No wonder the leaders of the people were discouraged and alarmed. Washington was in despair. “I am mortified beyond expression”, he wrote, “when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned upon any country.... I am lost in amazement when I behold what intrigue, ignorance, and jealousy are capable of effecting.... It is but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitutions under which we now live—constitutions of our own choice and making—and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them.... What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves!” These are bitter words, but the condition of the country quite justified them. Sensible men in all the states shared this alarm and felt that what had been won during the war might easily be lost, for if the states should fall to fighting among themselves, it would be very easy for Europe to take a hand in the fray and divide the spoils. The fate of Poland was fresh in the minds of those who had read history. [Sidenote: A Constitutional Convention called.] =The Triumph of Public Spirit over Selfishness.=—But presently there came a rift in the clouds. The four million people who formed the population of the thirteen states, despite their sectional prejudices, were possessed of common sense and patriotism. They were blessed, moreover, with as fine a group of leaders as ever carried a young nation through troublous years. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and the others of this notable galaxy held different views as to the best means of bringing order out of chaos; but they were ready, when the time came, to sink these personal differences in order that some effective form of central government might be established. They lent the weight of their great influence, therefore, to a movement for revising the Articles of Confederation in such a way that a better union of the thirteen states might be achieved. In truth it was a difficult task to induce the states to move towards unity, for they were all headed in exactly the opposite direction. But by the exercise of tact and patience, and after discouraging delays, twelve of the states finally sent delegates to a convention that was called to meet at Philadelphia in 1787 to see what could be done. If the states had been asked to join in the making of an entirely new constitution and the establishing of a real federal union, there is no doubt that some of them would have declined. The convention was called to consider changes in the Articles of Confederation. But when the delegates set to work they soon found that no patchwork performance would ever solve the problem of welding the American people into a unified nation. So they proceeded to make an entirely new covenant containing provision for a real central government endowed with adequate powers.