ch, and yet provide for the
interest and safety of all. Individuals entering into society must give
up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the
sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance as on the
object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with
precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered and
those which may be reserved; and on the present occasion this difficulty
was increased by a difference among the several States as to their
situation, extent, habits, and particular interests. 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 important
consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds, led each
State in the convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude
than might have been otherwise expected. And thus the Constitution which
we now present is the result of the spirit of amity, and of that mutual
deference and concession, which the peculiarity of our political
situation rendered indispensable."

Congress, having received the report of the convention on September 28,
1787, unanimously resolved "that the said report, with the resolutions
and letter accompanying the same, be transmitted to the several
legislatures in order to be submitted to a convention of delegates
chosen in each State by the people thereof in conformity to the
resolves of the convention, made and provided in that case."

Conventions in the various States which had been represented in the
general convention were accordingly called by their respective
legislatures; and the Constitution having been ratified by eleven out of
the twelve States, Congress, on September 13, 1788, passed a resolution
appointing the first Wednesday in January following for the choice of
electors of President; the first Wednesday of February following for the
assembling of the electors to vote for a President; and the first
Wednesday of March following, at the then seat of Congress (New York)
the time and place for commencing proceedings under the Constitution.
Electors were accordingly appointed in the several States, who met and
gave their votes for a President; and the other elections for Senators
and Representatives having been duly made, on Wednesday, March 4, 17