The first State to ratify the Constitution was Delaware, on December 6, 1787.  Pennsylvania followed on December 12th, and New Jersey on December 18th.  Ratifications continued without haste until New Hampshire, the ninth State, signed on June 21, 1788.  Four days later, Virginia, a very important State, ratified.  New York, which had been Anti-Federalist throughout, joined the majority on July 26th.  North Carolina waited until November 21st, and little Rhode Island, the last State of all, did not come in until May 29, 1790.  But, as the adherence of nine States sufficed, the affirmative action of New Hampshire on June 21, 1788, constituted the legal beginning of the United States of America.

No test could be more winnowing than that to which the Constitution was subjected during more than eighteen months before its adoption.  In each State, in each section, its friends and enemies discussed it at meetings and in private gatherings.  In New York, for instance, it was only the persistence of Alexander Hamilton and his unfailing oratory, unmatched until then in this country, that routed the Anti-Federalists at Poughkeepsie and caused the victory of the Federalists in the State.  In Virginia, Patrick Henry, who had said on the eve of the Revolution, “I am not a Virginian, but an American,” still held out.  Nevertheless, the more the people of the country discussed the matter, the surer was their conviction that Washington was right when he intimated that they must prefer the new Constitution unless they could show reason for supposing that the anarchy towards which the old order was swiftly driving them was preferable.

During the autumn of 1788 peaceful electioneering went on throughout the country.  Among the last acts of that thin wraith, the Continental Congress, was a decree that Presidential Electors should be chosen on the first Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new Congress should meet on the first Wednesday in March.  The State of New York, where Anti-Federalists swarmed, did not follow the decree—­with the result that that State, which had been behindhand in signing the Declaration of Independence, failed through the intrigues of the Anti-Federalists to choose electors, and so had no part in the choice of Washington as President of the United States.  The other ten States performed their duty on time.  They elected Washington President by a unanimous vote of sixty-nine out of sixty-nine votes cast.

The Vice-Presidential contest was perplexing, there being many candidates who received only a few votes each.  Many persons thought that it would be fitting that Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution, should be chosen to serve with Washington, the father of his country; but too many remembered that he had been hostile to the Federalists until almost the end of the preliminary canvass and so they did not think that he ought to be chosen.  The successful man was John Adams, who had been a robust Patriot from the beginning and had served honorably and devotedly in every position which he had held since 1775.