the new
Constitution realized, however, that the new government could not
succeed without the addition of New York and Virginia, neither of which
had ratified. Madison, Marshall, and Randolph led the struggle for
ratification in Virginia. On June 25, 1788, by a narrow margin of 10
votes in a convention of 168 members, that State ratified over the
objection of such delegates as George Mason and Patrick Henry. In New
York an attempt to attach conditions to ratification almost succeeded.
But on July 26, 1788, New York ratified, with a recommendation that a
bill of rights be appended. The vote was close--yeas 30, nays 27.

Eleven States having thus ratified the Constitution,[o] the Continental
Congress--which still functioned at irregular intervals--passed a
resolution on September 13, 1788, to put the new Constitution into
operation. The first Wednesday of January 1789 was fixed as the day for
choosing presidential electors, the first Wednesday of February for the
meeting of electors, and the first Wednesday of March (i.e. March 4,
1789) for the opening session of the new Congress. Owing to various
delays, Congress was late in assembling, and it was not until April 30,
1789, that George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of
the United States.

Notes

[a] The colonists, for example, claimed the right "to life, liberty, and
property", "the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and
natural-born subjects within the realm of England"; the right to
participate in legislative councils; "the great and inestimable
privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to
the course of [the common law of England]"; "the immunities and
privileges granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured
by their several codes of provincial laws"; "a right peaceably to
assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king." They
further declared that the keeping of a standing army in the colonies in
time of peace without the consent of the colony in which the army was
kept was "against law"; that it was "indispensably necessary to good
government, and rendered essential by the English constitution, that the
constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other";
that certain acts of Parliament in contravention of the foregoing
principles were "infringements and violations of the rights of the
colonists." (Text in Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the
Union, pp. 1-