 1788. In August, by a vote of 184 to 84, it refused either to ratify or to reject the Constitution until a bill of rights and other amendments were proposed. North Carolina was not part of the United States when the new government began. It ratified at a second convention, at Fayetteville, on November 21, 1789, after the new Congress had proposed the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. The vote was 194 to 77.

Rhode Island, the state that had refused to come to Philadelphia, went its own way to the end. Instead of calling a convention, its legislature put the Constitution to a direct vote of the town meetings in March 1788. Federalists refused to take part, and the Constitution was rejected by more than ten to one, about 2,700 votes to about 240. Rhode Island did not call a convention until 1790. On May 29, 1790, more than a year after Washington became president, it ratified by 34 to 32, the closest vote of all. It was the thirteenth state.

The states in order

Look at the votes. The first states to ratify, most of them small, voted yes by wide margins or with no one opposed. The big, divided states, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, were close. And the last state of all, Rhode Island, ratified by just two votes. The Constitution was not welcomed by everyone. It was won, state by state, and in several states it was won narrowly.

The new government begins

On September 13, 1788, the old Congress of the Confederation, still meeting in New York City, passed a resolution to start the new government. It set three dates. On the first Wednesday in January 1789, the states that had ratified would choose electors, the people who would cast the votes for president. On the first Wednesday in February, the electors would meet in their own states and vote. And on the first Wednesday in March, the new government would begin, in "the present seat of Congress," which was New York City.

That first Wednesday in March was March 4, 1789. The new Congress, with a House of Representatives and a Senate, was supposed to begin work that day at Federal Hall, the old city hall on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, which had been rebuilt for the new government. But travel was slow, and so few members had arrived that the House and Senate could not begin business until April. The old Congress of the Confederation simply stopped meeting. The Articles of Confederation were over.

Washington takes the oath on Wall Street

Every elector voted for George Washington. He was the only president ever chosen without a single elector voting against him. John Adams of Massachusetts, who came second, became vice president. Washington traveled from his home at Mount Vernon in Virginia to New York, greeted by crowds in every town. He crossed from New Jersey to Manhattan by boat.

On April 30, 1789, Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street and took the oath of office written in Article II of the Constitution. The oath was given by Robert R. Livingston, the chancellor of New York, the state's highest judicial officer, who had helped lead the Federalists at Poughkeepsie. A crowd filled the streets below. Then Washington went inside and gave the first inaugural address to Congress. (An inauguration is the ceremony that begins a term of office.)

New York City was the first capital of the United States under the Constitution. The government stayed there until 1790, when it moved to Philadelphia for ten years, and then, in 1800, to the new city of Washington, D.C., built on land along the Potomac River. The building where Washington took the oath was torn down in 1812. The building on that corner today, also called Federal Hall, was finished in 1842 as a customs house. A large statue of Washington stands on its steps, near the spot where he took the oath. The National Park Service keeps it as a memorial, a short walk from the Wall Street subway stations.

Madison keeps the promise

The Constitution had been ratified with a promise: that amendments protecting the people's rights would follow. Many Federalists, now in power, were in no hurry to keep it. Some Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, wanted a second national convention that could rewrite the Constitution in large ways, and perhaps take back the national government's power to tax.

James Madison decided to keep the promise himself, and in a way that would protect rights without weakening the new government. He had won his seat in the first House of Representatives after promising the voters of his Virginia district that he would work for a bill of rights. On June 8, 1789, he proposed a set of amendments, drawn largely from the lists the state conventions had sent. Congress debated them through the summer, and in September 1789 it sent twelve amendments to the states. Ten of them were ratified by three-fourths of the states on December 15, 1791. Those ten are the Bill of Rights.

The story of each of those ten amendments, and of how courts have applied them, is told in Chapter 7: The Bill of Rights. What matters for this chapter is where they came from. The Anti-Federalists lost the fight over ratification. But their chief demand, a written list of rights that the national government could not take away, became part of the Constitution. That is why many historians say that the Anti-Federalists, though they lost, left a lasting mark on the Constitution through the Bill of Rights.

Two ways of seeing

Behind all the arguments about taxes, armies, and courts was a deeper question: whom would the new government serve? The two sides answered it differently, and historians still argue about it. Here are both sides in their own words, and then the main views of historians.

Who should represent the people?

At Poughkeepsie in June 1788, Melancton Smith and Alexander Hamilton argued about the House of Representatives. You read Smith's view in Part 4: representatives "should be a true picture of the people." Smith went on to warn that in large districts, only a "natural aristocracy" of the wealthy and well-educated would be elected, men who, he said, did not feel the hardships of "the poor and middling class." Hamilton answered him:

In plain words: My opponents forget that a representative has to go back home and live among the people, and that he needs their votes to be elected again. It will never be in his interest to go against what they want. The opinion of the people as a whole will control how their representatives behave. (Reflect here means stop to think. Regulate means control.)

