With the easy states having agreed in favor of ratification, the question turned to those much more questionable states. Could the country survive without New York or Virginia? This week those critical states take up the question of ratifying the new Constitution.

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Hello, and welcome to the political history of the United States.

The Constitution was seemingly gaining traction, and there was reason for cautious optimism.

Thus far, seven states had taken up the question of ratification, with six of them agreeing to ratify.

Even for that one state that had failed to ratify, Rhode island, nobody was really all that concerned because everybody always knew that Rhode island was going to be a no.

The most recent state to ratify had been Massachusetts, which really had been the first major test for the proposed government.

Things had been close in Massachusetts.

Indeed, they had been very close.

But the defection of Samuel Adams and then subsequently John Hancock into the Federalist camp had pushed things over that finish line.

With Massachusetts voting to ratify on February 6, however, that cautious optimism that must have existed following Massachusetts voting to ratify was still very much tempered.

Sure, six out of seven states voting to ratify sounded pretty great, and all but the leading Federalists recognized that substantial battles remained in the path towards official ratification.

Neither Virginia and especially New York were sure things for ratification.

Both of these states were critical to the future prospects of the United States, to the point where it seemed difficult to imagine a path forward for the young country where either of the two failed to join the Union.

Not to mention that the majority of the states that had ratified, with Massachusetts notwithstanding, had been among those states where ratification seemed to be a given.

As we are going to see, the biggest battles over ratification were just now beginning, and securing the new government was anything but assured.

This week we are going to look at those battles as everybody tries to drag this thing over the finish line with Massachusetts now over the finish line, the next state to jump into the fray was New Hampshire.

New Hampshire was not a state that really caused any particular stress for Madison and his cadre of Federalists.

Everybody assumed that it was safe within the ratification camp, which was all fine and good right up until the moment that it became clear that New Hampshire was anything but a sure thing.

So what happened?

As it turned out, although the New Hampshire delegates were largely Federalist leaning, in many communities they had given specific instructions to reject the Constitution.

This kind of mandate was something that the delegates took very seriously and felt unable to simply sidestep.

The Federalists, recognizing the very serious problem that they had, one where they were obligated to vote against the very thing that they were fighting to enact, took an interesting, albeit frustrating, third option.

Rather than opening the convention and getting down to work, they quickly pivoted and voted immediately to adjourn the meeting until further notice, with the hope being that that they could return home and convince the local populations to give them the freedom to vote their own conscience.

In short order, New Hampshire had moved from a solid yes to a likely no and now adjourned as a concerning toss up.

Maryland was, at least on paper, a state of concern for the Federalists.

Among the leadership in Maryland is our old friend Luther Martin, who was anything but a friend to the new proposed order.

Martin wasted no time in filling the Maryland convention in on all of the details of what had gone down during those sessions in Philadelphia.

Unsurprisingly, these wealthy senators fell right into the group that the Constitution was designed to protect and were as a result, firmly planted in the Federalist camp.

Now, although they probably wish that they could have just picked an all Federalist slate, they knew that would be a bit on the nose.

Their solution, therefore, was to place a 500 property requirement on the delegates at the ratifying convention to hopefully swing them into the Federalist camp.

The anti Federalists, not amused by this, managed to successfully campaign to remove such property qualifications.

The leader in this effort was future Supreme Court justice, and still the only Supreme Court justice to ever be impeached, Samuel Chase.

The second victory that Chase scored was that he managed to push back the convention by several months.

The advantage here is that it gave the anti Federalists significantly more time to get their arguments in place ahead of the convention.

As it would turn out, however, delaying the vote and eliminating the property requirement was about as big of a victory as the anti Federalists were going to get.

Of the 18 counties in Maryland, only three of them managed to elect anti Federalists to the ratifying convention.

The writing was clearly on the wall, and the anti Federalists understood that victory was not in the cards.

Maryland was going to vote in favor of ratification.

For the anti Federalists, the wind was just completely taken out of their sails, with mainstays among them like Martin and Chase.

Not even bothering to show up to the meeting on time.

The anti Federalists made a weak attempt to emulate Massachusetts and add on some amendments.

But even here they lacked the energy to make anything happen.

On April 25, Maryland voted to ratify the Constitution, becoming the seventh state to do so.

In May, it was South Carolina's turn to consider the Constitution.

Here again, the Constitution was never really in any danger of not being ratified.

Although there remained some pushback against the proposed federal pact from the backcountry farmers, they hardly were able to pull together enough support to ever really endanger the prospect of ratification.

