The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (144 page)

In 1787 the state enjoyed a thriving economy. The millers grinding imported wheat flourished; trade bad picked up after the war; and public indebtedness was light. The possibility of life alone, however, was difficult to conceive of. The ratifying convention brought together farmers who had the intelligence to see where political realism lay. The result was a rapid meeting and a vote of thirty in favor, none opposed.

Pennsylvania moved almost as swiftly. By some rough handling of reluctant legislators, the Federalists forced through a vote in the legislature authorizing the meeting of a ratifying convention. A few hours later the legislature dissolved in preparation for the election of a successor to itself; the action in favor of convening a body to consider ratification had been a near thing.

The arguments over the Constitution were amplified in Pennsylvania for several weeks before the election. Organization may have been even more important, and here the Federalists gained the advantage. The key to the election of the convention lay in Philadelphia and the surrounding countryside. Both the city and the farms around it fell to the Federalists -- with artisans, shopkeepers, and farmers voting in favor of delegates

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pledged to ratification. If the Antifederalists had a chance in Pennsylvania, they had to capture the western sector and to play on suspicions of concentrated power. Federalist organization carried the struggle. Shortly after it was elected, Pennsylvania's ratifying convention voted on December 12 two to one in favor of the Constitution.

Six days later New Jersey's convention voted unanimously in favor of ratification, and on January 2, 1788, the twenty-six members of Georgia's convention did the same. In a general way both states acted, as Delaware had before them, to escape the weakness of isolation. New Jersey could not survive alone, and the Constitution promised advantages to every major group in the state. Georgia's weakness was more apparent than New Jersey's. The Creek Indians threatened survival of the state, and a strong national government seemed to promise security. Local attachments, which persisted almost everywhere else in America, were weak in Georgia, which was populated by recent immigrants who had not yet rooted themselves deeply.

Connecticut had a different set of reasons for ratifying, but it too could not survive outside a union. It wanted to rid itself of economic bondage to New York, and the Constitution, by placing the regulation of foreign commerce with the new government, offered the means. A week after Georgia acted, Connecticut voted by better than three to one in favor of the Constitution.

Thus within a period of just over a month, five states had ratified the Constitution. One of them, Pennsylvania, would be essential to any union of the states. The other four, though small and relatively weak, had helped give force to the process of ratification, a process which would reach a completion of sorts with the adherence of four more states.

The first of the four, Massachusetts, approved early in February by a vote of 187 to 168. Opposition to the Constitution had formed in several parts of the state with the western area especially hostile. The bitterness of rebellion still lingered there. Small farmers, the victims of eastern power, were understandably suspicious of an even more remote authority. The Federalists, recognizing that the contest would be close, took pains to woo John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Both were popular men; both distrusted the transactions at Philadelphia. The road to Hancock's sympathies lay in his vanity, which the Federalists carefully cultivated, even going so far as to suggest apparently that he might expect to become Vice President in the new government. Hancock took the bait like a hungry fish. Samuel Adams was vain in his own way. He could not bear to be separated from "the people," and when Paul Revere and a group of artisans let him know that they fancied the Constitution, he joined the Federalists. Along with approval, the Massachusetts convention recommended amendments to the Constitution, proposals that guarantees of civil liberties be added.

Maryland, which ratified next, in April, considered amendments, but adopted none. Ratification was voted easily a week after the convention opened. The decision in South Carolina, a month after Maryland's, came in a closer vote, 149 to 73, but probably was never in doubt. South Carolina had not yet recovered from the terrible damages of the war and had everything to gain in the Union. Its public debt was heavy, and assumption of it by the national government would be welcome. Union with other states also offered security, and in South Carolina public concern about defense remained strong.

With South Carolina's vote, eight states were in the Union. Two powerful states remained uncommitted -- Virginia and New York. North Carolina and Rhode Island had already expressed their distaste for the Constitution, and New Hampshire's convention, which met first in February, refused to act. This refusal arose from an opposition which, though strong, was not prepared to burn all bridges. By June, public opinion bad swung behind the Constitution, in part because of the ratification by other states -- especially next-door Massachusetts. Still the vote was almost evenly divided, 57 to 47 in favor of ratification.

Would Virginia and New York come in? Delegates in both states twisted and turned before voting. The condition of Virginia's economy may have persuaded some planters to look with favor on the Constitution. There was little money in the state, but much indebtedness. A strong stable government, some planters said, would make borrowing from abroad possible.

Patrick Henry led the Antifederalists in the convention. Much of his attack had a certain eloquence, but more was simply shapeless. Much of what Henry said was a play on this sentence (from his second long speech): "My great objection is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants." Edmund Pendleton, among others, cut through Henry's oratory like a sharp knife. Whether Federalist arguments moved men or not, the Federalists gained an edge in the convention, Edmund Randolph's decision to support the Constitution undoubtedly helped just as the immense prestige of George Washington must have. In any case the final vote, though not heavily on the side of the Constitution, was favorable.

Virginia ratified in late June. A month later New York gave its approval in a tough fight which saw Hamilton lead the way. News from Virginia undodbtedly swayed delegates, and the threat of New York City to secede from the state if the Constitution were not approved forced some delegates to back the Constitution.

With New York in, only North Carolina and Rhode Island remained out. North Carolina delayed joining the Union until November 1789; Rhode Island held back until May of the following year. By the time it gave approval, the administration of President Washington had been in office for over a year.

Before the American Revolution many Americans lived by standards implicit in such words as grace, calling, frugality, thrift, and virtue. During the Revolution they came also to speak of honor, glory, and sacrifice. The Americans were not a perfect people before the Revolution; nor did they approach perfection during the war. But despite their lapses and their failures, they left these words unsoiled, as good as they had been before the Revolution.

Between 1776 and 1789 the Americans had to reconsider the meaning of these old words and some others as well -- independence, the nation, liberty, and equality. War and crisis had brought them to this reconsideration and had stimulated their imaginations. The revolutionaries indeed had managed to think in two extraordinarily different ways: they had learned to see things as they are and to imagine how they might be. The old truths had endured while new standards were raised. The test the Americans now faced lay in getting the best out of themselves in the service of old and new.