The scheme for a new constitution passed the Convention by a large majority and was submitted to the people. The Whig leaders, who seemed to have had all their wisdom and energy taken out of them when the Free Soilers left them, were much alarmed by the strength of the discontent with the existing order of things manifested by the coalition victory in the election of the Constitutional Convention. Many of them concluded that it would be unwise to resist the popular feeling. One Saturday afternoon during that summer I was in the office of Francis Wayland, a great friend of mine, long Dean of the New Haven Law School, when Henry S. Washburn, a member of the Whig State Central Committee, came into Wayland's office and told me he had just attended a meeting of the Committee that day and that it determined to make no contest against the new Constitution. The Springfield _Republican,_ then a Whig journal, had an article that day, or the following Monday, to the same effect. I was very much disturbed. I hurried to Concord by the first train Monday morning, and saw my brother, who was then a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He agreed with me in thinking that the proposed scheme of government a very bad one. He went at once to Cambridge and saw John G. Palfrey, a very able and influential leader of the Free Soilers. Mr. Palfrey agreed that the Constitution ought to be defeated, if possible. Judge Hoar and he sat down together and prepared a pamphlet, the Judge furnishing all the legal argument and Mr. Palfrey the rest, clothing it all in his inimitable style. It was published under Dr. Palfrey's name. Judge Hoar, being then upon the bench, did not think it becoming to take any more public action in the matter, although he made his opinion known to all persons who cared to know it. Charles Francis Adams and Marcus Morton also made powerful arguments on the same side. My father, Samuel Hoar, also made several speeches against the Constitution. At this defection of so many Free Soilers the Whig leaders took heart and made a vigorous and successful resistance. The result was that the people voted down the whole constitution. Several of the most eminent leaders of the Free Soilers and Democrats separated themselves from their party and joined the Whigs in defeating it. Among them were Marcus Morton, formerly Governor and Judge of the Supreme Court; John G. Palfrey, who had been the Free Soil candidate for Governor; Charles Francis Adams, afterward member of Congress and Minister to England, and Samuel Hoar. I was myself, at this time, an enthusiastic Free Soiler, and was, as I have said, Chairman of the Republican County Committee, but I joined the rebels against the dominant feeling of my party.