a call was issued for a meeting in the following spring
at Philadelphia. Virginia turned first to Washington to be one of its
delegates, but he had sincere scruples against entering public life
again. He wrote to James Madison on November 18th:

Although I had bid adieu to the public walks of life in a public
manner, and had resolved never more to tread upon public ground,
yet if, upon an occasion so interesting to the well-being of the
confederacy, it should have appeared to have been the wish of the
Assembly to have employed me with other associates in the business
of revising the federal system, I should, from a sense of
obligation I am under for repeated proof of confidence in me, more
than from any opinion I should have entertained of my usefulness,
have obeyed its call; but it is now out of my power to do so with
any degree of consistency.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 87.]

Washington's disinclination to abandon the quiet of Mount Vernon
and the congenial work he found there, and to be plunged again into
political labors, was perhaps his strongest reason for making this
decision. But a temporary aggravation ruled him. The Society of the
Cincinnati, of which he was president, had aroused much odium in the
country among those who were jealous or envious that such a special
privileged class should exist, and among those who really believed
that it had the secret design of establishing an aristocracy if not
actually a monarchy. Washington held that its original avowed purpose,
to keep the officers who had served in the Revolution together, would
perpetuate the patriotic spirit which enabled them to win, and might
be a source of strength in case of further ordeals. But when he found
that public sentiment ran so strongly against the Cincinnati, he
withdrew as its president and he told Madison that he would vote to
have the Society disbanded if it were not that it counted a minority
of foreign members. Stronger than a desire for a private life and for
the ease of Mount Vernon was his sense of duty as a patriot; so that
when this was strongly urged upon him he gave way and consented.

Spring came, the snows melted in the Northern States, and through the
month of April the delegates to this Convention started from their
homes in the North and in the South for Philadelphia. The first
regular session was held on May 25th, although some of the delegates
did not arrive until several we