The paralysis of government now enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system.

Exalted theorising on the principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old regime: matter-of-fact reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new.

The plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the popular will to procure a general ratification.
Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but under local control.

At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it continued to lie in the several state governments.

The great convention at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all problems not regarded as essential in their main task.