Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/125



OW many Americans of the present day realize that the State of New York, at the time of the adoption of the national Constitution, was radically and overwhelmingly opposed to entrance into the Union which the Constitution proposed, and was at last forced into the league of States only by the demonstration that the State would be isolated and cut off from its neighbor States if it did not join, with a tariff wall raised against it? It is indeed hard for New Yorkers to realize, as