LRTC: Ratification
/Article VII
The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
The Word, "the," being interlined between the seventh and eighth Lines of the first Page, The Word "Thirty" being partly written on an Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page, The Words "is tried" being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lines of the first Page and the Word "the" being interlined between the forty third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page.
Attest William Jackson Secretary
done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
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The seventh and final article of the original constitution adds nothing new or meaningful. It is only the terms that the delegates set out for putting the constitution into effect. They recommended that their plan should go into effect as soon as nine states out of 13 ratified it in their legislatures.
The important thing to recognize here is the ease with which the existing national government compact (the Articles of Confederation) was set aside. The 39 men who signed the new constitution didn’t ask the sitting government approve. They instead ignored the congress and declared that “We the People,” in the form of nine state legislatures, could put the new constitution into effect. And the congress meekly accepted the outcome.
I should add that the Articles of Confederation was not actually declared null by the constitutuopn or any other legislation. Many of the law the old congress passed remained in effect. An example of that would be the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibited slavery in the territories that became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.
The provisions of the old government and its laws ere neither rescinded nor affirmed, and the new government under the constitution, beginning with George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, just sorted out what to change, and what to ignore.
