The Convention closed its work September 17, 1787, and on the same date George Washington, its President, by letter submitted the "Constitution to the consideration of the United States in Congress assembled," saying:
"It is obviously impracticable in the Federal Government of these States to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and yet provide for the interest and safety of all. . . . In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety; perhaps our national existence."
This Constitution by its preamble showed it was, in many things, to supersede and become paramount to State authority. It was to become a charter of freedom for the people collectively, and in some sense individually. Its preamble runs thus:
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Nine States were, by its seventh article, necessary to ratify it before it went into effect.
The ratification of the Constitution, on various grounds, was fiercely opposed by many patriotic men, Patrick Henry among the number. Some thought it did not contain sufficient guarantees for individual freedom, others that private rights of property were not adequately secured, and still others that States were curtailed or abridged of their governmental authority and too much power was taken from the people and centered in the Federal Government. Mason, of Virginia, a member of the Convention that framed it, led a party who opposed it on the ground, among others, that it authorized Congress to levy duties on imports and to thus encourage home industries and manufactories, promotive of free labor, inimical and dangerous to human slavery. The best efforts and influence of Washington and other friends of the Constitution would not have been sufficient to secure its ratification had they not placated many of its enemies by promising to adopt, promptly on its going into effect, the amendments numbered one to ten inclusive. (The First Congress, September 25, 1789, submitted those ten amendments according to the agreement, and they were shortly thereafter ratified and became a part of the Constitution.)
By a resolution of the Old Congress, of September 13, 1788, March 4, 1789, was fixed as the time for commencing proceedings under the Constitution. At the date of this resolution eleven of the thirteen States had ratified it. North Carolina ratified it November 21, 1789, and Rhode Island, the last, on May 29, 1790.
Vermont, not of the original thirteen States, ratified the Constitution
January 10, 1791, over a month prior to her admission into the
Union. This latter event occurred February 18, 1791.
Thus fourteen States became, almost at the same time, members of the Union under the Constitution, and each and all of which then held or had theretofore held slaves.
Notwithstanding all this, there were many of the framers of the Constitution and its warmest friends who sincerely desired to provide for the early abolition of slavery, some by gradual emancipation, others by heroic measures; and there were many from the South who favored emancipation, while by no means all the leading and influential citizens of the Northern States desired it.