And still thick clouds and darkness rested on the land, and there lowered upon its hopes a night as black as that upon the freezing Delaware; but through the gloom the dauntless leader was still marching on to the consummation of his colossal work, with a hope that never died; with a courage that never faltered; with a wisdom that never yielded that "all is vanity."
It was not permitted the Roman to despair of the republic, nor did he--our chieftain. "It will all come right at last," he said. It did. And now let the historian, Bancroft, speak: "From this state of despair the country was lifted by Madison and Virginia." Again he says: "We come now to a week more glorious for Virginia beyond any in her annals, or in the history of any republic that had ever before existed."
It was that week in which Madison, "giving effect to his own long-cherished wishes, and still earlier wishes of Washington," addressing, as it were, the whole country, and marshaling all the states, warned them "that the crisis had arrived at which the people of America are to decide the solemn question, whether they would, by wise and magnanimous efforts reap the fruits of independence and of union, or whether by giving way to unmanly jealousies and prejudices, or to impartial and transitory interests, they would renounce the blessings prepared for them by the Revolution," and conjuring them "to concur in such further concessions and provisions as may be necessary to secure the objects for which that government was instituted, and make the United States as happy in peace as they had been glorious in war."
In such manner, my countrymen, Virginia, adopting the words of Madison, and moved by the constant spirit of Washington, joined in convoking that Constitutional Convention, in which he headed her delegation, and over which he presided, and whose deliberations resulted in the formation and adoption of that instrument which the premier of Great Britain pronounces "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."
In such manner the state which gave birth to the Father of his Country, following his guiding genius to the Union, as it had followed his sword through the battles of Independence, placed herself at the head of the wavering column. In such manner America heard and hearkened to the voice of her chief; and now closing ranks, and moving with reanimated step, the thirteen commonwealths wheeled and faced to the front, on the line of the Union, under the sacred ensign of the Constitution.