New York was the toughest nut for the Federalists to crack. For here was one state where not only was the population overwhelmingly opposed to the Constitution, but the opposition was also in firm and determined control of the state government and the state political machinery. Here was a powerful governor, George Clinton, who would not, like Hancock and Randolph in the other critical states, yield to a sellout under pressure.

With all but two relatively obscure states—Rhode Island and North Carolina—having ratified the Constitution, the Confederation Congress was now ready to put the new federal government in place. As soon as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, Congress dutifully created a committee to get the new Constitution up and running. Only the doughty Abraham Yates dissented—in a sense, the last attempt to block the Constitution as a whole.

There were still two beleaguered states not yet in the Union: Rhode Island and North Carolina. Of all the southern states, North Carolina was by far the least aristocratic. Only the Edenton–New Bern area of the northeast, with its ports, navigable inlets, large slave plantations, and swollen commercial farms, was typically “Federalist”; almost all of the rest of the state was non-commercial subsistence farming. Of the five North Carolina delegates at the Philadelphia Convention, the one westerner, former Governor Alexander Martin, walked out from the forming of the Constitution.

Doughty, courageous little Rhode Island was the last state left. It is generally assumed that—even by the most staunchly Antifederalist historians—Rhode Island could not conceivably have gone it alone as a separate nation. But such views are the consequence of a mystique of political frontiers, in which it is assumed that a mere change in political frontiers and boundaries necessarily has a profound effect in the lives of the people or the validity of a territory or region.

The Virginia contest was definitely close. For once, here was a state where ability, wealth, influence, and leadership were evenly distributed on both sides. Thus, James Madison ruefully learned that most of the judges and the bar opposed the Constitution. More important was the fact that the Antifederal forces were led by men of immense prestige and ability: Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, and Governor Edmund Randolph.

Pennsylvania had been difficult, but the next state to ratify was as simple as Delaware and New Jersey. Sentiment for the Constitution in Georgia did not quite approach unanimity as in the former states, but it was nonetheless overwhelming. That the plantation landlords enthusiastically welcomed the Constitution was not surprising since conditions resembled neighboring South Carolina. Furthermore, much of the nearer interior settlers lived along the Savannah River, and that meant they were bound to Savannah in a commercial nexus. But what of the western backcountry?

The Federal cause received its first setback in the little state of New Hampshire. General John Sullivan, the president of New Hampshire and an active Federalist, called a special session of the legislature for December to arrange an early convention. A quorum failed to appear, but the legislature continued illegally in session anyway. After an attempt by the Federalists to weight the apportionment in the convention in favor of the Federalist towns around Portsmouth was rejected by the legislature, the Federalists used another device to obtain a quorum for the state convention.