t
should she say No, the final result would be doubtful, even if the
requisite nine should be secured by the acquiescence of one of the
smaller States. This answer could not, of course, depend altogether upon
one man, but it did depend more upon Madison than upon anybody else.

The convention was in session nearly a month. At the end of a fortnight
he was not hopeful. "The business," he wrote to Washington, "is in the
most ticklish state that can be imagined. The majority will certainly be
very small, on whatever side it may finally lie; and I dare not
encourage much expectation that it will be on the favorable side." But
his fears stimulated rather than discouraged him. He was always on his
feet; always ready to meet argument with argument; always prompt to
appeal from passion to reason; quick to brush aside mere declamation,
and to bring the minds of his hearers back to a calm consideration of
how much was at stake, and of the weight of the responsibility resting
on that convention. Others were no less earnest and diligent than he;
but he was easily chief, and the burden and heat of the day fell mainly
upon him. Probably when the convention assembled the majority were
opposed to the Constitution; but its adoption was carried at last by a
vote of eighty-nine to seventy-nine. Thenceforth opposition in the
remaining States was hopeless.

New Hampshire--though the fact was not known in Virginia--preceded that
State by a few days in accepting the Constitution, so that the requisite
nine were secured before the convention at Richmond came to a decision.
But it was her decision, nevertheless, that really settled, so far as
can be seen now, the question of a permanent Union. Had the vote of
Virginia been the other way it is not likely that Hamilton would have
carried New York, or that North Carolina and Rhode Island would have
finally decided not to be left in solitude outside. What the history of
the nine united States only, with four disunited States among them,
might have been, it is impossible to know, and quite useless to
conjecture. The conditions which some of the States attached to the act
of adoption, the addition of a Bill of Rights, proposed amendments to
the Constitution, and the suggestion of submitting it to a second
convention, were matters of comparatively little moment, when the
majority of ten delegates was secured at Richmond. These were questions
that could be postponed. "The delay of a few years," Madiso