…If the Federalists could have been permitted to pass a law for putting the government into the hands of an officer, they would certainly have prevented an election. But we thought it best to declare, one and all, openly and firmly, that the day such an act passed, the middle States would arm; and that no such usurpation, even for a single day, should be submitted to. This first shook them; and they were completely alarmed at the resource for which we declared, namely, to reorganize the government, and to amend it. The very word convention give them the horrors, as in the present democratical spirit of American they fear they should lose some of the favorite morsels of the Constitution.