on shall or shall not be continued. There is,
in my opinion, no middle ground to be taken."

Those who would have called a second convention to revise the labors of
the first had no sympathy from him. He not only doubted if the work
could be done so well again; he doubted if it could be done at all. With
him, it was this Constitution or none. "Every man," he said in "The
Federalist," referring to a picture he had just drawn of the perils of
disunion,--"every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country,
every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that
he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America,
and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it." This
"means" was the Constitution.

Of the eighty papers of "The Federalist" he wrote twenty-nine; Hamilton
writing forty-six, and Jay only five. These famous essays, of wider
repute than any other American book, are yet more generally accepted
upon faith than upon knowledge. But at that time, when the new
Constitution was in the mind and on the tongue of every thoughtful man,
they were eagerly read as they followed each other rapidly in the
columns of a New York newspaper. They were an armory, wherein all who
entered into the controversy could find such weapons as they could best
handle. What governments had been, what governments ought to be, and
what the political union of these American States would be under their
new Constitution, were questions on which the writers of these papers
undertook to answer all reasonable inquiries, and to silence all cavils.
Madison would undoubtedly have written more than his two fifths of them,
had he not been called upon early in March to return to Virginia; for
the work was of the deepest interest to him, and the popularity of the
papers would have stimulated to exertion one as indolent as he was
industrious.

But the canvass for the election of delegates to the Constitutional
Convention of Virginia called him home. He had been nominated as the
representative of his county, and his friends had urged him to return
before the election, for there was reason to fear that the majority was
on the wrong side. Henry, Mason, Randolph, Lee, and others among the
most influential men of Virginia, were opposed to the Constitution.
There must be somebody in the convention to meet strong men like these,
and Madison was urged to take the stump and canvass for his own
election. Even this