At length, wearied with the continued shortcomings of her sister states, and, probably, aroused by the frequent insults and threats of dismemberment which had been freely indulged in by more than one of her immediate neighbors⁠—all of whom had envied her rising greatness, without at any time aspiring to her fidelity to the Federal compact⁠—on the suggestion of one of the most distinguished and most patriotic, but most maligned, of her citizens, New York had been the first to propose measures for a complete revision of the Federal Constitution.

In this hazardous undertaking, however, while she had steadily sought the extension of sufficient authority to the Federal Congress to render the existing government entirely efficient for the purposes for which it had been organized, New York had never lost sight of her own dignity, nor ceased to guard, in the most careful manner, all her rights as a free, sovereign, and independent commonwealth. Accordingly, while she had steadily sought the delegation , by the several constituent states of the Confederacy, of sufficient authority to the Federal Congress to maintain the credit of the United States, to pay their obligations, and, generally, to execute its duties with more efficiency and despatch, she had as steadily opposed every movement which might be construed to imply a surrender

of the prerogatives of her sovereignty, or which, in the future, might be considered as her approval of a centralization of “the right to command”; and every proposition which possibly might serve at any time to obliterate the lines of the several states, or to consolidate the thirteen distinct peoples and sovereignties which then existed within the Union, into one people, one nation, one sovereignty, was vigorously opposed both by her members and her Government.

Governed by these well-known sentiments, and sustained by so jealous a constituency, it need not be wondered at, that the delegation from New York in the Federal Convention⁠—a body which had originated in the action of the Legislature of that state, several months before⁠—had firmly disapproved the pretensions, and resolutely opposed the designs, of several of the states, in the formation of a new constitution; or that, when the simple result which she had proposed had been found unattainable, two of the three gentlemen who composed her delegation in that Convention had considered it their duty to withdraw from its 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.