Footnote 31:[ (return) ]
Constitution, Article V.
Footnote 32:[ (return) ]
See Elliott's "Debates," vol. v, p. 214. This reference is taken from "The Republic of Republics," Part III, chapter vii, p. 217. This learned, exhaustive, and admirable work, which contains a wealth of historical and political learning, will be freely used, by kind consent of the author, without the obligation of a repetition of special acknowledgment in every case. A like liberty will be taken with the late Dr. Bledsoe's masterly treatise on the right of secession, published in 1866, under the title, "Is Davis a Traitor? or, Was Secession a Constitutional Right?"
Footnote 33:[ (return) ]
No. xliii.
Footnote 34:[ (return) ]
See "Republic of Republics," Part II, chapters xiii and xiv.
CHAPTER III.
Ratification of the Constitution by the States.—Organization of the New Government.—Accession of North Carolina and Rhode Island.—Correspondence between General Washington and the Governor of Rhode Island.
The amended system of union, or confederation (the terms are employed indiscriminately and interchangeably by the statesmen of that period), devised by the Convention of 1787, and embodied, as we have seen, in the Constitution which they framed and have set forth, was now to be considered and acted on by the people of the several States. This they did in the highest and most majestic form in which the sanction of organized communities could be given or withheld—not through ambassadors, or Legislatures, or deputies with limited powers, but through conventions of delegates chosen expressly for the purpose and clothed with the plenary authority of sovereign people. The action of these conventions was deliberate, cautious, and careful. There was much debate, and no little opposition to be conciliated. Eleven States, however, ratified and adopted the new Constitution within the twelve months immediately following its submission to them. Two of them positively rejected it, and, although they afterward acceded to it, remained outside of the Union in the exercise of their sovereign right, which nobody then denied—North Carolina for nine months, Rhode Island for nearly fifteen, after the new Government was organized and went into operation. In several of the other States the ratification was effected only by small majorities.
The terms in which this action was expressed by the several States and the declarations with which it was accompanied by some of them are worthy of attention.
Delaware was the first to act. Her Convention met on December 3, 1787, and ratified the Constitution on the 7th. The readiness of this least in population, and next to the least in territorial extent, of all the States, to accept that instrument, is a very significant fact when we remember the jealous care with which she had guarded against any infringement of her sovereign Statehood. Delaware alone had given special instructions to her deputies in the Convention not to consent to any sacrifice of the principle of equal representation in Congress. The promptness and unanimity of her people in adopting the new Constitution prove very clearly, not only that they were satisfied with the preservation of that principle in the Federal Senate, but that they did not understand the Constitution, in any of its features, as compromising the "sovereignty, freedom, and independence" which she had so especially cherished. The ratification of their Convention is expressed in these words:
"We, the deputies of the people of the Delaware State, in convention met, having taken into our serious consideration the Federal Constitution proposed and agreed upon by the deputies of the United States at a General Convention held at the city of Philadelphia on the 17th day of September, A. D. 1787, have approved of, assented to, and ratified and confirmed, and by these presents do, in virtue of the powers and authority to us given for that purpose, for and in behalf of ourselves and our constituents, fully, freely, and entirely, approve of, assent to, ratify, and confirm the said Constitution.
"Done in convention at Dover, December 7, 1787."