Virginia ratifies

On June 25, 1788, the Virginia ratifying convention in Richmond approved the Constitution by a vote of 89 to 79 after one of the fiercest debates in the nation. James Madison, John Marshall, and Edmund Randolph defended ratification, while Patrick Henry and George Mason warned that the new government endangered liberty and state authority. The Richmond vote brought the largest state yet into the proposed Union.

Virginia's convention mattered because the Constitution's legitimacy would have been badly weakened if the state of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, and Henry had rejected it. Anti-Federalists in Richmond pressed especially hard on the absence of a bill of rights and on the danger of consolidated national power. The narrow vote therefore showed that ratification in Virginia depended on both Federalist argument and the expectation that amendments would soon be proposed.

Virginia's approval strengthened the case for New York ratification one month later and helped ensure that the new government would command support in the Upper South as well as New England and the middle states. The convention's recommended amendments also fed directly into James Madison's work on the Bill of Rights in the First Congress.