With victory essentially assured, all the anti federalists could do is attempt to delay the proceedings long enough that they might be able to better organize.

Thomas Sumner made just such an attempt, but was soundly defeated.

On May 23, Maryland became the eighth state to ratify the Constitution.

Great.

So taking stock, there were now just four states left to make a decision, and only one of them needed to ratify to make the Constitution a thing.

However, as is the case during the playoffs, in any sport that has a multi game series, the hardest win is the one where you're trying to close out that series and you desperately need the win.

The remaining states, Virginia, New York, New Hampshire and North Carolina would prove to be the most contentious out of all of the states.

Although only one more state needed to get on board, ratification was still not guaranteed.

Perhaps no state posed more of a challenge for not only the passage of the Constitution, but the national acceptance of it as well.

As did Virginia.

Of course, there were a few states that were outright opposed to ratification, and the Clintonites in New York are going to put up a big fight.

As we are going to see shortly.

Though, Virginia was just really front and center to this entire plan.

As we have talked about before, the idea of the Constitution being ratified, but Virginia not joining the Union seemed unthinkable.

Sure, the Constitution might get ratified without the Old Dominion's assent, but the practical survival of the Union without Virginia seemed pretty unlikely.

None of this touches on the symbolic nature of Virginia choosing either to ratify or reject the Constitution.

It was Virginia, after all, that was the state of the architect of the document, James Madison.

It was the state of one of its biggest supporters and the presumptive first president, George Washington.

Yet Virginia was not without serious detractors as well.

It is not as though Patrick Henry, George Mason or Edmund Randolph were nobodies.

Patrick Henry was the Virginian Samuel Adams and was among the earliest agitators, at one time making his slightly treasonous comment about the King, remembering that even Julius Caesar had his Brutus.

George Mason was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

Randolph was the governor of Virginia and the man who had actually proposed the Virginia plan at the Philadelphia Convention back the previous May, James Madison had been working since the end of the convention on the Federalist Papers, along with Hamilton and occasionally John jay.

Now, ultimately, it would be Hamilton that would contribute the largest number of papers.

However, Madison's own contribution had been significant.

In some of the more significant papers, most prominently federalist number 10, Madison lays out the justification for the republican style of government that the United States would have.

It is here where he, using just a touch of retcon, declares that the entire national negative thing that he had been so desperately wanting actually never really was that big of a deal.

He argued that having such a large republic would introduce so many different factions, classes and individuals that minority and majority rights alike would be protected through the sheer size of the legislature.

It is interesting seeing Madison here dropping the necessity for the national negative, something that was so core to his pre convention vision for the power of Congress.

However, realistically, Madison understood the need to pivot.

Here, though, Madison shows his flexibility in defending the new Constitution, which, although not exactly what he had hoped for, was still a document that he was desperate to see ratified.

Knowing this, it must have come as an even more crushing disappointment when he did return to Virginia to find a whole lot more animosity than anticipated towards the new Constitution.

Arriving the day before the election of the delegates, Madison suddenly found himself having to do something previously unthinkable.

He had to, albeit very briefly, campaign as a Virginia gentleman.

Actively campaigning was not really something commonly done and was generally looked down upon.

Now, this is not to say that there were not political campaigns, but rather the actual candidate would have remained aloof from the process of chasing votes.

Madison had been in politics for well over a decade and prior to that point had never done a bit of campaigning.

Here, however, the stakes were too high and he had no other choice, forcing him to make his appeal via a speech directly to the people.

Degrading or not, the play worked and Madison was elected as a delegate.

The Virginia Federalists emerged from the delegate elections with what amounted to a slight majority.

With that being said, the anti Federalists were nothing to discount here and included some of the most vocal anti Federalists in the entire country.

Among the ranks of the anti Federalists were George Mason, Benjamin Harrison, who was the father of future President William Henry Harrison and the grandfather of another future president in Benjamin Harrison.

And while we are speaking of presidential parents, John Tyler, the father of President John Tyler was amongst the anti Federalists, as were both Richard Henry Lee and Light Horse Harry Lee.

The leader of this group was Surprise surprise, our old friend Patrick Henry.

Madison, as in tune with the Virginia political scene as he was, had a pretty good sense of who was going to vote for what.

In fact, the only person that he viewed as a wild card was a delegate that I believe is in need of some more formal introduction.

This particular delegate has come up here once before on the show back in episode 4.42 on the crossing of the Delaware.

