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Starting in 1787, states began to ratify the newly drafted federal Constitution in order to determine the fate of the American Republic. In order for the Constitution to go in effect, nine of the states needed to agree to the document. While five states quickly ratified the Constitution between December 1787 and January 1788, the country turned towards Virginia. Virginia was the most populated and largest state and it was critical for the state to ratify the Constitution to legitimize the process. Lorri Glover's new book, The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution, explores the dramatic battle that took place during the Virginia Ratification Convention. Virginia's convention was notable because some of the most influential founding fathers had staked out positions on the Constitution in stark opposition to one another. As Patrick Henry, James Madison, George Mason and John Marshall publicly debated the merits of the new Constitution, the nation waited for a decision. Glover explores the constitutional questions that divided Virginia and shows how those questions are still relevant in understanding our founding document.

====Why did you become interested in the Virginia Ratifying convention? What drew you this subject?====

I was working on another book, Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries, when I got captivated by this spectacular collision of wills between so many giants of the Revolutionary Age. I found it fascinating that a cohort of Virginians, who came out of the same culture and worked side by side during the imperial crisis and the war years, could reach radically different conclusions about the Constitution. Half the states’ leaders (and citizens) believed the Constitution betrayed the Revolution, and the other half was convinced it fulfilled the Revolution.

====Aside from the Constitution, what were Virginians concerned about in 1788? What type of local political factors impacted the discussions at the ratification convention?====

Well, the ratification question overshadowed nearly everything else in Virginia politics from October 1787 to June 1788. As one man put it, debating the Constitution consumed everyone “from the Governor to the door keeper.” But Virginians were also deeply concerned about navigation rights on the Mississippi River, and they read those anxieties onto the Constitution. Residents of the western region of Virginia, which later became Kentucky, were especially worried that the federal government would sacrifice their access to the Mississippi to advance the international trading interests of the northeastern states. Also Virginians—supporters and critics of the Constitution alike—were keenly proud of their state. Virginia had been the oldest of the English American colonies and it was the largest state geographically and the most heavily populated. One in six Americans called Virginia home in 1787. Everyone seemed anxious about Virginia’s place in the union of states and protective of its power in the young country.

====Who were the leading figures in this debate? What positions did they stake out?====

The formal debates in Richmond, in June 1788, were one of the greatest dramas in all of American history. In no other gathering during the entire revolutionary era was there so fierce a contest between so many talented, famous, and committed leaders. Patrick Henry, the greatest orator of the age, insisted the Constitution betrayed the Revolution’s deepest principles. He was joined by George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and conceived the first state constitution in America, and by the war hero and future president James Monroe. They faced off against James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution and probably the greatest intellectual force of that generation. George Washington, already beloved as the “father” of the country, worked behind the scenes to help Madison. And Madison joined forces at the Richmond convention with John Marshall, the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Virginia’s popular governor, Edmund Randolph. Men on both sides agreed on one thing: they would be deciding, “not the welfare of a state, but, that of mankind.”