The Anti-Federalists opposed the ratification of the 1787 U.S. Constitution because they feared that the new national government would be too powerful and thus threaten individual liberties, given the absence of a bill of rights. Show Their opposition was an important factor leading to the adoption of the First Amendment and the other nine amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. The Constitution, drafted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, needed to be ratified by nine or more state conventions (and by all states that wanted to take part in the new government). A clash erupted over ratification, with the Anti-Federalists opposing the creation of a strong national government and rejecting ratification and the Federalists advocating a strong union and adoption of the Constitution. Patrick Henry was an outspoken anti-Federalist. The Anti-Federalists included small farmers and landowners, shopkeepers, and laborers. When it came to national politics, they favored strong state governments, a weak central government, the direct election of government officials, short term limits for officeholders, accountability by officeholders to popular majorities, and the strengthening of individual liberties. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain, portrait by George Bagby Matthews and Thomas Sully)Anti-Federalists were concerned about excessive power of national governmentThe Anti-Federalists included small farmers and landowners, shopkeepers, and laborers. When it came to national politics, they favored strong state governments, a weak central government, the direct election of government officials, short term limits for officeholders, accountability by officeholders to popular majorities, and the strengthening of individual liberties. In terms of foreign affairs, they were pro-French. To combat the Federalist campaign, the Anti-Federalists published a series of articles and delivered numerous speeches against ratification of the Constitution. The independent writings and speeches have come to be known collectively as The Anti-Federalist Papers, to distinguish them from the series of articles known as The Federalist Papers, written in support of the new constitution by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pseudonym Publius. Although Patrick Henry, Melancton Smith, and others eventually came out publicly against the ratification of the Constitution, the majority of the Anti-Federalists advocated their position under pseudonyms. Nonetheless, historians have concluded that the major Anti-Federalist writers included Robert Yates (Brutus), most likely George Clinton (Cato), Samuel Bryan (Centinel), and either Melancton Smith or Richard Henry Lee (Federal Farmer). By way of these speeches and articles, Anti-Federalists brought to light issues of:
Anti-Federalists pressured for adoption of Bill of RightsThe Anti-Federalists failed to prevent the adoption of the Constitution, but their efforts were not entirely in vain. Although many Federalists initially argued against the necessity of a bill of rights to ensure passage of the Constitution, they promised to add amendments to it specifically protecting individual liberties. Upon ratification, James Madison introduced twelve amendments during the First Congress in 1789. The states ratified ten of these, which took effect in 1791 and are known today collectively as the Bill of Rights. Although the Federalists and Anti-Federalists reached a compromise that led to the adoption of the Constitution, this harmony did not filter into the presidency of George Washington. Political division within the cabinet of the newly created government emerged in 1792 over fiscal policy. Those who supported Alexander Hamilton’s aggressive policies formed the Federalist Party, while those who supported Thomas Jefferson’s view opposing deficit spending formed the Jeffersonian Party. The latter party, led by Jefferson and James Madison, became known as the Republican or Democratic-Republican Party, the precursor to the modern Democratic Party. Richard Henry was a possible writer of anti-Federalist essays with the pseudonym Federal Farmer. (Image via National Portrait Gallery, public domain, portrait by Charles Wilson Peale)Election of Jefferson repudiated the Federalist-sponsored Alien and Sedition ActsThe Democratic-Republican Party gained national prominence through the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1801. This election is considered a turning point in U.S. history because it led to the first era of party politics, pitting the Federalist Party against the Democratic-Republican Party. This election is also significant because it served to repudiate the Federalist-sponsored Alien and Sedition Acts — which made it more difficult for immigrants to become citizens and criminalized oral or written criticisms of the government and its officials — and it shed light on the importance of party coalitions. In fact, the Democratic-Republican Party proved to be more dominant due to the effective alliance it forged between the Southern agrarians and Northern city dwellers. The election of James Madison in 1808 and James Monroe in 1816 further reinforced the importance of the dominant coalitions within the Democratic-Republican Party. With the death of Alexander Hamilton and retirement of John Quincy Adams from politics, the Federalist Party disintegrated. After the War of 1812 ended, partisanship subsided across the nation. In the absence of the Federalist Party, the Democratic-Republican Party stood unchallenged. The so-called Era of Good Feelings followed this void in party politics, but it did not last long. Some scholars continue to see echoes of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates in modern party politics. This article was originally published in 2009. Mitzi Ramos is an Instructor of Political Science at Northeastern Illinois University. Send Feedback on this articlePage 2
Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) stands as the first U.S. Supreme Court case to expound upon the concept of academic freedom though some earlier cases mention it. Most constitutional academic freedom issues today revolve around professors’ speech, students’ speech, faculty’s relations to government speech, and using affirmative action in student admissions. Although academic freedom is regularly invoked as a constitutional right under the First Amendment, the Court has never specifically enumerated it as one, and judicial opinions have not developed a consistent interpretation of constitutional academic freedom or pronounced a consistent framework to analyze such claims. By 1785 a conviction had developed among several influential leaders in the various states that greater inter-state cooperation was needed if the United States was to reach its true economic potential. In that year, leaders from Virginia and Maryland met at Mount Vernon at the invitation of George Washington to discuss, among other things, navigation of the Potomac River. As those assembled came to agreements, they increasingly acknowledged the efficacy of an expanded meeting, which would include at the least Pennsylvania and Delaware, states struggling over transportation between the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River. The result was a convention held at Annapolis in 1786 to which nine states named representatives, though representatives of only five attended (absent were the New England states, the Carolinas, and Georgia). Despite the disappointing showing at Annapolis, Alexander Hamilton was determined to follow up on the idea of a states-wide meeting and presented a resolution to the Confederation Congress for a convention “to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” When the resolution calling for such a meeting passed through Congress, the wording was a bit different: those who met in Philadelphia would have as their “sole and express purpose…revising the Articles of Confederation.” Some states were slower than others to respond, but by May, 1787, eleven states had elected representatives. The meeting convened on May 14, though it was not until May 25 that a quorum was reached and George Washington elected president of the proceedings. The delegates worked through the summer, releasing the document on September 17, 1787. During the weeks before the meeting was to convene, it became apparent that there were two schools of thought as to the ultimate goals of those who would attend. One group, centered on Edmund Randolph of Virginia and including Thomas Jefferson, currently Ambassador to France, held onto the idea that the Articles need only to be revised, patched like a fabric, as Jefferson commented. On the other hand, leaders like George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison believed that the Articles should be thrown out and an entirely new outline of government drawn up. Madison had become convinced before his arrival in Philadelphia that there should be a bi-cameral legislature, a separate judicial branch, and an executive, separate from either of the other branches. The central government should have the right of taxation and the power of the veto over state laws “in all cases whatsoever.” In this phrase he echoed the wording of the Declaratory Act of 1766, passed upon the repeal of the Sugar Act by Parliament. In 1787, Madison prepared a tract entitled Vices of the Political System of the United States in which he made clear his leanings. Historian Joseph J. Ellis comments that the document “reads like an indictment of the Confederation Congress prepared by a relentless special prosecutor” as in the tract, Madison decries the encroachment of the states on the federal government and on the laws of each other, their failure to “comply with Constitutional requisitions,” and their unconcern for the “common interest” of the citizens of the United States. And so on May 25, a quorum of twenty-nine delegates from nine states empowered by their state governments to revise the Articles of Confederation met at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the site of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Rhode Island was the only state that did not participate at all in the proceedings. The delegates met for four months, and when the convention ended, they emerged with a document that laid out a completely new plan of government. Those who gathered in Philadelphia were an impressive array of American leaders: Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania; James Madison, George Washington, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph from Virginia; William Paterson from New Jersey; James McHenry from Maryland; Charles Pinckney and John Rutledge from South Carolina; and Elbridge Gerry from Massachusetts. Several notable Americans were not present at the convention: Thomas Jefferson, who, along with Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and John Adams had drafted the Declaration of Independence, was in France, John Adams was in Europe trying to raise money to pay off war debts, and Patrick Henry, who distrusted all centralized governments, refused to participate, claiming he “smell[ed] a rat.” Both Jefferson and Adams, however, kept a close eye on developments in Philadelphia. Despite the fact that the states had empowered delegates to “revise” the Articles of Confederation, within days, those in attendance reached two important decisions: their deliberations must be held in secrecy, and the Articles should be scrapped in favor of a completely new document. Edmund Randolph, who later introduced the Virginia Plan, explained the reasoning behind the latter decision, pointing out that the Articles did not “protect the United States from attacks from foreign powers,” it did not “secure harmony and blessings to the states,” nor was it “superior to State constitutions.” Similarly, Alexander Hamilton wrote to George Washington in July: “the people begin to be convinced that their ‘excellent form of government’ [the Articles] as they have been used to call it, will not answer their purpose; and that they must substitute something not very remote from that which they have lately quitted.” The latter, an allusion to the British monarchy, probably overstated the leanings of the convention as a whole and may have been more the preference of Washington and Hamilton, both of whom were ardent proponents of a strong national government. The Founding Fathers held many principles in common. They believed in John Locke’s natural rights theory that all people were entitled to life, liberty, and property—what Jefferson called “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence—and were proponents of the idea of the Baron Montesquieu, an Enlightenment writer of France, that the best political system was one in which power was shared by more than one branch of a national government. Most of the delegates did not want a monarchy, and they wanted the states to be recognized as separate entities, holding some independent power of their