[Sidenote: Action of Congress.]
[Sidenote: Action of legislatures.]

The text of the Constitution was printed and rapidly distributed
throughout the Union. It was still but a lifeless draft, and before it
could become an instrument of government the approving action of Congress,
of the legislatures, and of State conventions was necessary. Congress, on
Sept. 28, 1787, unanimously resolved that the Constitution be transmitted
to State legislatures. The federal convention had determined that the
consideration of its work should not depend, like the Articles of
Confederation, upon the slow and unwilling humor of the legislatures, but
that in each State a convention should be summoned solely to express the
will of the State upon the acceptance of the Constitution. It had further
avoided the rock upon which had been wrecked the amendments proposed by
Congress; when nine State conventions should have ratified the
Constitution, it was to take effect for those nine. On the same day that
Congress in New York was passing its resolution, the Pennsylvania
legislature in Philadelphia was fixing the day for the election of
delegates; all the State legislatures followed, except in Rhode Island.

[Sidenote: The Constitution attacked.]

The next six months was a period of great anxiety and of national danger.
The Constitution was violently attacked in every part of the Union: the
President, it was urged, would be a despot, the House of Representatives a
corporate tyrant, the Senate an oligarchy. The large States protested that
Delaware and Rhode Island would still neutralize the votes of Virginia and
Massachusetts in the Senate. The federal courts were said to be an
innovation. It was known that there had been great divisions in the