6, 1787. Pennsylvania followed on December 12th, and New Jersey
on December 18th. Ratifications continued without haste until New
Hampshire, the ninth State, signed on June 21, 1788. Four days later,
Virginia, a very important State, ratified. New York, which had been
Anti-Federalist throughout, joined the majority on July 26th. North
Carolina waited until November 21st, and little Rhode Island, the
last State of all, did not come in until May 29, 1790. But, as the
adherence of nine States sufficed, the affirmative action of New
Hampshire on June 21, 1788, constituted the legal beginning of the
United States of America.

No test could be more winnowing than that to which the Constitution
was subjected during more than eighteen months before its adoption. In
each State, in each section, its friends and enemies discussed it at
meetings and in private gatherings. In New York, for instance, it was
only the persistence of Alexander Hamilton and his unfailing oratory,
unmatched until then in this country, that routed the Anti-Federalists
at Poughkeepsie and caused the victory of the Federalists in the
State. In Virginia, Patrick Henry, who had said on the eve of the
Revolution, "I am not a Virginian, but an American," still held out.
Nevertheless, the more the people of the country discussed the matter,
the surer was their conviction that Washington was right when he
intimated that they must prefer the new Constitution unless they could
show reason for supposing that the anarchy towards which the old order
was swiftly driving them was preferable.

During the autumn of 1788 peaceful electioneering went on throughout
the country. Among the last acts of that thin wraith, the Continental
Congress, was a decree that Presidential Electors should be chosen
on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for
President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new
Congress should meet on the first Wednesday in March. The State of New
York, where Anti-Federalists swarmed, did not follow the decree--with
the result that that State, which had been behindhand in signing the
Declaration of Independence, failed through the intrigues of the
Anti-Federalists to choose electors, and so had no part in the choice
of Washington as President of the United States. The other ten States
performed their duty on time. They elected Washington President by a
unanimous vote of sixty-nine out of sixty-nine votes cast.

The Vice-P