FREE ESSAY ON U.S CONSTITUTION RATIFICATION DEBATES

U.S CONSTITUTION RATIFICATION DEBATES

On September 28, 1787, after three days of bitter debate, the Confederation Congress sent
the Constitution to the states with neither an endorsement nor a condemnation. This
action, a compromise engineered by Federalist members, disposed of the argument that the
convention had exceeded its mandate; in the tacit opinion of Congress, the Constitution
was validly before the people. The state legislatures' decisions to hold ratifying
conventions confirmed the Constitution's legitimacy. 
The ratification controversy pitted supporters of the Constitution, who claimed the name
Federalists, against a loosely organized group known as Antifederalists. The
Antifederalists denounced the Constitution as a radically centralizing document that
would destroy American liberty and betray the principles of the Revolution. The
Federalists urged that the nation's problems were directly linked to the frail,
inadequate Confederation and that nothing short of the Constitution would enable the
American people to preserve their liberty and independence, the fruits of the Revolution.

The Federalists - led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, John Marshall,
James Wilson, John Dickinson, and Roger Sherman - had several advantages. In a time of
national political crisis, they offered a clear prescription for the nation's ills; they
were well organized and well financed; and they were used to thinking in national terms
and to working with politicians from other states. They also had the support of the only
two truly national political figures, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. 
The Antifederalists - led by Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, James
Monroe, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, George Clinton, Willie Jones, and
Melancton Smith - counted among their advantages the support of most state 
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politicians and the American people's distrust of strong central government. Their most
potent argument against the Constitution was that it lacked a bill of rights. 
The lively newspaper and pamphlet war over the Constitution was a key element of the
ratification controversy. Federalists and Antifederalists published hundreds of essays
praising or denouncing the document. They often signed these essays with pseudonyms drawn
from classical sources such as Plutarch's Lives or from the seventeenth-century English
struggles against the tyranny of the Stuart kings. Notable Antifederalist pamphlets
included the Letters of Brutus, attributed to Robert Yates; Luther Martin's
Genuine Information; Mercy Otis Warren's Observations on the New Constitution ... by a
Colombian Patriot; and the Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, whose
authorship is still disputed. 
Every state but Rhode Island elected a ratifying convention in 1787-1788, and only North
Carolina's adjourned (August 2, 1788, by a vote of 185-84) without voting on the
Constitution. (Rhode Island submitted the Constitution to its town meetings; on March 24,
1788, in a vote boycotted by most Federalists, the voters rejected it, 2,708-237.) The
first five ratifications took place in quick succession: Delaware, December 7, 1787
(unanimous); Pennsylvania, December 12, 1787 (46-23); New Jersey, December 18,
1787 (unanimous); Georgia, January 2, 1788 (unanimous); and Connecticut, January 9, 1788
(128-40). In Massachusetts, however, the Constitution ran into serious, organized
opposition. Only after two leading Antifederalists, Adams and Hancock negotiated a
far-reaching compromise did the convention vote for ratification on February 6, 1788
(187-168). Antifederalists had demanded that the Constitution be amended before they
would 
Ratification debates 
consider it or that amendments be a condition of ratification; Federalists had retorted
that it had to be accepted or rejected as it was. Under the Massachusetts compromise, the
delegates recommended amendments to be considered by the new Congress, should the
Constitution go into effect. 
The Massachusetts compromise determined the fate of the Constitution, as it permitted
delegates with doubts to vote for it in the hope that it would be amended. All subsequent
state conventions but Maryland's recommended amendments as part of their decisions to
ratify: Maryland, April 28, 1788 (63-11); South Carolina, May 23, 1788 (149-73); New
Hampshire, June 21, 1788 (57-47); Virginia, June 25, 1788 (89-79); and New York, July 26,
1788 (30-27). By that date, eleven states had ratified, including all four critical
states. 
The lists of recommended amendments and the Federalists' promise to work for amendments
(particularly a bill of rights), set in motion the process by which the Bill of Rights
was added to the Constitution in 1789-1791. In turn, the First Congress's proposing of
amendments in 1789 induced the hold-out states to elect conventions that ratified the
Constitution - North Carolina, November 21, 1789 (195-77) and Rhode Island, May 29, 1790
(34-32). 
The struggle for ratification of the Constitution was both a direct, unabashed contest
for votes and a complex, impressive argument about politics and constitutional theory. It
was the first time that the people of a nation freely determined their form of
government. It was also the first national political controversy in American history; the
people of all thirteen states for the first time debated and decided the same issue.
Ratification was a 
Ratification debates
catalyst for the creation of a national political community, transforming the ways
Americans thought of themselves and encouraging the growth and popularity of national
loyalties. The political discourse generated by the ratification controversy continues to
this day within the matrix of the Constitution; the argument in 1787-1788 is one of the
finest chapters of that discourse. 
Bibliography
References 
Conley, Patrick T. & Kaminski, John P. (1989), The Constitution and the States
Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, & Richard Leffler (1976) 
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
1787-1791