That first step which proverbially gives the most trouble had now been fairly taken. But other compromises were needed before the work of construction could properly be carried out. As the antagonism between great and small states disappeared from the scene, other antagonisms appeared. It is worth noting that just for a moment there was revealed a glimmering of jealousy and dread on the part of the eastern states toward those of which the foundations were laid in the northwestern territory. Many people in New England feared that their children would be drawn westward in such numbers as to create immense states beyond the Ohio; and thus it was foreseen that the relative political weight of New England in the future would be diminished. To a certain extent this prediction has been justified by events, but Roger Sherman rightly maintained that it afforded no just grounds for dread. King and Gerry introduced a most illiberal and mischievous motion, that the total number of representatives from new states must never be allowed to exceed the total number from the original thirteen. Such an arrangement, which would surely have been enough to create that antagonism between east and west which it sought to forestall and avoid, was supported by Massachusetts and Connecticut, with Delaware and Maryland; but it was defeated by the combination of New Jersey with the four states south of Maryland. The ground was thus cleared for a very different kind of sectional antagonism,--that which, as Madison truly said, would prove the most deep-seated and enduring of all,--the antagonism between north and south. The first great struggle between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties began in the Federal Convention, and it resulted in the first two of the long series of compromises by which the irrepressible conflict was postponed until the north had waxed strong enough to confront the dreaded spectre of secession, and, summoning all its energies in one stupendous effort, exorcise it forever. From this moment down to 1865 we shall continually be made to realize how the American people had entered into the shadow of the coming Civil War before they had fairly emerged from that of the Revolution; and as we pass from scene to scene of the solemn story, we shall learn how to be forever grateful for the sudden and final clearing of the air wrought by that frightful storm which men not yet old can still so well remember.