dopted even in case it did not approve
them itself. America in this way set out upon the high road that led
from a league of states to a nation.

THE STRUGGLE OVER RATIFICATION

On September 17, 1787, the Constitution, having been finally drafted in
clear and simple language, a model to all makers of fundamental law, was
adopted. The convention, after nearly four months of debate in secret
session, flung open the doors and presented to the Americans the
finished plan for the new government. Then the great debate passed to
the people.

=The Opposition.=--Storms of criticism at once descended upon the
Constitution. "Fraudulent usurpation!" exclaimed Gerry, who had refused
to sign it. "A monster" out of the "thick veil of secrecy," declaimed a
Pennsylvania newspaper. "An iron-handed despotism will be the result,"
protested a third. "We, 'the low-born,'" sarcastically wrote a fourth,
"will now admit the 'six hundred well-born' immediately to establish
this most noble, most excellent, and truly divine constitution." The
President will become a king; Congress will be as tyrannical as
Parliament in the old days; the states will be swallowed up; the rights
of the people will be trampled upon; the poor man's justice will be lost
in the endless delays of the federal courts--such was the strain of the
protests against ratification.

[Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT OF _The Federalist_]

=Defense of the Constitution.=--Moved by the tempest of opposition,
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay took up their pens in defense of the
Constitution. In a series of newspaper articles they discussed and
expounded with eloquence, learning, and dignity every important clause
and provision of the proposed plan. These papers, afterwards collected
and published in a volume known as _The Federalist_, form the finest
textbook on the Constitution that has ever been printed. It takes its
place, moreover, among the wisest and weightiest treatises on government
ever written in any language in any time. Other men, not so gifted, were
no less earnest in their support of ratification. In private
correspondence, editorials, pamphlets, and letters to the newspapers,
they urged their countrymen to forget their partisanship and accept a
Constitution which, in spite of any defects great or small, was the
only guarantee against dissolution and warfare at home and dishonor and
weakness abroad.

[Illustration: CELEBRATING THE RATIFICATION]

=The Action of the Stat