Last we had seen him, this young officer was one of the few casualties during the Battle of Trenton, having been shot in the chest and very nearly bleeding to death.

Well, the good news is that he fully recovered from his injuries, meaning that now is the time to formally introduce a new player to our story.

James Monroe.

The family was well off, largely as a result of Elizabeth coming from a well to do family.

They owned a plantation of some size, though not on the same scale as either say a Mount Vernon or a Monticello.

As would largely be expected, the cash crop for the Monroe's was tobacco, something which Spence taught to the young James.

Although not the prolific slave owners as some of our other southern founders, the Monroe family owned at least eight known enslaved people.

Now critically for the young James, he came from a well educated family with two literate parents.

As was the common course of action, James was taught primarily by his parents early in life before being sent off to Campbell Academy at the age of 11.

His father was a politically involved man and appeared to have taken on at least some role in the protests over the Stamp Act.

This all going on when James was young enough that his father's activism may well have had a strong impression on the boy through his education.

One of the talents of James Monroe that appeared was that he found himself constantly intermingling with some of the biggest names in American politics.

At Campbell Academy he would befriend John Marshall, a future Goliath of the Supreme Court that we are going to talk about in depth later this season.

This friendship was so strong that despite the two men often significantly Diverging on politics, they would remain lifelong friends.

Perhaps the hero of this story for Monroe was his uncle, Joseph Jones.

Following the death of both of James's parents, it was his uncle that stepped up and assumed responsibility so that James didn't have to.

His uncle seems to have recognized the potential in the young Monroe and was eager for his nephew to fully realize said potential.

So rather than having to care for his family, the young James was able to continue with his education.

Following Campbell, Monroe attended the College of William and Mary, where he befriended John Mercer, one of the anti Federalists from Maryland.

When the Revolution did come, Monroe viewed this as his chance to go off and fight as part patriotic duty and part adventure.

This, of course, brings us to that very serious chest wound that he had suffered during the Battle of Trenton.

Following the end of the war, Monroe would end up continuing along with that habit of working with men in high places, as Thomas Jefferson took him under his wing and taught him the law.

In Monroe, Jefferson saw a potential protege that he was eager to mold.

Madison, though, as it turned out, had some good reason to believe that Monroe might surprise everybody by voting for ratification.

The two men were friends and had in the past, worked well together as investment partners.

However, on June 10, Monroe decided to pour cold water all over Madison's hopes.

Madison had days before argued that the greatest risk to the United States was disunity from within.

Madison's argument was that neutrality was the best policy for the United States when it came to both trade and potential European conflicts.

With the country in its current state, with its completely ineffective government, neutrality was not going to be an option.

The country as currently constituted would essentially be the plaything of the European powers.

Monroe agreed that neutrality was the best path forward.

However, where he disagreed with Madison is that he felt that the threat from the European powers was at least somewhat overstated.

He pointed out that there was an entire ocean separating Europe from the United States and that nobody inside of the country seemed terribly interested in the prospect of a civil war.

In other words, Monroe told Madison to stop being so dramatic and to stop exaggerating.

All of the work that so many had fought and died for during the war, and they were just going to throw it all away.

Henry argued that what the Federalists thought was not to protect the liberties that were so hard earned during the Revolution, but rather it was to convert the United States into an empire.

Henry claimed that all this talk of checks and balances was little more than imaginary and that it was nothing more than a bit of performative theater.

Rather than offering any kind of meaningful protections, the Virginia Convention descended into a clause by clause review of the Constitution where all of those allegations from the Philadelphia Convention were put back on the table.

Henry and the anti Federalists continued to argue that there was not a situation where the people in New England would be able to understand the plight of those living in the south and that any attempt at a central government would quickly become unwieldy and as ineffective as the current system.

Per Katherine Dinker Bowen, author of Miracle at Philadelphia, this entire process was grating and seemingly exhausting for Madison.

Bowen writes that on multiple occasions, Madison abandoned decorum entirely and just interrupted Henry mid speech.

As thoroughly frustrated as Madison was at Henry, it was a key defection in the anti Federalist camp that would put the Constitution on the way to ratification in Virginia.

You see, Governor Edmund Randolph was vacillating.

The Governor had gone to Philadelphia as a close ally of Madison, Washington and the fellow nationalists.

It was Randolph, not Madison, who had presented the Virginia plan to the Convention.

