Five state U.S. Constitution ratifying conventions demanded a Bill of Rights.

The ratification of the United States Constitution was a longer and more complex process in New York than in any other state. The final vote was 30 for ratification and 27 against ratification. The New York ratification convention due to the expansion of the franchise had a majority of Anti-Federalists. The Anti-Federalists outnumbered the Federalists 46 to 19.

The Continental Army could not have occurred without British influence. George Washington explicitly wanted to have the officer corps of the Continental Army to be modeled on the aristocratic officer corps of European armies. With Washington as his superior, Hamilton echoed his views in many respects through the New York convention on the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The Continental Army was not only European but nationalist and centralist as opposed to the militia. Federalists supported a strong standing army; the Anti-Federalists supported local militias. Their views on the military echoed in the debates at the New York convention on the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The younger Federalists such as Hamilton were more connected to the British; the older Antifederalists were more provincial.

New York City was a Loyalist stronghold during the Revolutionary War.

. Despite the pro-British nature of the Federalists, the threat of British aggression against upstate New York or the necessity of making an alliance with Britain against the United States convinced many Anti-Federalists to vote for ratification.

Sources:

The Debates in the Convention of the State of New York on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. In Convention. Poughkeepsie, New York (1788).

The Constitution of the United States. Third Edition by Michael Stokes Paulsen, Steven Gow Calabresi, Michael W. McConnell, Samuel L. Bray, and William Baude.

See Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984); and Herbert J. Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For: The Political Thought of the Opponents of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Founding Fathers: Young Men of the Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Service Center for Teachers of History, 1962).