For nine months the struggle went on among the citizens
of the different States to determine whether they should abide by the
National Government they had legally adopted seven years before, or
whether they would exercise the right of peaceful revolution and cast
it aside for another. It was a true revolutionary movement, a turning
upside down, in comparison with which the Revolution of 1776 becomes
a revolt against the King. Recognising the revolutionary action of
annulling one frame of national government by adopting another, a wag
wrote this stanza:
"Here, too, I saw some mighty pretty shows,
A revolution, without blood or blows;
For as I understood the cunning elves,
The people all revolted--from themselves!"
The opposition to a change in the national form of government, as shown
in the debates in the various State conventions, was based upon
expediency among the masses and constitutionality among the few. In
the light of the dangers which have confronted the people during a
century of experience, some of the objections to the Constitution seem
ridiculous. But the objectors were sincere in their apprehensions,
being just emerged from a despotic government, and jealous of their
hard-earned liberty.
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