ascribed to the King were now being repeated by the state legislatures. In this view, Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising in Massachusetts in 1786, was simply one, albeit extreme, example of "democratic excess" in the aftermath of the War. A national convention was called for May 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Madison believed that the problem was not with the Articles, but rather the state legislatures, and so the solution was not to fix the articles but to restrain the excesses of the states. The principal questions before the convention became whether the states should remain sovereign, whether sovereignty should be transferred to the national government, or whether a settlement should rest somewhere in between. By mid-June, it was clear that the convention was drafting a new plan of government around these issues—a constitution. Madison's nationalist position shifted the debate increasingly away from a position of pure state sovereignty, and toward the compromise. In a debate on June 26, he said that government ought to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" and that unchecked, democratic communities were subject to "the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions". Publication September 17, 1787 marked the signing of the final document. By its own Article Seven, the constitution drafted by the convention needed ratification by at least nine of the thirteen states, through special conventions held in each state. Anti-Federalist writers began to publish essays and letters arguing against ratification, and Alexander Hamilton recruited James Madison and John Jay to write a series of pro-ratification letters in response. Like most of the Federalist essays and the vast majority of The Federalist Papers, No. 10 first appeared in popular newspapers. It was first printed in the Daily Advertiser under the name adopted by the Federalist writers, "Publius"; in this it was remarkable among the essays of Publius, as almost all of them first appeared in one of two other papers: the Independent Journal and the New-York Packet. Federalist No. 37, also by Madison, was the only other essay to appear first in the Advertiser. Considering the importance later ascribed to the essay, it was reprinted only on a limited scale. On November 23, it appeared in the Packet and the next day in the Independent Journal. Outside New York City, it made four appearances in early 1788: January 2 in the Pennsylvania Gazette, January 10 in the Hudson Valley Weekly,