be submitted to, like any other
misfortune.

While it did exist, however, Madison believed it should be protected,
though not encouraged, as a Southern interest. The question resolved
itself into one of expediency,--of union or disunion. What disunion
would be, he knew, or thought he knew. Perhaps he was mistaken.
Disunion, had it come then, might have been the way to a true union. "We
are so weak," said C. C. Pinckney, "that by ourselves we could not form
a union strong enough for the purpose of effectually protecting each
other. Without union with the other States, South Carolina must soon
fall." But he was careful to say this at home, not in Philadelphia. In
the convention, Madison wrote a month after it adjourned, "South
Carolina and Georgia were inflexible on the point of the slaves." What
was to be the union which that inflexibility carried was not foreseen.
It was the children's teeth that were to be set on edge.

CHAPTER IX

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION

Madison's labors for the Constitution did not cease when the convention
adjourned, although he was not at that moment in a hopeful frame of mind
in regard to it. Within a week of the adjournment he wrote to Jefferson:
"I hazard an opinion that the plan, should it be adopted, will neither
effectually answer its national object, nor prevent the local mischiefs
which excite disgusts against the state governments."

But this feeling seems to have soon passed away. Perhaps, when he
devoted himself to a careful study of what had been done, he saw, in
looking at it as a whole, how just and true it was in its fair
proportions. He now diligently sought to prove how certainly the
Constitution would answer its purpose; how wisely all its parts were
adjusted; how successfully the obstacles to a perfect union of the
States had been, as he thought, overcome; how carefully the rights of
the separate States had been guarded, while the needed general
government would be secured. Whether there should be an American nation
or not depended, as he had believed for years, upon whether a national
Constitution could be agreed upon. Now that it was framed he believed
that upon its adoption depended whether there should be, or should not
be, a nation. In September, as he wrote to Jefferson, he was in doubt;
in February he wrote to Pendleton: "I have for some time been persuaded
that the question on which the proposed Constitution must turn is the
simple one, whether the Uni