The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

151

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Gulf of Mexico

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

NORTH CAROLINA

(Nov 1789)

VIRGINIA

(June 1788)

PENNSYLVANIA

(Dec 1787)

NEW YORK

(July 1788)

GEORGIA

(Jan 1788)

SOUTH

CAROLINA

(May 1788)

SPANISH

FLORIDA

BRITISH CANADA

NEW HAMPSHIRE

(June 1788)

MAINE

(to Mass)

VERMONT

(disputed between

New Hampshire

and New York)

Disputed between the

United States and

Great Britain

MASSACHUSETTES

(Feb 1788)

RHODE ISLAND

(May 1790)

CONNECTICUT

(Jan 1788)

NEW JERSEY

(Dec 1787)

DELAWARE

(Dec 1787)

MARYLAND

(April 1788)

Federalist majority (for)

Antifederalist majority (against)

Evenly divided

Ratification of the Federal Constitution, 1787–1790Historian Jackson Turner Main argued that the debate over
ratification of the Constitution was fundamentally a struggle between radical frontiersmen and conservative
easterners. The Antifederalists were democratic populists; the Federalists sought to prevent further democratization
of American society, or so Main claimed. The accompanying map showing the vote on ratification by congressional
district provides support for Main’s thesis. Kentucky and Tennessee were almost solidly opposed to the
Constitution, along with most of the western sections of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Western
Pennsylvania and western Massachusetts were also mostly Antifederalists. Conversely, support for the Constitution
was strongest in coastal regions of the Carolinas, the plantation districts of tidewater Virginia and the Chesapeake,
as well as New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and the New England coast. But such an explanation fails to explain
why some districts in western Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and even Massachusetts, supported the
Constitution. Some frontiersmen thought that a federal army could do better than state militias against Indian
threats; and some sober citizens, even those living west of the Susquehanna, worried that society might devolve
into anarchy if the Constitution were not approved.