and today I'm learning more about Article VII

of the U.S. Constitution, which is the provision

that specified the conditions

for the Constitution to become law.

It reads,

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States,

shall be sufficient for the Establishment

of this Constitution between the States

so ratifying the Same.

Although this sounds simple,

it reminds us that when the Framers finished

drafting the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787,

it was by no means a done deal.

At least nine states had to ratify the Constitution

in order to replace the existing government

under the Articles of Confederation.

To learn more about the ratification process,

I sought out the help of two experts.

Mark Graber is the Jacob A. France Professor

of Constitutionalism at the University of Maryland

Francis King Carey School of Law.

Michael Rappaport is the Darling Foundation Professor

at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Professor Graber, can you tell us a little bit

about the political context of ratification?

What was going on at this time as

the Framers tried to put a new Constitution

into the fabric of the United States?

- [Mark] Well, one central problem

of the Articles of Confederation was the Articles required

that all 13 states consent for any amendment.

And it turned out, at this time,

Rhode Island was a great outlier,

so Rhode Island wasn't going to consent to much of anything.

And, in fact, Rhode Island did not even send delegates

to the convention that drafted the Constitution.

So the Framers knew

that if you had the unanimous rule for ratification,

it would not work.

So instead, they chose nine, it's about 2/3, 3/4,

in part to make sure Rhode Island, one outlier,

could not prevent adoption.

- [Michael] So let's remember, there's two stages here

in how the Constitution gets written and ratified.

So first, it's written

in what's called the Drafting Convention

or the Philadelphia Convention,

which was held during the summer of 1787.

And in that convention, it was pretty much in agreement

that the Federal Government needed to be made stronger,

but that was just a proposal.

In order for the Constitution to be ratified,

it needed nine of the 13 states,

and so it went to the second stage.

And there, things were, in some ways,

gonna be more difficult

because there was a variety of viewpoints

in the different states.

And the main question that came up

in state after state after state was

was the Federal Government being given

too much additional power?

Under the previous regime of the Articles of Confederation,

the Federal Government had very limited powers,

and the Constitution was gonna

give the Federal Government more power.

- [Mark] They wanted a strategy that,

once the ball started rolling,

states that were slower

were going to be faced with a choice.

You could get in on the inside

and maybe effect some changes early.

But if you were left out,

whatever happened would happen without you,

and a lot of states, at the end,

were fearful of being left out.

- [Michael] This strategy worked.

And as they went through in tough states, as time went on,

so New Hampshire, Virginia,

New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island,

in order to get ratification,

each time, they promised, we'll have a Bill of Rights

and those states added

a list of amendments that they wanted

added to the Constitution.

- [Kim] So was it controversial that the Framers decided

that only nine states would be necessary

to ratify the Constitution?

- [Mark] Very controversial.

One of the central points of Anti-Federalist

was that this was illegal,

that the existing Constitution said all states,

and therefore only all states could change the Constitution.

- [Michael] So in that respect,

it was somewhat controversial.

Another way in which it departed from the Articles

is the Articles said you needed the state legislatures

to approve the amendments,

and the U.S. Constitution said, no,

we want state conventions,

special bodies elected by the people,

to approve these things.

Why did they say that?

Because they feared that the state legislatures,

who would be losing a lot of power under the Constitution,

would vote against it.

So they wanted sort of to go directly to the people

in these conventions and bypass the state legislatures.

- [Kim] So we know that there were some opponents

of this new Constitution.

How close did they actually come

to preventing its ratification?

- [Michael] Well, it was a very close fight.

We look back on it,

and eventually all 13 states are gonna ratify,

and it just looks like, oh well,

that wasn't too much of a trouble.

But it was very close,

and things could have easily gone in the opposite direction.

One of the ways in which it was close was

that there were just very close votes.

Massachusetts was

187 to 168.

New Hampshire was 57-47.

New York was 30-27.

So very close votes involved,

but, you know, a couple of people changing their mind,

and that would've meant various states didn't ratify.

In addition to that,

some of the states actually did not ratify.