Then, of course, Randolph would become disenchanted with the Constitution, refused to sign the document, and moved firmly into the anti Federalist camp.

Now, however, he was starting to have second, or actually would it be third thoughts.

Randolph seems to have become intrigued with what had happened in Massachusetts.

He defensively explained that he still had a significant number of concerns with the document, but that if a bill of rights was attached, well, that would be enough to sway him towards ratification.

Randolph made this declaration on June 4, the first full day of the debates, meaning that for most of the convention, the ultimate outcome was already known.

The question shifted, therefore, to whether or not the amendments would be previous or subsequent.

The previous camp argued that these amendments must be made prior to ratification, with the subsequent crowd in favor of the amendments following ratification.

Randolph stated that although he agreed with the previous crowd, too many states had already ratified for it to make much practical sense to undo the work now, and that subsequent would have to be good enough.

Even though events now seemed to dictate that ratification was going to happen in Virginia, that certainly did not stop Patrick Henry from taking his pound of flesh.

He would spend the rest of the Virginia Convention hurling accusations and insults at Randolph for his indecisiveness.

The accusations, if you're curious is that George Washington had used his influence to convince Randolph to vote for ratification, going so far as to insinuate that Washington had promised Randolph a spot in his seemingly inevitable administration.

Years later, Washington would name Randolph as his Attorney General, a decision which certainly raised many of those old anti Federalist eyebrows as to the truth of a promised position.

Washington was not the only person absent from the ratifying convention that was having a major impact.

Both Henry and Madison would invoke the absent Thomas Jefferson quite frequently during the debates.

Jefferson had, prior to the convention, written a letter saying that his desire was that nine states would ratify and that four would decline.

Such a situation would all but force the states back to the negotiating table and hopefully to a better compromise.

Madison, for his part, pointed out that he was much closer to Jefferson than was Henry and that he fully believed that had Jefferson been present, he would have voted in favor of ratification.

On June 25, the Constitution came to a vote in Virginia.

Henry called out the absurdity of a subsequent Bill of Rights being pointless.

However, it was not enough to change the outcome.

Ratification took the day by a vote of 89 to 79 votes, much as was the situation in Massachusetts.

In addition to ratification, the convention agreed upon a list of some 20 proposed amendments which were sent along as suggestions with the now ratified Constitution.

On the night of the ratification, there was some low level planning for rabble rousing.

However, it never really moved forward.

There was a meeting of the anti Federalists to discuss their next move.

However, Patrick Henry spoke and took the wind out of their sails.

He explained that they had fought hard, that they had lost, and that it was time to go home.

With ratification, Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the Constitution, which now was officially going to be the law of the land.

Now, if you are sitting there saying wait, hold on, you mean that Virginia was the ninth state to ratify?

Well, no, they were indeed the tenth.

Although Virginians were happily celebrating being that final pillar that pushed the new Constitution into force, they were blissfully unaware that right before they had ratified, New Hampshire had reconvened their convention.

And after months of fighting to be released from those onerous restrictions placed upon them by the local towns, they had won.

With the convention reconvened, they voted 143 to 73 in favor of ratification.

Thus, New Hampshire actually became the critical ninth state to ratify and and Virginia the 10th.

With Virginia and New Hampshire now out of the way, There remained only two states to make a decision, North Carolina and the all important, New York.

New York was always going to present a unique challenge when it came to ratification.

Outside of Rhode island, no single state had been so openly hostile to the prospect of a new constitution.

Recall that the Philadelphia convention had been an overwhelmingly nationalist affair.

Pretty much everybody there was in agreement that a new, more powerful central government was needed.

But these groups largely stayed away from the convention, boycotting what they believed to be an illegitimate assembly.

In the case of Rhode island, they had just ignored it altogether.

New York, however, was the exception to this rule.

They did send two delegates who were staunchly opposed to such reforms.

It was the third, New York delegate, Alexander Hamilton, who now faced the absolutely huge task of pushing through an otherwise unpopular new constitution.

Anti federalism in New York was strong.

Heading into the June convention, the state's governor, George Clinton, was among the most fervent anti Federalists, and with little opposition, he was elected as the convention's president.

He would be joined in opposition from the likes of Robert Yates and John Lansing are aforementioned Philadelphia delegates who attended for the sake of being opposition.

For the Federalist contingent, Alexander Hamilton took the lead with other key members, including Hamilton's fellow Federalist paper co author John Jay, as well as representatives from imminent New York families like the Van Cortlands and the Roosevelts.

