The Georgia Constitutional Ratification Convention unanimously ratifies the Constitution for the united States (YEA, 26; NAY, 0), making it the fourth State to secede from the Confederation.  This brings to five the number of States still necessary to put the Constitution into force.

        [updated 7/14/2023]

        Alexander Hamilton, a former Delegate to the Constitutional Convention from New York, using the pseudonym “Publius,” publishes “Federalist #32,” seeking assuage fears that the ratification of the Constitution for the united States will result in the assimilation of the States into one indivisible nation.  In paragraph two he writes,

        An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts. … [T]he State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States [emphasis in the original].

        [restored 11/30/2024]

       Alexander Hamilton, a former Delegate to the Constitutional Convention from New York, using the pseudonym “Publius,” publishes “Federalist #33,” seeking to lend assurances that the Necessary and Proper Clause will not be perverted into a federal grant of unlimited federal powers.  In paragraphs six and seven he writes:

       If the Federal Government should overpass the just bounds of its authority, and make a tyrannical use of its powers; the people whose creature it is must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the constitution, as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify… 

       But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation and will deserve to be treated as such. [emphasis in the original].

       [added 7/24/2026]