Meantime, Congress nearing its end made testamentary provision for its heir. After much wrangling and vacillation, it fixed upon New York as the seat of the new Government and summoned the States to choose presidential electors, Senators, and Representatives. The new national legislature was to assemble on the first Wednesday in March, which fell upon the 4th. To this summons, two States turned a deaf ear. Not having ratified the new Constitution, North Carolina and Rhode Island were strangely circumstanced. Of all the States which had entered into the "firm league of friendship," they alone remained loyal--loyal, but discredited. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Full accounts of the work of the Federal Convention may be found in the histories of Bancroft and Curtis; briefer accounts, in the volumes already cited, by McMaster, Fiske, McLaughlin, and Channing. A succinct narrative is given by Max Farrand, _The Framing of the Constitution_ (1913). A suggestive volume, treating of the Constitution as the resultant of conflicting economic interests, is C. A. Beard's _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States_ (1913). Among the special studies of the ratification of the Constitution may be mentioned, O. G. Libby, _The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787-1788_ (1888); McMaster and Stone, _Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, 1787-1788_ (1888); S. B. Harding, _The Contest over the Ratification of the Federal Constitution in the State of Massachusetts_ (1896); and F. G. Bates, _Rhode Island and the Formation of the Union_ (1898). The most illuminating notes of the debates in the Convention were those taken by James Madison, which are printed in the _Records of the Federal Convention_ (3 vols., edited by Farrand, 1911). The most valuable commentary on the Constitution is still _The Federalist_, written by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay. CHAPTER III THE RESTORATION OF PUBLIC CREDIT "The people have been ripened by misfortune for the reception of a good government," Washington wrote to Jefferson, in the midsummer of 1788. "They are emerging from the gulf of dissipation and debt into which they had precipitated themselves at the close of the war. Economy and industry are evidently gaining ground." There is, indeed, abundant evidence that thrift and enterprise were steadily banishing hard times. The task of establishing the new government was made incomparably easier by the confidence inspired by returning prosperity.