body that the national Convention itself had looked for the initiatory measures necessary to organize the new government under the Constitution. The question whether that government should be organized at all, was necessarily involved with the question as to the place where it should be directed to assemble and to exercise its functions. This latter topic had often been a source of dissension between the States; and there was much danger lest the votes of North Carolina and Rhode Island, in the Congress of the Confederation, by being united with the votes of States opposed to the selection of the place that might be named as the seat of the new government, might prevent the Constitution from being established at all. But now, the pen that has thus traced these great events, and has sought to describe them in their true relations to the social welfare of the American people, must seek repose. How the Constitution was inaugurated, — by whom and upon what principles it was put into operation, - how and why it was amended or altered, when and under what circumstances the two remaining States accepted its benefits, what development and what direction it received from the generation of statesmen who made and established it,-belongs to the next epoch in our political history, the Administration of Washington. APPENDIX. NOTE ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1787. (See page 344, ante.) WHEN writing this volume, I prepared an elaborate note, for the purpose of proving that the Ordinance of 1787 was drawn up by Nathan Dane. The subsequent publication by Mr. Charles King, of New York, of an autograph letter of Mr. Dane's to his father, the Hon. Rufus King, written a few days after the passage of the Ordinance, put an end to all possibility of controversy on this subject, and made it unnecessary for me to burden my readers with a discussion of Mr. Dane's claim to be regarded as the author of that instrument. The following sentence in Mr. Dane's letter to Mr. King is decisive of the point which has sometimes been controverted: "When I drew the Ordinance, (which passed, a few words excepted, as I originally formed it,) I had no idea the States would agree to the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, as only Massachusetts, of the Eastern States, was present, and therefore omitted it in the draft; but finding the House favorably disposed on the subject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved the article, which was agreed to without opposition." FIRST DRAFT OF THE CONSTITUTION, AS REPORTED BY THE COMMITTEE OF DETAIL. MONDAY, August 6. In Convention. - Mr. RUTLEDGE delivered in the report of the committee of detail, as follows, a printed copy being at the same time furnished to each member: We, the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain, declare, and establish the following Constitution for the government of ourselves and our posterity: ARTICLE I. The style of the government shall be, "The United States of America." ART. II. The government shall consist of supreme legislative, executive, and judicial powers. ART. III. The legislative power shall be vested in a Congress, to consist of two separate and distinct bodies of men, a House of Representatives and a Senate; each of which shall in all cases have a negative on the other. The legislature shall meet on the first Monday in December in every year. ART. IV. Sect. 1. The members of the House of Representatives shall be chosen, every second year, by the people of the several States comprehended within this Union. The qualifications of the electors shall be the same, from time to time, as those of the electors, in the several States, of the most numerous branch of their own legislatures. Sect. 2. Every member of the House of Representatives shall be of the age of twenty-five years at least; shall have been a citizen in the United States for at least three years before his election; and shall be, at the time of his election, a resident of the State in which he shall be chosen. Sect. 3. The House of Representatives shall, at its first formation, |