CHAPTER I. EARLY DIVISIONS OF SENTIMENT. HEN the doors of the Federal Convention at WHE Philadelphia were thrown open, on the seventeenth day of September, 1787, and the Constitution framed and proposed by the delegates from the States in attendance was made public, it was found to be not an amendment of the existing articles of Confederation but a new and complete scheme for a Federal Government. By its concluding article it was to become operative whenever ratified by the convention of nine of the States among the States ratifying it. When it was discovered that two of the four delegates from Massachusetts had refused had refused to sign the Constitution, two also of the three delegates from New York, and four of the seven from Virginia, it was made manifest that the adoption of the new new form of government was by no means assured, and that its fate was most uncertain in the large States of the Confederation. As we review the history of the contests over the adoption of the Constitution in these three States, it is equally manifest that, both in New York and Virginia, whatever may be the fact as to Massachu |