own. Many of the delegates distrusted true democracy, in which all men over a certain age would have the right to vote, holding firm to the belief that freeholders, those owning land, were the best guarantors of liberty; in other words, many delegates thought landholders were the only ones who should be allowed to vote. With rare exception, American historians have seen the creation of the Constitution as the triumph of an effort to create a government of ordered liberty, an achievement seldom duplicated elsewhere. Because this effort represented a reversal of the American Revolution’s trend toward greater democratization and decentralization of power, historians have usually taken pains to describe the Confederation era (1781-1787) as a time of dangerous economic and political instability requiring the strongest counter-measures to overcome it. However, divisive issues became apparent almost from the first week of deliberations. One had to do with the relative power of the national and state governments and the manner in which representatives to the central government should be apportioned. Those who were proponents of the rights of the states were predominantly from the smaller states of Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland, and were satisfied with the traditional structure, true of every congress since independence, of equal representation for all states, regardless of population. They were also convinced that the states should exercise some power independently of the national government. Nationalists like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, on the other hand, who favored a strong central government with legislative representation based on population, tended to be from the larger states. Their verbiage pointed to the powerlessness of the Confederation government, which was clearly too weak to enjoy diplomatic or domestic success, and touted the need for representation to be based on population. Those states with the greater population should be granted the largest number of seats in the national legislature, for after all, why should the residents in large states receive less representation than those living in small states? A stronger central government, with representation based on population, was called for. Of course, there were also reasons why the small states might want a stronger central government, as they, like the large states, wanted a government that could regulate commerce, maintain order against disturbances like Shays’s revolt, create and maintain a healthy economy, and protect the republic against the diplomatic encroachments. As Oliver Ellsworth commented, “We were partly national; partly federal. I trusted that on this middle ground a compromise would take place.” Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania echoed this sentiment when he wrote to John Adams that “with such excellent principles among us…there is little doubt of our adopting a vigorous and compound federal structure,” in other words, a system of government in which power is divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units, like states. Similarly, sectional divisions became apparent as the delegates debated the institution of slavery. Should slavery be recognized at all in the document being framed? How were slaves to be counted for purposes of representation and taxation, or should they be counted at all? Should the document provide for the abolition of slavery altogether, and, if it were not abolished, should its existence be limited in some way?
On May 29, a plan for a central government was introduced by Edmund Randolph of Virginia. Called the “large state” or “Virginia” Plan, it called for a two house “National Legislature,” an independent executive, and a national judiciary. In terms of Congressional delegates, voters would elect the lower house, the lower house would select the upper house from a list of nominees from the state legislatures, and both houses would choose the President and the judiciary. Although the Plan was praised by the larger states, representatives of the small states were quick to point out that under this plan the less populous states might very likely have no representatives in the upper house and very little input into who was elected president. Consequently, in mid-June, William Paterson presented a “small state” or “New Jersey” Plan. This plan envisioned a national government consisting of a one house legislature with equal representatives from all states, a plural executive, and an independent judiciary. As the Convention debated the features of each plan, a committee, headed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, drafted what has been called the Great Compromise (also called the Connecticut Compromise in honor of its architects) which dealt with representation in the House and Senate and became a prominent feature of the U.S. Constitution. Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, both of Connecticut, suggested a two house national legislature, with the lower house elected by the freeholders, the upper house by the state legislatures, and the President by electors, to be chosen by the state legislatures. In the lower house, the House of Representatives, representation was apportioned according to the population of the individual states; each state would have two representatives in the upper house or Senate. A second compromise, known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, addressed the issue of slavery. Some of the delegates wanted the institution abolished completely, though these were in the minority. Most Southern representatives wanted slaves counted by head for purposes of determining numbers of legislators, but did not want them counted when determining the imposition of national taxes on the states. The Northern states wanted just the opposite. The Three-Fifths Compromise settled this controversy: a slave would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose both of determining representation and taxation. Another issue dealt with the slave trade. Many wanted the slave trade with Africa stopped completely, as had already occurred in some Northern states, while Southern slave holders strongly objected to its cessation. The compromise reached was that the slave trade would not be stopped before 1808. A last agreement was reached over the use of the word “slave” in the Constitution; the term was not used. Instead, the document refers to “free persons” and “all other persons,” in other words, the enslaved.
