ional riots
took place. Several States refused to ratify. The opposition had the
support of the great name of Patrick Henry, who had been the soul of the
resistance to the Stamp Act, and who now declared that under the
specious name of "Federation" Liberty had been betrayed. The defence was
conducted in a publication called _The Federalist_ largely by two men
afterwards to be associated with fiercely contending parties, Alexander
Hamilton and James Madison. But more persuasive than any arguments that
the ablest advocate could use were the iron necessities of the
situation. The Union was an accomplished fact. For any State, and
especially for a small State--and it was the small States that hesitated
most--to refuse to enter it would be so plainly disastrous to its
interests that the strongest objections and the most rooted suspicions
had eventually to give way. Some States hung back long: some did not
ratify the Constitution until its machinery was actually working, until
the first President had been chosen and the first Congress had met. But
all ratified it at last, and before the end of Washington's first
Presidency the complement of Stars and Stripes was made up.

The choice of a President was a foregone conclusion. Everyone knew that
Washington was the man whom the hour and the nation demanded. He was
chosen without a contest by the Electoral College, and would undoubtedly
have been chosen with the same practical unanimity by the people had
the choice been theirs. So long as he retained his position he retained
along with it the virtually unchallenged pre-eminence which all men
acknowledged. There had been cabals against him as a general, and there
were signs of a revival of them when his Presidency was clearly
foreshadowed. The impulse came mostly from the older and wealthier
gentry of his own State--the Lees for example--who tended to look down
upon him as a "new man." Towards the end of his political life he was to
some extent the object of attack from the opposite quarter; his fame was
assailed by the fiercer and less prudent of the Democratic publicists.
But, throughout, the great mass of the American people trusted him as
their representative man, as those who abused him or conspired against
him did so to their own hurt. A less prudent man might easily have worn
out his popularity and alienated large sections of opinion, but
Washington's characteristic sagacity, which had been displayed so
constantly during the