The Ratification Debate
by Alan Brinkley
This reading is excerpted from Chapter Four of Brinkley’s American History: A Survey (12th ed.). I
wrote the footnotes. If you use the questions below to guide your note taking (which is a good idea),
please be aware that several of the questions have multiple answers.
Study Questions
1.
2.
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5.
How did the Framers “stack the deck” to help insure that the Constitution would be ratified?
Why did supporters of ratification have an advantage over opponents?
Why did the Antifederalists oppose ratification of the Constitution?
Why did the promise of a Bill of Rights bring some Antifederalists over to the Federalists’ side?
What limitations does the Bill of Rights place upon the powers of the national government?
Federalists and Antifederalists
The delegates at [the Constitutional Convention in] Philadelphia had greatly exceeded their
instructions from Congress and the states. Instead of making simple revisions to the Articles of
Confederation, they had produced a plan for a completely different form of government. They
feared, therefore, that the Constitution might never be ratified under the rules of the Articles of
Confederation, which required unanimous approval by the state legislatures. So the convention
changed the rules. The Constitution specified that the new government would come into
existence among the ratifying states when any nine of the thirteen had ratified it. The delegates
recommended to Congress that special state conventions, not state legislatures, consider the
document. They were required to vote “yes” or “no” on the document. they could make no
changes until after the Constitution was ratified by the required number of states, at which point
the Constitution’s amendment process could be used (as it was for the Bill of Rights).
The old Confederation Congress, now overshadowed by the events in Philadelphia, passively
accepted the convention’s work and submitted it to the states for approval. All the state
legislatures except Rhode Island’s elected delegates to ratifying conventions, most of which
began meeting by early 1788. Even before the ratifying conventions convened, however, a great
national debate on the new Constitution had begun—in the state legislatures, in mass meetings,
in the columns of newspapers, and in ordinary conversations. Occasionally, passions rose to the
point that opposing factions came to blows. In at least one place—Albany, New York—such
clashes resulted in injuries and death.
Supporters of the Constitution had a number of advantages. They were better organized than
their opponents, and they had the support of the two most eminent men in America, Franklin and
Washington. And they seized an appealing label for themselves: “Federalists”—the term that
opponents of centralization had once used to describe themselves—thus implying that they were
less committed to a “nationalist” government than in fact they were. The Federalists also had the
support of the ablest political philosophers of their time: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,
and John Jay. 1 Those three men, under the joint pseudonym “Publius,” wrote a series of essays—
widely published in newspapers throughout the nation—explaining the meaning and virtues of
1
Jay was from Katonah, about 20 miles north of Scarsdale in northern Westchester. His home is a historic site.
the Constitution. They did so in an effort to counter the powerful arguments that those opposed
to the Constitution—those who became known as the Anti-federalists—were making. Without a
powerful defense of the new Constitution, they feared, the Anti-federalists might [prevail] in
several crucial states, and most notably in New York. The essays were later issued as a book,
and they are known today as The Federalist Papers. They are among the greatest American
contributions to political theory.
The Federalists called their critics “Antifederalists,” implying that their rivals had nothing to
offer except opposition and chaos. But the Antifederalists had serious and intelligent arguments
of their own. they presented themselves as the defenders of the true principles of the Revolution.
The Constitution, they believed, would betray those principles by establishing a strong,
potentially tyrannical, center of power in the new national government. The new government,
they claimed, would in crease taxes, obliterate the states, wield dictatorial powers, favor the
“well born” over the common people, and put an end to individual liberty. But their biggest
complaint was that the Constitution lacked a bill of rights, a concern that revealed one of the
most important sources of their opposition: a basic mistrust of human nature and of the capacity
of human beings to wield power. The Antifederalists argued that any government that
centralized authority would inevitably produce despotism. Their demand for a bill of rights was
a product of this belief: no government could be trusted to protect the liberties of its citizens;
only by enumerating the natural rights of the people could there be any assurance that those
rights would be preserved.
