Thus did the Massachusetts Constitutionalists take very human and effective measures to prevent such revolt against the Constitution, after its ratification, as the haughty and harsh conduct of their Pennsylvania brothers had stirred up in the City and State of Brotherly Love. "The minority are in good temper," King advises Madison; "they have the magnanimity to declare that they will devote their lives and property to support the Government."[1098] While there was a little Anti-Constitutionalist activity among the people after the Convention adjourned, it was not virulent. Gerry, indeed, gave one despairing shriek over departing "liberty" which he was sure the Constitution would drive from our shores; but that lament was intended for the ears of New York. It is, however, notable as showing the state of mind of such Anti-Constitutionalists as the Constitution's managers had not taken pains to mollify.
Gerry feared the "Gulph of despotism.... On these shores freedom has planted her standard, diped in the purple tide that flowed from the veins of her martyred heroes" which was now in danger from "the deep-laid plots, the secret intrigues, ... the bold effrontery" of those ambitious to be aristocrats, some of whom were "speculating for fortune, by sporting with public money." Only "a few, a very few [Constitutionalists] ... were ... defending their country" during the Revolution, said Gerry. "Genius, Virtue, and Patriotism seems to nod over the vices of the times ... while a supple multitude are paying a blind and idolatrous homage to ... those ... who are endeavouring ... to betray the people ... into an acceptance of a most complicated system of government; marked on the one side with the dark, secret and profound intrigues of the statesman, long practised in the purlieus of despotism; and on the other, with the ideal projects of young ambition, with its wings just expanded to soar to a summit, which imagination has painted in such gawdy colours as to intoxicate the inexperienced votary and send him rambling from State to State, to collect materials to construct the ladder of preferment."[1099]
Thus protested Gerry; but if the people, in spite of his warnings, would "give their voices for a voluntary dereliction of their privileges"—then, concluded Gerry, "while the statesman is plodding for power, and the courtier practicing the arts of dissimulation without check—while the rapacious are growing rich by oppression, and fortune throwing her gifts into the lap of fools, let the sublimer characters, the philosophic lovers of freedom who have wept over her exit, retire to the calm shades of contemplation, there they may look down with pity on the inconsistency of human nature, the revolutions of states, the rise of kingdoms, and the fall of empires."[1100]
Such was the resistance offered to the Constitution in Massachusetts, such the debate against it, the management that finally secured its approval with recommendations by that Commonwealth,[1101] and the after effects of the Constitutionalists' tactics.
In New Hampshire a majority of the Convention was against the Constitution. "Almost every man of property and abilities ... [was] for it," wrote Langdon to Washington; but "a report was circulated ... that the liberties of the people were in danger, and the great men ... were forming a plan for themselves; together with a thousand other absurdities, which frightened the people almost out of what little senses they had."[1102]
Very few of the citizens of New Hampshire knew anything about the Constitution. "I was surprised to find ... that so little information respecting the Constitution had been diffused among the people," wrote Tobias Lear. "The valuable numbers of Publius are not known.... The debates of the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conventions have been read by but few persons; and many other pieces, which contain useful information have never been heard of."[1103]
When the New Hampshire Convention assembled, "a great part of whom had positive instructions to vote against it," the Constitutionalists, after much argument and persuasion, secured an adjournment on February 22 until June.[1104] Learning this in New York, nine days later, Madison wrote Pendleton that the adjournment had been "found necessary to prevent a rejection."[1105] But, "notwithstanding our late Disappointments and Mortification," the New Hampshire Constitutionalists felt that they would win in the end and "make the people happy in spight of their teeth."[1106]
When, therefore, Virginia's great Convention met on June 2, 1788, the Nation's proposed fundamental law had not received deliberate consideration in any quarter; nor had it encountered weighty debate from those opposed to it. New York's Convention was not to assemble until two weeks later and that State was known to be hostile. The well-arranged plan was working to combine the strength of the leading enemies of the Constitution in the various States so that a new Federal Convention should be called.[1107]
"Had the influence of character been removed, the intrinsic merits of the instrument [Constitution] would not have secured its adoption. Indeed, it is scarcely to be doubted, that in some of the adopting States, a majority of the people were in the opposition," writes Marshall many years afterwards in a careful review of the thorny path the Constitution had had to travel.[1108] Its foes, says Marshall, were "firmly persuaded that the cradle of the constitution would be the grave of republican liberty."[1109]
In Virginia's Convention, the array of ability, distinction, and character on both sides was notable, brilliant, and impressive. The strongest debaters in the land were there, the most powerful orators, and some of the most scholarly statesmen. Seldom, in any land or age, has so gifted and accomplished a group of men contended in argument and discussion at one time and place. And yet reasoning and eloquence were not the only or even the principal weapons used by these giant adversaries. Skill in political management, craft in parliamentary tactics, intimate talks with the members, the downright "playing of politics," were employed by both sides. "Of all arguments that may be used at the convention," wrote Washington to Madison, more than four months before the Convention, "the most prevailing one ... will be that nine states at least will have acceded to it."[1110]