blics," Part II, chapters xiii and
xiv.]

CHAPTER III.

Ratification of the Constitution by the States.--Organization of
the New Government.--Accession of North Carolina and Rhode
Island.--Correspondence between General Washington and the
Governor of Rhode Island.

The amended system of union, or confederation (the terms are employed
indiscriminately and interchangeably by the statesmen of that period),
devised by the Convention of 1787, and embodied, as we have seen, in the
Constitution which they framed and have set forth, was now to be
considered and acted on by the people of the several States. This they
did in the highest and most majestic form in which the sanction of
organized communities could be given or withheld--not through
ambassadors, or Legislatures, or deputies with limited powers, but
through conventions of delegates chosen expressly for the purpose and
clothed with the plenary authority of sovereign people. The action of
these conventions was deliberate, cautious, and careful. There was much
debate, and no little opposition to be conciliated. Eleven States,
however, ratified and adopted the new Constitution within the twelve
months immediately following its submission to them. Two of them
positively rejected it, and, although they afterward acceded to it,
remained outside of the Union in the exercise of their sovereign right,
which nobody then denied--North Carolina for nine months, Rhode Island
for nearly fifteen, after the new Government was organized and went into
operation. In several of the other States the ratification was effected
only by small majorities.

The terms in which this action was expressed by the several States and
the declarations with which it was accompanied by some of them are
worthy of attention.

Delaware was the first to act. Her Convention met on December 3, 1787,
and ratified the Constitution on the 7th. The readiness of this least in
population, and next to the least in territorial extent, of all the
States, to accept that instrument, is a very significant fact when we
remember the jealous care with which she had guarded against any
infringement of her sovereign Statehood. Delaware alone had given
special instructions to her deputies in the Convention not to consent to
any sacrifice of the principle of equal representation in Congress. The
promptness and unanimity of her people in adopting the new Constitution
prove very clearly, not only that