The anti Federalist arguments in New York were really nothing terribly unique.

They were the same fight that had taken place in every other state.

Now, Hamilton and company fully understood the level of acceptance for the Constitution in New York and likely realized that they were probably going to be unsuccessful in attempts of trying to win Clinton and company over to the new government.

So instead, Hamilton would wage his battles from a point of view of both practicality, with a couple threats mixed in for good measure.

The Federalists pointed out that especially following the Virginia vote to ratify, which came about halfway through the New York convention, that things would be awfully lonely for New York should they fail to ratify.

Sure, they could hang out with Rhode island, and hey, things in North Carolina seemed to be heading in a pretty ominous direction regarding ratification.

But that was just about it.

Massachusetts to their north, had ratified.

Pennsylvania to their south, had ratified.

Virginia was no longer hanging around on the margins of ratification, so they wouldn't have another one of the big states to hang with.

Sure, the United States needed New York, but at the same time, was anybody in New York really all that interested in standing all but completely alone?

Indeed, Hamilton spent much of the first half of the convention just stalling for time while he waited to hear what Virginia was planning to do.

He fully understood the gravity of the situation for New York.

Should Virginia choose to ratify, the Federalists had a second ace up their sleeve as well.

Although New York was largely anti Federalist, New York City itself was largely Federalist.

In fact, during the state's convention, New York City was the only location where Federalists would actually manage to get elected to the convention.

Then, as it remains today, New York City was a very powerful place.

Hamilton suggested the possibility that if New York did not ratify the Constitution, well, that maybe the city itself would simply secede from the state and ratify the Constitution independently.

This presented even the most ardent anti Federalists with a sense of absolute dread.

Really, though, by the end of June, even in New York, the position of the anti Federalists was beginning to soften.

As it turned out, nobody was really all that interested in the state being completely isolated from their neighbors.

Therefore, as was the case in so many other states, the strategy amongst the anti Federalists began to shift towards extracting whatever concessions they could, chiefly in the form of a bill of rights.

By the end of June, the New York anti Federalists were discussing ratification in exchange for amendments.

New York pretty quickly ditched the idea of prior amendments for the now much more accepted idea of subsequent amendments.

A position of ratify now and amend later.

The anti Federalists, channeling the arguments of Patrick Henry in Virginia, understood the value of subsequent amendments, understanding that there was virtually nothing they could do to hold Congress's feet to the fire.

What was suggested, therefore, was the idea of ratification, but with a time limit.

Sure, we're going to go ahead and ratify today, but following a certain amount of time, if you don't get us an acceptable bill of rights, well, then the ratification becomes null and void.

By the middle of July, there was real fear throughout New York that New York City might secede from the state and ratify without them.

Sensing the cracks in the anti Federalist resolve, John Jay went ahead and called for a vote on ratification, essentially calling out the anti Federalist bluff.

Should they not agree to the unconditional ratification of the Constitution, albeit with suggestions for a bill of rights, it was now going to be on the anti Federalists to reject the Constitution and accept all of the potential consequences that would come along with it.

The anti Federalists made a final grasp to avoid defeat, suggesting that until a Bill of Rights be adopted, that the federal government suspend some of their powers within the state.

This is a position that gained a dangerous amount of traction for the likes of the Federalists.

Hamilton proposed that they adjourn for a few weeks to think about if this is really the path that they wanted to follow.

However, the answer from the anti Federalists is that it was not.

By this point, the anti Federalists were in complete disarray.

Wellington Smith, who had been the most vocal of the anti Federalist crowd, openly wavered on his own proposal of a conditional ratification.

With the prospect of a conditional ratification now looking fatally undermined, the Federalists called for a vote.

On July 26, by a slim 30 to 27 margin, New York voted to ratify the Constitution.

Along with the Constitution, New York would send out a circular letter to the other states recommending that a federal convention be held to discuss amendments.

They would likewise include a list of some 32 potential amendments that they wished to see taken up in a future Bill of Rights.

Begrudgingly as it may have been, however, New York was now the 11th state to ratify the Constitution.

The final state to take up the issue was North Carolina.

Now, if you sit down and start doing the research into the ratification process, no state gets more completely forgotten about than does North Carolina.

Seriously, most of the sources just casually mention North Carolina's rejection of the Constitution in passing.

There are a few obvious reasons for this.

By the time that North Carolina's convention made their decision, everybody else had already gone through the process, with only Rhode island having not ratified, having outright refused to even hold a convention.

