Summary
Though accepted by the convention, the Constitution had to be ratified by
the people of the United States before it could take effect as the law of the
land. The framers devised a system by which special state conventions of
popularly elected delegates would be created to ratify the Constitution. Only
two-thirds (nine) of the states needed to ratify the Constitution to put the new
government into operation. Since those states that did not ratify the
constitution would remain under the authority of the Articles of
Confederation this situation presented the possibility of the division of the
United States into two separate nations.
As the process of ratification began, the majority of Americans were hesitant to
support the Constitution, which represented a drastic shift away from the
Articles of Confederation, whose weaknesses many common citizens had not been in
a position to observe. The long process of ratification began with the
entrenchment of opposing sides. The supporters of the Constitution called
themselves the Federalists, and their opponents, who supported states rights
over centralized power, were dubbed the Anti-federalists. The main
contention of the Anti-federalists was that the Constitution failed to balance
the power of state and national governments, erring in the direction of granting
too much power to the national government. The Anti-federalists claimed that
the Constitution doomed the states to be dominated by a potentially tyrannical
and uncompassionate central government. Federalists, for their part, defended
the necessity of a strong national government and pointed to the Constitution as
the best possible framework for the United States' government.
With the aid of funding and experience, the Federalists pushed ratification
through eight state conventions between December 1787 and May 1788. Only Rhode
Island and North Carolina rejected the Constitution outright. However, by May
1788, along with New Hampshire, neither Virginia nor New York, both states
crucial to the Union in terms of population and economics, had made a move
toward rejecting or ratifying the Constitution. The Union, for all intents and
purposes, could not function without the membership of both states. When, on
June 21, 1788 New Hampshire ratified the Constitution, making it effective as
the framework of national government, neither Virginia nor New York had reached
a decision. Both states were torn by debate between solid constituencies of
both Federalists and Anti-federalists. On June 25, 1788 Virginia finally
ratified the Constitution by a narrow 53 percent margin. In New York, the
debate raged on until Alexander Hamilton's Federalists finally emerged
victorious by nearly as slight a margin on July 26, 1788.
The fierce debates over the issue of ratification, particularly in Virginia and
New York, mobilized both Federalists and Anti-federalists in media campaigns to
convince the population of the value of their causes. The writings of the
political leaders of this period have become an important part of American
history. The most notable works produced are collectively entitled The
Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers contain a series of
newspaper articles written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander
Hamilton. The articles most likely played little part in the ratification of
the Constitution, but clearly lay out the arguments in favor of the Constitution
and against the Anti-federalists.
The framers realized that if they sent the Constitution straight to the state
legislatures, it would no doubt be defeated, as it took power from the states
and gave it to the national government. Additionally, the framers intended the
source of governmental legitimacy to be the population at large rather than the
states. In keeping with this ideal and with concern for the state legislatures'
bias toward rejection, the framers established the system of ratification which
eventually took place. The people would elect reppresentatives, not to govern,
but to decide on the form of government. However, the framers knew that the
process of ratification would not be easy. They anticipated the resistance that
sprung up among the Anti-federalists.
The Anti-federalists' arguments against the Constitution represented deep-seated
mistrust of centralized government, which found its source in Enlightenment
thinking, and more concretely, in the colonial experience leading up to the
revolution. The principle contention of the Anti-federalists was that the
national government could never be as responsive and compassionate to the needs
of the citizens as could state governments. The Anti-federalists claimed that
the people would not submit to being governed by a geographically distant
central government controlled by politicians who had little incentive to vote
for the best interests of individual states. They saw the submission of state
government to national government as representative of the submission of the
interests of the individual to the dangerous interests of the nation. Indeed,
one of the Anti-federalists' main points of contention with the Constitution was
that it nowhere guaranteed the protection of individuals' civil rights, and
nowhere explicitly guaranteed that the national government would not attempt to
unjustly limit and usurp the power of the states. Indeed, the absence of a bill
of rights was a common criticism of the Constitution, and turned many to the
Anti-federalist side.