At its heart, then, the debate between the Federalists and the Antifederalists was a battle
between two fears. The Federalists were afraid, above all, of disorder, anarchy, chaos; they
feared the unchecked power of the masses, and they sought in the Constitution to create a
government that would function at some distance from popular passions. The Antifederalists
were not anarchists. They too recognized the need for an effective government. But they were
much more concerned about the dangers of concentrated power than about the dangers of
popular will. They opposed the Constitution for some of the same reasons the Federalists
supported it: because it placed obstacles between the people and the exercise of power.
Despite the Antifederalist efforts, ratification proceeded quickly (although not without
occasional difficulty) during the winter of 1787-1788. The Delaware convention was the fist to
act, when it ratified the Constitution unanimously. The New Jersey and Georgia conventions did
the same. In the larger states of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the Antifederalists put up a
more determined struggle but lost in the final vote. New Hampshire ratified the document in
June 1788—the ninth state to do so. It was now theoretically possible for the Constitution to go
into effect.
A new government could not hope to flourish, however, without the participation of Virginia
and New York, the two biggest states, whose conventions remained closely divided. By the end
of June, first Virginia and then New York had consented to the Constitution by narrow margins.
The New York convention yielded to expediency—even some of the most staunchly
Antifederalist delegates feared that the state’s commercial interests would suffer if, once the
other states gathered under the “New Roof,” New York were to remain outside. Massachusetts,
Virginia, and New York all ratified, on the assumption that a bill of rights would be added to the
Constitution. The North Carolina convention adjourned without taking action, waiting to see
what happened to the amendments. Rhode Island, whose leaders had opposed the Constitution
almost from the start, did not even call a convention to consider ratification.
Completing the Structure
The first elections under the Constitution took place in the early months of 1789. Almost all the
newly elected congressmen and senators had favored ratification, and many had served as
delegates to the Philadelphia convention. There was never any real doubt about who would be
the first president. George Washington had presided at the Constitutional Convention, and many
who had favored ratification did so only because they expected him to preside over the new
government as well. Washington received the votes of all the presidential electors. John Adams,
a leading Federalist, became vice president. After a journey from Mount Vernon 2 marked by
2
Not the town in New York. Mount Vernon was the name of Washington’s plantation in Virginia, nearby to what is
now Washington, D.C.
elaborate celebrations along the way, Washington was inaugurated in New York—the national
capital for the time being—on April 30, 1789.
The first Congress served in many ways almost as a continuation of the Constitutional
Convention, because its principal responsibility was filling in the various gaps in the
Constitution. Its most important task was drafting a bill of rights. By early 1789, even Madison
had come to agree that some sort of bill of rights was essential to legitimize the new government
in the eyes of its opponents. Congress approved twelve amendments on September 25, 1789; ten
of them were ratified by the states by the end of 1791. What we know as the Bill of Rights is
these first ten amendments to the Constitution.3 Nine of them placed limitations on Congress by
forbidding it to infringe on certain basic rights: freedom of religion, speech, and the press;
immunity from arbitrary arrest; trial by jury; and others. The Tenth Amendment reserved to the
states all powers except those specifically withheld from them or delegated to the federal
government.
On the subject of the federal courts, the Constitution said only: “The judicial power of the
United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress
may from time to time ordain and establish.” It was left to Congress to determine the number of
Supreme Court judges to be appointed and the kinds of lower courts to be organized. In the
Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress provided for a Supreme Court of six members, with a chief
justice and five associate justices; thirteen district courts... and three circuit courts of appeal.... In
the same act, Congress gave the Supreme Court the power to make the final decision in cases
involving the constitutionality of state laws.
The Constitution referred indirectly to executive departments but did not specify what or how
many there should be. The first Congress created three such departments—state, treasury, and
war—and also established the offices of the attorney general and postmaster general. To the
office of secretary of the treasury, Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton of New York, who
at age thirty-two was an acknowledged expert in public finance. For secretary of war he chose a
Massachusetts Federalist, General Henry Knox. As attorney general he named Edmund
Randolph of Virginia, sponsor of the plan on which the Constitution had been based. As
secretary of state he chose another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, who had recently served as
minister to France.
3
The Constitution requires that new amendments be approved by a 2/3 vote in each house of Congress and then
ratified by 3/4 of the states. This is a good thing for you to know.