The Process of RatificationnEven as we, in our own time, go about revising, ornrefusing to revise, our fundamental law, so did ournFathers in the beginning vote to put such law in its place:nthat is, one state at a time, reflecting, after vigorous dispute,n13 different majorities, some of them very belated — andnvery reluctant. All of which is to say that there is no betterndefinition of American federalism than the process withnwhich the federalism began: no purely ideological explanation.nYet, though it is true that most American citizens livingnin 1787 wished to see a revision of the Articles ofnConfederation, it is a great mistake to assume that a generalnapproval of the Philadelphia Convention and what it hadnproduced was automatic from September 17 of that yearnonward. Those who know politics cannot believe that ansecond convention or a circulation of previous amendmentsnwas unthinkable, or that outright defeat could not have beennarranged. Though some change in the form of governmentnadministered by the Continental Congress was, sooner ornlater, bound to occur, it might have been much lessnambitious than what the Framers proposed; and muchnnarrower in the range of implications that even the mostnsubtle constitutional lawyer could wring out of its text. Mostnobviously, such would have been the case had the statenratifying conventions met in an order somewhat differentnfrom the one that history records.nThere are, of course, many ways of explaining thensequence of events that provides us with the originalnConstitution of the United States and then adds to it thensupplement we call (after its British prototype) the “Bill ofnRights.” Even though they appear to be mutually exclusive,nit may be argued of these views that several of them containnM.E. Bradford is a professor of English at the Universitynof Dallas.n18/CHRONICLESnA Study in Political Dynamicsnby M.E. Bradfordnnna modicum of truth — so far as they go. From two or three Inwill borrow details in developing the argument I propose.nBut through my own study of the records of the CreatnConvention and of the state ratifications that followed thendeliberations in Philadelphia, I have come to believe that it isndangerous and misleading to dump all of these documentsntogether in some great political “stew.” For each conventionnis a dramatic event with a pattern of its own and a meaningndetermined not only by the special history of the people itnrepresented, but also by its function in a larger temporalnsequence that cannot be recognized unless the integrity ofnits components is acknowledged before description begins.nAs I believe I have demonstrated in the past, no one isnmore convinced of the uniqueness of particular conventions,nof their authority as readings of the fundamental law;nno one is more interested in the formal, dramatic view of thenPhiladelphia Convention itself. It is an action, a formncommenting in structure on the bond of Union that itnproduced. Even so, I take separate readings as only anpreliminary part of the task of commentary on the making ofnour Constitution — and attempt to keep in mind that therenwas, beneath a tiresome pattern of topical squabbling andntheoretical dispute, a deeper level of practical consensus sonwidespread as to require almost no mention in any of thenassemblies that occurred during the months when ratificationnwas in question: a consensus that made our forebears,nby negation, one people, united in their suspicion ofngovernment, of its self-importance, its afi^ected benevolence,nits disposition to tyranny established and imposed in thenname of “good causes.”nA narrative explanation of the political dynamic thatnfinally approved the original Constitution must begin, ofncourse, with the condition of the country after the achievementnof independence. A first predicate of this story is then