Put the two side by side. Smith says that to be represented well, the people need representatives who are like them, who share their lives. Hamilton says the people do not need representatives who are like them; they need representatives who must answer to them at election time. Smith worries about who holds office. Hamilton trusts the elections to keep any officeholder in line. You have probably heard both arguments in your own lifetime, about the city council, the state legislature, or Congress.

The Federalist view

The Federalists believed the Constitution would serve the whole nation. A stronger government would pay the country's debts and restore its credit, so that it could borrow when it needed to. It would protect trade, so that merchants, farmers who sold their crops, and the craftsmen and sailors who worked for them would all do better. It would defend the frontier and keep order. And its design, a large republic with separate branches checking one another, would protect the rights of every citizen, including minorities, against the kind of hasty majorities that had passed unjust laws in the states during the 1780s.

The Anti-Federalist view

The Anti-Federalists believed the Constitution would serve the few. Its House was too small for ordinary people to win seats. Its Senate and president would be far from the voters. Its courts would favor those who could afford lawyers and long journeys. Its power to tax and to keep an army would reach into every household. And with no bill of rights, nothing would stop it. In their view, the farmers and working people who had fought the Revolution would end up governed by a new set of distant rulers, as they had been before.

What historians have said

Historians have argued about this for more than a hundred years.

In 1913 a historian named Charles Beard published a famous book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. He argued that many of the men who wrote and supported the Constitution held government debt certificates and other property that a stronger government would make more valuable. In his view, the Constitution was written in large part to protect the interests of creditors and men of wealth against the debtors and farmers who controlled several state legislatures. Remember Madison's own words in Federalist No. 10: he named "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts" as the kind of wicked project a faction might carry out in a state. On Beard's view, that sentence shows whose side the Constitution was on.

Other historians, especially in the 1950s, checked Beard's evidence and found that it did not fit as neatly as he said. Some leading Anti-Federalists were wealthy, and many ordinary people supported the Constitution. The New York City workers who marched down Broadway in July 1788 are an example: many of them expected a stronger government to protect their trades and bring back business. These historians stressed the founders' ideas about liberty, power, and republican government more than their pocketbooks.

More recent historians have looked again at the Anti-Federalists themselves. One, Herbert Storing, collected their writings and argued in 1981 that they should be counted among the founders, because their arguments shaped the Constitution as it finally came to be, above all through the Bill of Rights. Others have argued that the pressure of ordinary voters in the 1780s, the same pressure Madison feared, pushed the framers to write the Constitution as they did, and then pushed them to add the Bill of Rights.

These views do not always cancel each other out. Some readers conclude that the Constitution could be both a plan to fix a national government that truly was failing and a plan that protected the property of the people who wrote it. The Anti-Federalists could be both the losers of 1788 and the side whose main demand became the Bill of Rights. And all of this happened while enslaved people, women, and Native nations had almost no part in the argument, though its results would shape their lives for generations.

The GED test will not ask you which side was right. It will ask you to recognize a point of view, to tell a fact from an opinion, and to judge whether a claim is supported by evidence. When you read a passage from 1787 or 1788, ask: Who wrote this? Which side was the writer on? What did the writer want, and what did the writer fear?

Words to know

Ratify, ratification

To formally approve a document such as a constitution, an amendment, or a treaty. Ratification is the act of approving it.

Convention

A meeting of delegates elected for one special purpose. Each state elected a ratifying convention whose only job was to vote on the Constitution.

Article VII

The last article of the Constitution. It said the ratification of conventions in nine states would be enough for the Constitution to take effect.

Federalists

Supporters of the Constitution and of a stronger national government, such as Madison, Hamilton, and Jay.

Anti-Federalists

Opponents of the Constitution as written, such as George Mason, Patrick Henry, and Melancton Smith. They feared a strong national government and demanded a bill of rights.

Federal

Before 1787, usually a league of independent states. Today, the national government of the United States, as in "the federal government."

Consolidated government

A single central government that swallows up the states. The Anti-Federalists warned that the Constitution would create one.

Republic

A government in which the people elect representatives to make laws for them.

Faction

In Madison's words, a group of citizens, a majority or a minority, united by a shared feeling or interest that goes against the rights of others or the good of the whole community.

Tyranny

A government that uses its power cruelly or unjustly, without regard for the rights of the people.

Checks and balances

The system in which each branch of government can limit the others, so that no one branch becomes too powerful.

Standing army

A permanent, paid army kept in peacetime as well as in war.

Bill of rights

A written list of the people's rights that the government may not take away. The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791.

Pen name

A made-up name a writer signs instead of his or her own, such as "Publius" or "Brutus."

The Federalist Papers

Eighty-five essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, signed "Publius," printed in New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788 to argue for ratification.

Recommended amendments

Changes to the Constitution that a state convention asked for while ratifying it, without making them a condition.

Conditional ratification

Approval that takes effect only if certain changes are made first. The Federalists refused to accept it.

Elector

A person chosen to cast a vote for president.

Inauguration

The ceremony that begins a term of office, such as a president's.

Capital

The city where a government meets. New York City was the first capital under the Constitution.

Aristocracy

Rule by a small, privileged group, usually the wealthy or high-born.