Still, though the requisite nine states had ratified, including all of the major ones, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia had all, at times somewhat reluctantly, given their approval.

North Carolina was not one of the big states, and their rejection of the Constitution did little to put the Union in any real danger.

So then why did North Carolina fail to ratify?

Among the biggest things to consider is the population distribution of the state, despite actually having the fifth largest population.

Third, if you included the enslaved peoples in that number, North Carolina's population was extremely diffuse.

Rather than a large city like, say, Boston, New York or Philadelphia, the largest cities in the state were still only a few thousand people.

As we have seen during these last two episodes, the Federalists often held the advantage in the cities, whereas the anti Federalists had an advantage in the more rural areas.

A state, therefore, lacking in big cities also meant a small potential base of Federalist support.

More Than just that, however, North Carolina had just developed slowly.

Even the cities that did exist Were less developed than you would expect to see in any other state.

The biggest concern for the North Carolina anti federalists, however, came down to questions over the economic effect that the constitution would have on the state.

Specifically, there were two issues at hand that had everybody worried.

The first concern had to do with the role of paper currency in the state, as most of the legal tender in North Carolina was in the form of paper currency.

And in an effort to provide enough currency, they had mostly just printed at will.

As you probably would guess, the huge amount of paper money pumped into the economy had rendered it all but worthless.

This, of course, had been an underlying reason for the reforms that led to the constitution in the first place.

However, in North Carolina, the problem was even more pronounced than elsewhere.

Under the new Constitution, States would no longer be able to issue currency at all.

That would now be a power given to the national government alone.

There was real fear of the economic damage that would come from eliminating North Carolina's ability to issue currency Even in the cities.

North Carolina had not really developed that deep creditor class like you see in places like New York, Boston or Philadelphia.

For the vast majority of the population, that ability to use that worthless scrip to to pay their debts and taxes was critical.

Furthermore, there was at least some concern that the constitution would essentially just nullify all of that paper currency floating around North Carolina, Making the almost completely worthless currency actually worthless.

The second concern with the economy had to do with fear over taxation.

The very last thing that anybody in North Carolina wanted was, was for the national government to be coming into North Carolina to collect taxes.

The feeling was still overwhelmingly one of just go ahead and send us the bill and we're going to take care of it ourselves.

With the unique conditions of North Carolina, the hope was that the power of taxation would remain something that the state would be able to tailor to their own local needs, Whereas such accommodations would be impossible should the national government be involved.

All of this, plus a handful of other concerns were enough to doom the constitution in North Carolina.

Sure, there were federalists and they would fight back.

However, here the anti federalists simply held too big of a majority to easily be overcome.

Even the methods of information distribution played into this.

North Carolina had fewer newspapers, the main instrument of the federalists for spreading information.

Instead, it was the anti federalist message.

That was more easily disseminated throughout local channels.

As was the case in several of the states, the lack of a bill of rights was also a real sticking point.

Unlike in the other states, however, when that question of prior versus subsequent amendments came up, North Carolina loudly declared that their willingness to ratify the Constitution was going to be predicated upon those amendments being made prior to ratification.

When the vote came on August 4, 84 delegates voted for ratification, with 183 voting against.

It would be another year before North Carolina would come around and ratify the Constitution.

Until that point, however, North Carolina existed outside of the United States.

This situation would become increasingly unpopular, as many inside of the state, despite their concerns over the Constitution, still really wanted to be in the Union.

These pressures are going to build up over the course of the next year.

The United States had a new government and indeed, a new outlook on the future.

Yet even now, it is impossible to ignore the power that the states still possessed.

It had been decided in Philadelphia that a bill of rights was unnecessary.

The state conventions, however, despite having no actual power to do so, had all but created a referendum on the new government that a bill of rights was indeed very much required.

Likewise, the new government was not exactly going to be able to waltz into a clean start.

Two states were still on the outside of the Union, looking in, acting as seemingly independent nations.

A situation which benefited nobody.

Likewise, all of those problems that had existed under the Confederation still very much existed.

Now it was going to be up to the new government to clean up the mess that its predecessor had left behind.

Next time, with the green light having been given to establish a new government, we are going to dive into the process of actually establishing back government.

Paramount to that task was the election of the first president and making the seemingly inevitable pick of George Washington official.

Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful two weeks.

I hope that you are staying healthy and that you are staying safe.

And I will see you back here next time.

As the United States puts their shiny new government into action.

Sa.