sessions, leaving her without a legal representation in that assembly, and throwing the entire responsibility of the result of its deliberations on the eleven states which had remained therein. Nor need it excite any surprise that, from that time forth, the opposition to the proposed “Constitution for the United States” had been nowhere so determined, so general, or so completely organized as in the State of New York; and that in no other state had that opposition been directed by so formidable an array of leaders, each of whom had been so entirely, so consistently, so effectively, or, during so long a period, identified with the best interests of the state and of the Union. So thoroughly, indeed, had the opposition to the proposed constitution been organized in that state, and with so much skill had it been directed by the experienced popular leaders, that the impending political crisis appears to have been fully understood, even while the Federal Convention was yet engaged in the discussion of the various projects of its members; and, through the newspapers of the day, as well as through tracts which had been prepared for the purpose, the fundamental principles of Governmental science, the existing necessities of the United States, and the relative rights and duties of the constituent states and of the Union, had been discussed before the people, with marked ability and the utmost diligence.
The termination of the labors of the Federal Convention, and the promulgation of its proposed plan of government, served rather to concentrate than to diminish the strength of the opposition; and, thenceforth, from every county in the state, the arguments and appeals of the “Anti-Federalists”—as the States’-Rights party of that day was subsequently called—were hurled against the devoted instrument, without ceasing, and with the most relentless severity.
On Thursday, the twenty-seventh day of September, 1787, the same day on which the draught of the proposed constitution had been promulgated in the city of New York, and side by side with that document in The New York Journal —the ancient organ of “ The Sons