In the end, what was created was a government that was neither strictly national nor strictly federal, but rather contained elements of each. On the one hand, there was a separate executive branch, consisting of a president and connected executive departments. The president would be elected by electors, who themselves were elected by the state legislatures. Thus the executive would be indirectly elected, as would be the Senate, which was the upper house of the two-house Congress. The Senate, like the electors, was to be elected by the state legislatures. Only the House of Representatives was popularly elected. There was a national judiciary consisting of a Supreme Court, whose justices would be appointed by the president and would serve life terms. The number of justices that would sit on the high court was not established, nor was a lower court system created. The power to create “Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court” was given to Congress in Article I, section 8. The final draft of the Constitution obviously adheres to the Baron Montesquieu’s idea of checks and balances, as the president would appoint judges, who in turn had to be approved by the Senate. All bills would have to pass both the House and Senate to become laws, and, while the president could make treaties, these also had to be approved by the Senate. The president could veto Congressional laws, but vetoes could be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. A provision for the removal of a sitting president placed a further check on the executive. The House of Representatives could impeach, or indict, the president. Once indicted, the president would be tried by the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. Nor was the Supreme Court exempt from checks, as Congress could impeach judges, and the approval of the Senate was required to confirm presidential appointments to the judiciary. The un-amended Constitution had no provision for judicial review, the right of the Supreme Court to review Congressional laws to determine their constitutionality. In the two centuries since the adoption of the Constitution, power has been classified according to type: those powers that are enumerated, or actually listed in the Constitution as belonging to one of the branches of the national government; those that are implied, using such devices as the “necessary and proper clause” of Article I, section 8 (see Annotated Constitution below); those that are shared between the states and the national government; and those which are reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment. The 1787 Constitution also had both national and federal features. In terms of nationalism, Congress was given broad powers that could be expanded by Article I, section 8, known as the “necessary and proper” clause; by the Supremacy Article, which proclaimed that the Constitution and all laws made under it were the “supreme law of the land;” and by the fact that the un-amended Constitution had no Bill of Rights. On the other hand, the states were recognized as individual entities in Article IV and were given jurisdiction over their own internal affairs through the reserved powers of the Tenth Amendment. James Madison proclaimed in Number 39 of the Federalist Papers, which were written mainly by Madison and Alexander Hamilton, that: “The constitutional reallocation of powers created a new form of government, unprecedented under the sun. Every previous national authority either had been centralized or else had been a confederation of sovereign states. The new American system was neither one nor the other; it was a mixture of both. ”
Article VII of the Constitution states that the document would go into effect when “the Conventions of nine states,” not quite three-quarters, had approved it. The document was released to the states in September 1787, and soon debates began over its merits, the structure of the government it created, and the powers given to the central government and the states (a few state powers were listed). The debates intensified in the fall of 1787. Those who spoke in favor of the Constitution had several advantages. Calling themselves Federalists, they were well-organized, literate, and provided a positive message. The irony was that, in terms of political orientation, they were in fact nationalists, favoring a strong central government. They deliberately chose the name “Federalist” in order to stress the federal nature of the government defined by the Constitution and direct the attention of those they were trying to persuade away from the fact that the central government was imbued with remarkable powers. It was, in fact, more national than federal. Their opponents made the mistake of calling themselves “Antifederalists,” thus giving two impressions: their message was basically negative, and they were opposed to federalism. In terms of political theory, many of these men, like Patrick Henry, George Mason, and Richard Henry Lee, felt that the Constitution created a central government at the expense of the states, were in fact federalists.
