Free American Experiment by James MacGregor Burns

legislatures in order to be submitted to a convention of delegates chosen in each state by the people thereof.” Richard Henry Lee of Virginia complained to his fellow anti-Federalist George Mason that the Federalists had made much of the Congress unanimously transmitting the Constitution to the states, “hoping to have it mistaken for an unanimous approbation of the thing…[but] no approbation was given.” The Federalist tacticians also saw to it that the legislatures had to call conventions in their states, and that the Constitution would go into effect—for the ratifying states—after endorsement by conventions in any nine of the thirteen states. The new order would not wait for unanimity.
    For a time the critics of the Constitution seemed thrown off balance by the Federalist momentum. But the anti-Federalists had a general strategy too. If the strength of the Federalists lay in their power to dominate the central and secret conclave in Philadelphia, that of their foes was to rally the opposition in the separate states. If the strength of the Federalists lay also in possessing a positive plan that would catalyze the amorphous political groupings in America, that of their foes was to unite the opponents of the Constitution, despite their own disagreements, in efforts to delay, amend, or repudiate the charter in the battle arenas of the states. The anti-Federalists were not overawed by the eminence of their leading opponents. One of them, annoyed by the incessant prating about the demigods of Philadelphia, remarked that he would not make invidious comments about their characters, “but I will venture to affirm, that twenty assemblies of equal number might be collected, equally respectable both in point of ability, integrity, and patriotism.” The foes of the Constitution could point to their own leadership in the convention—Mason, Gerry, and the others—and to their remarkable second team throughout the country, with state leaders such as Richard Henry Lee, Governor George Clinton of New York, Samuel Adams, and above all, the formidable Patrick Henry of Virginia.
    Among the Federalist leaders, none was more active than Alexander Hamilton, now barely thirty-two years old. During the summer of 1787, as Robert Yates and John Lansing returned from Philadelphia and spread rumors that a consolidated national government was being contrived, he fell into a row with Governor Clinton, who was already busy rallying the opposition in New York State. Hamilton was at his worst in this encounter. Choosing the dangerous pseudonym “Caesar,” indulging freely in personal attacks, he took such an elitist position in favor of a strong national government, in which popular passions would be curbed to defend the people’s own liberties, that he confirmed the anti-Federalists’ worst suspicions. So Hamilton turned to a mere cerebral approach—a collaborative series of reasoned and trenchant essays on the Constitution, to be published in New York newspapers, and he had the wit to involve in this enterprise James Madison and John Jay, both of whom were in New York City at this time. By late October, Hamilton had struck off the first number of the Federalist— written, it has been said, on a vessel proceeding up the Hudson—in which the author called for moderation and then went on to argue that “a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.” The vigor of government was essential, he argued, to the “security of liberty.”
    It was a remarkable collaboration. So agreed were the authors on their ends and their means, so similar was their background in ancient and contemporary classics, that readers could not recognize the particular author of a paper. Hamilton evidently had hoped that the three authors could meet regularly at his house at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street to