So the first thing that happened was Rhode Island,

early on in the process, says,

we don't like your horrible Constitution.

They all expected that.

We're not gonna hold even a convention.

You want us to hold a convention.

We're not gonna hold a convention.

We're just gonna have a vote in state.

And that vote in the state,

90% of the people voted against the Constitution.

So, in a way, Rhode Island actually

voted against ratification,

although it didn't use the proper method.

North Carolina, also, they held a convention,

and they were very upset about there not being

a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

And they just didn't approve it.

They didn't disapprove it,

they just did nothing, and they waited.

So, in a way, two of the states

voted against ratification.

- [Mark] North Carolina had not yet ratified

when George Washington took office.

So, in fact, when George Washington took office,

there were only 11 states in the Union.

At the end of the day, crucial people,

I think, decided it was better to sign the Constitution

and be in on the ground floor

than stay out and see what happened.

- [Kim] Interesting, so who are some of the major players

involved here, and what were they arguing about?

- [Michael] There were the Federalists,

who were arguing in favor of ratifying the Constitution,

and the Anti-Federalists,

who were arguing against ratifying the Constitution.

So the Federalists,

two of the very famous ones are familiar names,

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

Those two people, though, were also particularly important

because they decided, Hamilton said,

"We're gonna have a tough time

"getting ratification in New York.

"We need to write some essays defending the Constitution."

And so Hamilton and Madison cooperated together

and wrote what we now call The Federalist Papers,

which were simply essays written in the newspapers,

trying to urge the New York Convention

to ratify the Constitution.

Eventually, those essays were sent to other states

and became known, and now we come to revere those essays

as The Federalist Papers, but they were originally

just kind of advocacy pieces for ratifying the convention.

Now, there were also Anti-Federalists.

- [Mark] The Anti-Federalists, in part,

were simply people who opposed the Constitution.

And just as is the case that, say, people opposed Obamacare

from both the left and the right,

people who opposed the Constitution

opposed it for many different reasons,

and one of their problems was they were not a united bunch.

But, in general, these were people fearful

of a very strong national government.

They believed states were sovereign,

they wanted to keep power local,

and they were very fearful of

what they perceived to be an elite,

who would run the Constitution after ratification.

The names that people may know who were Anti-Federalists

were people like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams.

- [Kim] So what were some of the major arguments made

in favor of adopting this new Constitution?

- [Michael] There were, I think, two types of arguments.

People felt that the Articles were not working properly.

They had all kinds of problems.

And one of the strongest arguments

that The Federalist Papers made was that

if we don't fix this and make for a stronger union together,

what'll happen is, we'll break apart.

Look at what happens when you have a bunch of states

all next to one another in a land area.

We know what that looks like, it's called Europe.

And what happens in Europe?

They fight wars with one another all the time,

and those wars are very problematic.

You have to have big armies, standing armies.

Now, there were also the particular arguments about

what powers were missing that the Federal Government had.

The main arguments were made was

the Federal Government did not have enough power.

So they didn't have, for example, the taxing power,

and they didn't have a way of enforcing treaties

against the states very well.

And some of the states were putting tariffs up,

so interfering with trade within the country.

- [Mark] So states would set tariffs on out-of-state goods.

States wouldn't contribute to the national government.

Second, we needed to present a united front

to foreign governments.

So we were very worried, what would happen

if South Carolina formed an alliance with England

and North Carolina formed an alliance with France?

That wouldn't be good.

The country needed to speak with one voice.

- [Kim] So those are some of the arguments made

for adopting the Constitution.

What were some of the arguments against

adopting this new Constitution?

- [Mark] Well, first argument was,

even though most Anti-Federalists admitted

the Articles needed some repair,

they said it's not really urgent.

It's not like the house is gonna fall down tomorrow.

It's just, you know, the wind is coming through,

and we can figure it out.

We really want a better Constitution.

The other arguments were the Constitution

put too much power in the national government.

It put too much power in elites.

The fear was if you had national elections,

only elites would win.

If you had local elections,

people the people actually knew would win.

- [Kim] So they thought a big national government

would be too far away from the people