I.

CHAPTER boy in the procession seemed to consider himself as a principal in the business. Rank for a while forgot its 1788. claims, and agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, together with the learned and mechanical professions, seemed to acknowledge, by united harmony and respect, that they were all necessary to each other, and all useful in cultivated society. These circumstances distinguished this procession from the processions in Europe, which are commonly instituted in honor of single persons. The military alone partake of the splendor of such exhibitions. Farmers and tradesmen are either deemed unworthy of such connections, or are introduced like horses or buildings, only to add to the show or length of the procession. Such is the difference between the effects of republican and monarchical government upon the minds of men."

Wilson dwelt with emphasis, in his oration, upon the peculiar origin and popular sanction of the new federal government. "Delegates were appointed to deliberate and propose. They met and performed their delegated trust. The result of their deliberations was laid before the people. It was discussed and scrutinized in the fullest, fairest, and severest manner, by speaking, by writ ing, by printing, by individuals, and by public bodies, by its friends and its enemies. What was the issue? Most favorable, most glorious to the system! In state after state, at time after time, it was ratified, in some states unanimously, on the whole by a large and most respectable majority." On occasions like this, in the celebration of all party triumphs-for the policy of adopting the Federal Constitution was as yet a party question -more or less of exaggeration is usually indulged in. Of this privilege Wilson had not hesitated to avail himself; for it was exceedingly doubtful whether, upon a

I.

fair canvass, a majority of the people, even in the ratify- CHAPTER ing states, were in favor of the new Constitution. The enthusiasm of Philadelphia was by no means a test even 1788. of the feeling of Pennsylvania. That state had, indeed, been the second to ratify; no amendments had been proposed by the Convention; the majority seemed to be decisive. But, to judge from a protest put forth by the minority, the opinion of the people was far from having been clearly or decisively expressed. It was maintained in this protest that the Ratifying Convention had been illegally constituted. The resolution introduced into the Assembly for holding that Convention had allowed a period of only ten days within which to elect the members of it; and the minority in the Assembly had been able to find no other means of preventing this precipitation, except by absenting themselves, and so depriving the House of a quorum. But the majority were not to be so thwarted; and some of these absentees, so the protest alleged, had been seized by a mob, forcibly dragged to the House, and there held in their seats, while the quorum so formed gave a formal sanction to the resolu tion. It was further alleged that, of seventy thousand legal voters, only thirteen thousand had actually voted for members of the Ratifying Convention; and that the majority who voted for ratification had been elected by only six thousand eight hundred voters.

The day so unanimously celebrated in Philadelphia became the occasion elsewhere of very violent exhibitions of party feeling. The people of Providence, in Rhode Island, like those of most of the commercial towns, were in favor of ratifying, and had resolved to add to the usual commemoration of the 4th of July rejoicings that the Federal Constitution was to go into effect. this intention was defeated by a mob of a thousand men

But

The

CHAPTER from the neighboring country towns (some of them armI. ed, headed by a judge of the Supreme Court), who com1788. pelled the people of Providence to strike out from their programme all reference to the Federal Constitution. A still more violent collision took place in Albany. friends of the Constitution, the day before, on receiving news of the ratification by Virginia, had celebrated that event by a procession and a salute of ten guns. Those of the opposite party showed their chagrin by meeting the next morning and burning the Constitution. Both par ties united during the forenoon in the customary celebration of the anniversary of independence, but separated to dine at different places. After dinner the friends of the Constitution formed a new procession, escorted by some military companies, As they passed the head-quarters of the other party, an altercation arose, ending in a conflict in which clubs and stones, and presently swords and bayonets, were freely used, resulting in severe injuries to several persons.

Some three weeks after the Philadelphia celebration a similar pageant was got up in New York, that city, like Philadelphia, being decidedly in favor of the new Constitution, and hoping also, like Philadelphia, to become the seat of the national government, as it then was of the Continental Congress. One of the newspapers, Greenleaf's Political Register, the same afterward known as the Argus, and presently chief organ in New York of opposition to the federal administration, gave a somewhat disparaging account of this procession, and indulged in some jocular remarks on an accident which happened to a part of it. A night or two after, news having arrived that the Constitution had been ratified by the New July 27. York State Convention at Poughkeepsie, a mob attacked the obnoxious printing-office, broke the doors and windows, and destroyed the type.

I.

The high pitch of political passion to which the public CHAPTER mind had been raised during the war of the Revolution. had by no means, as yet, entirely subsided. During 1788. that impassioned and protracted struggle, imprisonment, banishment, confiscation, even death itself, had been occasionally visited upon political opponents. When men

to whom such extremities had grown familiar came to
differ among themselves on
themselves on a question so important as
the future national government of the Union, at a period,
too, when even the state governments were surrounded
with embarrassments, and seemed almost in danger of
dissolution, a wholesome moderation and a charitable es-
timate of each other's motives and intentions, however
much to be desired, was hardly to be hoped for.

The friends of the new Constitution, taking for themselves the title of FEDERALISTS, bestowed that of ANTIFEDERALISTS on their opponents. Those opponents insisted, however, that these names, if interchanged, would have been much more appropriately applied. The new Constitution, aiming, as it did, at a self-sustaining national government, was, they insisted, something more than federal, and its supporters, therefore, more than Federalists a name which might, with more justice, have been given to those who preferred a really federal compact. The name of anti-Federalists would seem to imply opposition to the union of the states; but by most of that party any such imputation was very warmly disclaimed. So far from being opposed to the Union, they declared themselves willing to make great sacrifices to maintain it. Notwithstanding the slight ebullitions of feeling already noticed-so slight that history has almost forgotten to record them, but important as showing the actual state of the public mind-no disposition was any where evinced to resist the will of the majority as

L

CHAPTER declared in legal form. In all the ratifying states the anti-Federalists expressed their readiness to aid, in good 1788. faith, in putting the new system into operation. But they insisted with great vehemence on the absolute necessity of immediate amendments, which had, indeed, been recommended by four out of the ten ratifying conventions, or five out of eleven, counting New York.

Sept. 5.

While giving a reluctant assent to the Constitution as it stood, the New York Convention had addressed a circular letter to the other ratifying states, in which they declared that several articles appeared so exceptionable to a majority of their body, "that nothing but the fullest confidence of obtaining a revision of them by a General Convention, and an invincible reluctance to separate from their sister states, could have prevailed on a sufficient number to ratify without stipulating for previous amendments ;" and they recommended to the states to make immediate application to the new Federal Congress presently to meet, that a new constitutional convention might be forthwith authorized under the provision to that effect contained in the Constitution.

This New York circular was soon responded to by a meeting held at Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania, consisting of delegates elected by the anti-Federalists in the different parts of the state. The proposal for a new Federal Convention was warmly seconded, and a list of the amendments deemed essential was agreed to. The only person as yet conspicuous in the history of Pennsylvania, whose name appears among the members of this Convention, was the venerable George Bryan, one of the judges of the Supreme Court, and late vice-president of the state, always a warm partisan of the old constitutional or ultra-liberal party. Albert Gallatin, an emigrant.