Citizens of Philadelphia who took up their copies of the Pennsylvania Advertiser on Tuesday, September 17, found to their surprise that the columns were completely filled with the new Constitution. This was their first intimation of what the convention had really done. Rumor had stalked abroad that the convention was rent by dissensions; but the envious reader saw at the end of his paper the words, "Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States ... in witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names." Done by unanimous consent of the delegates the Constitution was not, for not all the delegates who were present on the last day would affix their signatures. It was Gouverneur Morris who suggested the phrase which gave a specious unanimity to the work of the convention.
The thoughtful reader of the Constitution must have been impressed by the new features which caught his eye. In place of the old inefficient and powerless Congress, he observed a well-organized national legislature, an independent executive, and a federal judiciary of ample jurisdiction. Further scrutiny must have apprised him that the new Government would operate directly upon individuals, thus remedying a vital defect in the Confederation. The powers given to Congress may well have set at rest the minds of anxious public creditors. With the power to lay and collect taxes, to raise and support a military and naval establishment, and to regulate commerce, Congress had ample means to pay the public debt, to enforce its claims, and to offer protection to trade and industry. Not less significant to property-owners were the brief clauses in the new Constitution which sharply forbade States to emit bills of credit, to make anything but gold and silver legal tender in payment of debts, and to make laws impairing the obligation of contracts.
But what guaranty was there that States would observe these prohibitions? The power to coerce a State was nowhere conferred. The militia, to be sure, could be called out to execute the laws; and the United States guaranteed to every State a republican form of government and promised protection against domestic violence. Congress could deal surely and effectively with any future Shays if it were invited to do so. But what if a State passed a law violating the obligation of contracts? The answer is contained in the clause which reads: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." This and the correlative clause which extended the judicial power to all cases arising under the Constitution, the laws and the treaties of the United States, may be called the keystone of the whole constitutional structure. "For the first time in history, courts are called upon by the simple processes of administering justice, in cases where private right or personal injury is involved, to uphold the structure of the body politic." And there were those in the convention who believed that the principle of judicial control included the power of passing upon the constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress.
It was still within the power of the old Congress to expedite or block the ratification of the new Constitution. The document which the Philadelphia Convention presented was technically only a revision of the Articles of Confederation, which might be altered only with the consent of the legislatures of all thirteen States; but the last article of this new instrument provided that when ratified by conventions (not legislatures) in nine States, it should go into effect among the States so acting. In effect, Congress was asked to sanction a secession of nine States from the old Union which had been declared perpetual. Making a virtue of necessity, Congress finally yielded and passed the Constitution on to the States.
Since the party struggles of Whigs and Tories no campaign of continental proportions had ever been seen like that which ensued between the friends and foes of the new Constitution. By their forehandedness and their clear perception of what they must do, the Federalists, as the proponents of better government styled themselves, had a slight tactical advantage. The Anti-Federalists resented the assumption of the name by their opponents. They were the true friends of federal government, while the friends of the new Constitution aimed to set up a consolidated government. The press teemed with letters and essays, allegories and satires, squibs and pasquinades, expostulating, warning, ridiculing. The public was invited to heed the admonitions of Cato, Cassius, and many another worthy Roman.
Although much the same arguments, sober or satirical, were used everywhere, the campaign had to be fought out in the several States, each with its own peculiar social, economic, and political conditions. In Massachusetts the eastern counties, with their dominant commercial and mercantile interests, favored the Constitution, while the interior agricultural section, which had fought the battles of the Revolution and recruited the ranks of Shays' army, opposed it. The interior counties of New York containing the farming population were Anti-Federal, while the city and county of New York with its environs—the commercial section—were Federalist. In Pennsylvania, those who had opposed the domination of the Scotch-Irish and German radicals in the State Government now united in advocacy of the new Constitution. Here as elsewhere the Federal area corresponded closely to the counties where commercial and mercantile interests were most in evidence. In Virginia, the old-time social and economic antagonism between east and west, between the planters and merchants of the tidewater and the small farmers of the interior, reappeared. Much the same alignment is found in the Carolinas. Beyond the Alleghanies, the people were a unit in opposing the Constitution.