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.

But, not alone by reason of the apathy and the discord which existed among the nominal friends of the proposed constitution, nor of the harmonious and energetic opposition of those who disapproved its provisions, nor of the numerical weakness of the former when compared with the strength and perfect organization of the latter, was the position which New York then occupied so peculiar, and at the same time so important.

Possessing a territory which extended from the Atlantic seaboard to the southernmost bounds of the British possessions in America, it was within the power of New York, entirely and absolutely, to separate New England from every other portion of the United States; and it remained for her alone to determine⁠—even in opposition to the expressed wills of her twelve sister states⁠—whether or not the territories of the United States should, thenceforth, be severed by the intervening territory of a foreign sovereign republic; whether or not the Union, thenceforth, should be maintained, if maintained at all, between twelve distinct commonwealths, occupying not only distinct, but detached territories.

The peculiarity of her geographical position, therefore, the rising importance of her commerce, the acknowledged intelligence and enterprise of her inhabitants, the great ability and fearlessness of her statesmen and popular leaders, the widely spread influence of her political action in former days, not yet wholly forgotten, and her unflinching devotion to the then existing Union of the states, had rendered it important, in the highest degree, that New York should assent to the proposed “Constitution for the United States”; while, on the other hand, her undeviating opposition to any centralization of political powers within the federal government, which the constituent states, as such , could not entirely control, her uncompromising adherence to her rights as a free, sovereign, and independent republic, the unanimity of her well-tried popular leaders and of her inhabitants, in opposition to the proposed constitution, and the perfect organization of her citizens, in every county throughout the state, to prevent the official approval of that instrument, had indicated that the task of securing that approval of the Constitution, in the form which it then possessed, would be difficult, if not impossible.