ANTI-FEDERALISTS

The Anti-Federalists were a loosely associated group of men and women who opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution in the wake of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Although the intensity of and reasons for their opposition varied by individual, state, and region, a common thread bound Anti-Federalists: fear that a powerful, distant, and centralized national government was a direct threat to democracy (defined as local self-government or states' rights) and individual rights and liberties. Anti-Federalists believed passionately that the U.S. Constitution with its Supremacy Clause (Article VI) and the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, sec. 8) would create a tyrannical central government and so they agitated vigorously against its adoption in newspapers, on the streets, and in state ratifying conventions.

To understand the Anti-Federalists as they understood themselves, it is important to know that they were ardent supporters (and many were veterans) of the American Revolution. For Anti-Federalists, the American Revolution was fought on behalf of the liberal principles of liberty, equality, and democracy as asserted in the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Paine's Common Sense. For them, the war was a sacred event representing a blood sacrifice on the part of American patriots to vanquish tyranny and give birth to liberty. They believed that the Revolutionary War was fought to diminish the power of government to prevent centralization of authority. It was their belief that men like Alexander Hamilton and other nationalists had constructed a constitution that would ultimately betray the principles of the Revolution and transform the fledgling democracy into an authoritarian aristocratic or monarchical nation in fairly short order. Their fears were based on the seemingly open-ended clauses noted above along with provisions like the lifetime tenure of Supreme Court Justices and the long length of Senatorial terms. They were alarmed by Hamilton's statements that he greatly admired Julius Caesar and by his proposition that the American president be elected for life.

bill of rights

Prominent Federalists like James Wilson and James Madison supported ratification and argued vehemently that the new constitution was a "limited document for limited ends" that should be read as only authorizing the grants of power and authority that were specifically outlined in the text itself. Leading Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry, Luther Martin, Mercy Warren, Elbridge Gerry, George Clinton, and others were not convinced, and saw the seeds of political expansion and potential tyranny in the document. They pushed its supporters to add a Bill of Rights that would limit the power and scope of the new regime. These well-known provisions of the Constitution are stated with typical Anti-Federalist simplicity and parsimony. They begin with the well-known phrase "Congress shall make no law" and continue on to detail a number of important limits on national power, such as prohibiting Congress from abridging freedom of speech and freedom of press. They conclude with the much-debated and often-maligned Tenth Amendment which preserves to the states and the people respectively all powers not expressly prohibited to them nor delegated to the United States.

That final amendment is, indeed, the true heart and soul of Anti-Federalist political ideology. Embedded in that brief sentence is the whole of their hope that the Constitution would be strictly constructed to limit the power of the federal government. It is critical to note that the Bill of Rights as proposed was intended only to apply to the actions of the national government. Each state had its own constitution (often with its own bill of rights) that was designed to delineate the scope and limits of their power and authority within their own borders. As odd as it may seem to contemporary readers given the issues of slavery, civil rights, and women's rights, the Anti-Federalists believed that it was the states, not the national government, that could be trusted to defend the rights and liberties of the citizenry. To use the Second Amendment as an example, Anti-Federal proponents of states' rights thought that the "right to keep and bear arms" was necessary to physically defend themselves from a centralized government turned tyrannical. Beginning with the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), the federal government guaranteed equal protection under the Constitution. America gradually adopted the notion that all citizens possessed the same rights and that it was the responsibility of the national government to ensure those rights and liberties.

While the latter transformation was certainly not foreseen in the debates surrounding ratification, and perhaps not even desired by many who later passed the Fourteenth Amendment, the Anti-Federalists were responsible for forcing the adoption of the Bill of Rights. It is considered not only the hallmark of our own Constitution, but also the measuring stick by which other nations' own democratic legitimacy is gauged. So pervasive were their arguments and so persistent was their presence that in fairly short order after the Constitution was ratified, the remnants of the Anti-Federalists migrated toward Thomas Jefferson (the author of their beloved Declaration of Independence), and the emerging Republican Party (bringing James Madison along for good measure). While the Anti-Federalists ceased to exist as a party, they left an enduring legacy. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Americans sustained the Anti-Federalist convictions that government is best that is closest to home and that "government governs best that governs least." In this way the Revolutionary War and the struggle over the Constitution continue to shape politics and social values.

bibliography

Cornell, Saul. The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788–1828. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Duncan, Christopher M. The Anti-Federalists and Early American Political Thought. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995.

Siemers, David J. Ratifying the Republic: Antifederalists and Federalists in Constitutional Time. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Storing, Herbert J. What the Anti-Federalists Were For. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Wolin, Sheldon S. The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Christopher M. Duncan

See also:Articles of Confederation; Commonwealth Men; Constitution: Creating a Republic.