Antifederalists, like perhaps a majority of Americans in 1787, opposed the founders’ decision to replace rather than revise the Articles of Confederation. Patrick Henry, in newspapers, the Antifederalist Papers, and debates in the Virginia state legislature, pointed out that the drastic changes to the Articles of Confederation had been unwarranted and unnecessary. “Unless there be great and awful dangers,” he warned in Antifederalist Paper No. 4, “[this] change is dangerous, and the experiment ought not to be made.” Richard Henry Lee agreed that “important changes in the forms of government [should]…be carefully attended to in all their consequences.” And George Mason, also from Virginia, warned that a single executive was a lightning rod for disaster: “If strong and extensive Powers are vested in the Executive, and that Executive consists only of one Person, the Government will of course degenerate.” In addition, Antifederalists disliked the fact that the Constitutional Convention was held in secrecy during the drafting itself and that the ratification process was replete with extra-legal irregularities. Requiring not unanimity as the Articles of Confederation had done, but only nine states for ratification, the Founding Fathers changed the rules to guarantee success, but they did so at some cost to traditional parliamentary procedure. Equally worrisome was the fact that the founders wisely refused to submit the document to the state legislatures, reasoning that the states would not voluntarily agree to surrender their existing powers. So, they required that special conventions elected for the purpose of considering ratification be given the task of considering the issue. When many Antifederalists, objecting to this change in rules, refused to vote for delegates to the ratification conventions, those elected turned out to be overwhelmingly, and not surprisingly, Federalist in opinion. Another point of contention was that the document did not contain a bill of rights, adding to a general feeling that the document was hostile to popular participation in government. Antifederalists took this position, but so did many who would otherwise be in favor of approving the document. Historian Robert Middlekauff comments that the Constitution faced an uphill battle, and “the absence of a bill of rights was the reason.” A last point made by many Antifederalists was that representation as defined by the Constitution, that is, two Senators from each state and a maximum of 435 members of the House of Representatives, would be inadequate to appropriately represent the population of a large nation, which the United States would invariably become. The Federalists, on the other hand, were primarily well-to-do bankers and wealthy planters like Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin. In addition to being well-organized and literate, they published an impressive tome of well-constructed arguments, the Federalist Papers. The Papers, written largely by Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay, explained the advantages of a strong national government, though at the same time emphasizing in the minds of their readers that the government’s structure was also federal. In Federalist No. 2, Jay defined the issue at hand: “whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of American that they should…be one nation, under one federal government, or that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies.” Alexander Hamilton warned his readers of an “alarming danger---those which will in all probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves.” Weak nations allowed themselves to be forced into a confederation while a “FIRM Union” provided a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection.” Now regarded as a classic collection of rigorous thinking on matters of political science, these documents did sway opinion that was wavering or in doubt. The authors explained the diplomatic and domestic advantages that would come from a strong central government. Not only would “the dangers to which we should be exposed, in a state of disunion, from the arms and arts of foreign nations” be avoided by a strong central authority, but also would be “those which will in all probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and convulsions.” Historian Charles Beard argued in 1913 that conflict over the Constitution could be seen in economic class terms with wealthy property holders in favor of the Constitution and poorer elements of the community opposed. While economic concerns were important in determining an American’s opinion on the Constitution, it nevertheless appears not to have been a struggle between haves and have-nots. Rather, it appears that urban Americans, rich and poor alike, were in favor of ratification, believing that the Constitution would encourage commerce and business activity. Both rich and poor rural Americans, however, opposed it. Their opposition was not good news for the Federalists because the vast majority of Americans were the people whom Jefferson called “the chosen people of God,” in other words, the farmers. The final decision that led to the ratification of the Constitution was the promise that a bill of rights would be included in any Constitution ratified by the states. The necessary nine states were obtained when New Hampshire ratified the document in 1788. New York and Virginia only narrowly approved the document, New York by three votes and Virginia by five. Without the approval of these large states, the Constitution and perhaps the American national experiment would have been doomed. The victory of the Federalists became complete when Rhode Island ratified the document in 1790. The prospects for its success were unclear, but one factor helped. Most of the Antifederalists, including Patrick Henry, who were bitter in their defeat, retired from national politics. Consequently, nearly all those elected to the first Congress under the Constitution were Federalists, that is, friends of the government created by of the Constitution. For all practical purposes, the Antifederalists disappeared, but, in the future, other American groups would revive their cautionary warnings about the dangers of concentrated American power.
By 1785, it had become obvious that a stronger central government was needed, one that would be able to speak for the new American states as a whole. In 1787, delegates therefore met in Philadelphia; these delegates were elected and empowered by the state legislatures to revise the Articles of Confederation. The document that emerged from what came to be called the Constitutional Convention was very different from the Articles of Confederation, which had been scrapped shortly after the convention reached a quorum. The U.S. Constitution created a government that was both national and federal. As national, it gave expanded powers to the central government; as federal, it recognized the individual states as enduring entities. The lack of a bill of rights created a problem during ratification, as the Federalists and Antifederalists took their messages to the states. By 1789, however, despite the objections raised by those who opposed adoption, nine states had approved the document, and it was put into effect. The Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention met in 1787 for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. Answera
The Virginia Plan is also known as
b
During ratification debates, the Antifederalists were really Federalists. Answera
Who among the following was NOT a Federalist?
b
The Three-Fifths Compromise dealt with the issue of representation and taxation. Answera The Constitution
The necessary and proper clause has had the effect of limiting the power of the national government. Answerb
The source of powers “reserved” to the states is the
c
The “full faith and credit” clause applies to
b
Which of the following is NOT a Congressional power enumerated in the U.S. Constitution?
e
According to the Constitution, _______________ appoints judges; these appointments must be approved by __________.
d |