Federalist vs Anti Federalist

10 Key excerpts on "Federalist vs Anti Federalist"

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  The Federalist Papers

  • Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Ian Shapiro(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  Protofeminist Responses to the Federalist-Antifederalist Debate EILEEN HUNT BOTTING The Federalist Papers (1787–88) contributed to a vital political debate in the early American republic about the benefits and drawbacks of federalism for republican—or what today we call democratic—government. ∞ Both then and now, Americans have understood federalism as the division of government and its powers across national and subnational units, with the former overseeing the latter. ≤ From the 1780s onward, however, there has been no final verdict on whether federalism is the best institutional frame-work for American democracy. At the time of the publication of the Feder-alist Papers, the debate over federalism was divided into two broad camps. The Federalists were those who defended a strong national government, and its role in overseeing the state and local governments beneath it, as proposed in and then institutionalized by the ratification of the 1787 Consti-tution of the United States. ≥ The Antifederalists were those who criticized the Constitution’s powerful national government and advocated for greater strength in state and local government and further legal protection of indi-vidual rights. ∂ In the early 1790s, the Federalists formed a party under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton. Various strands of Antifederalism, on the other hand, deeply inflected the platform of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s Democratic-Republican Party. ∑ The impact of this debate on the evolution of a wide range of American political institutions has been well-charted. We regularly credit the debate over federalism for contributing to the establish-ment of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well as other political institutions, such as those that regulate political party development, income tax, welfare, and environmental policy.

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  The Federalist Papers

  A Reader's Guide

  • Kyle Scott(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  But there was more to the ratification debates than petty name-calling. There was a serious debate about what the U.S. political system should be, and indeed, what government in general should be. During the ratification debates two sides battled: Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Federalists were in favor of ratification and the Anti-Federalists were opposed. The people of New York were at the center of this debate. New York was where the most famous and well-known Federalists made their case, namely Publius. The three men who made up Publius argued that the Constitution created a stronger national government that would be able to provide a level of stability that was absent under the Articles of Confederation. Publius argued that the public good could best be achieved when the instability and factions created OVERVIEW AND BACKGROUND 15 at the local level were controlled at the national level. Where the Federalists saw stability, the Anti-Federalists saw tyranny. The Anti-Federalists were more influenced by their recent encounter with King George III than the failings of Greek city-states. As this book is a reflection on The Federalist Papers it may give the reader the impression that they put forth the only Federalist position or that Publius spoke for the nation. Thus, to get started, it is important to give the reader an introduction to the competing sides of the debate so as to properly situate the rest of the book in its historical and theoretical context. The danger in trying to do this lies in consolidating the arguments of each side. One does not want to distort the position of either side, nor present a united front where none existed. So let me say at the outset: there were many arguments made by each side that were not necessarily in agreement with each other. The arguments I have chosen to put forth here come from the most influential people of the time. For the Federalists this was Publius, the author of The Federalist Papers.

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  New Order of the Ages

  Time, the Constitution, and the Making of Modern American Political Thought

  • Michael Lienesch(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  138 FOUNDING 139 By contrast, in opposing the Constitution, the Antifederalists seem to have relegated themselves to a legacy of shame. Many historians have failed to even mention their role in the debates, let alone to note the fact that they came close to carrying the day. Instead, most have chosen to describe them in distinctly unflattering terms. From the time of John Fiske, Antifederal- ists have been seen as complacent in the face of chaos, blind to the conflict and disorder that characterized the mid-i78os, "the most critical moment," as Fiske called it, "in all the history of the American people." 5 Similarly, they have been seen as negativistic obstructionists who set themselves against the new government while offering no alternative of their own, pur- suing, in the words of one early twentieth-century historian, "merely a pol- icy of negation." 6 Max Farrand popularized this line of criticism, arguing that the Constitution's opponents were failed founders, their attempts at statesmanship seeming to consist of little more than "trying to find excuses for their opposition."? "Realist" historians like Boorstin and Hofstadter honed the theme further, contending that the genius of the Federalist fram- ers was their down-to-earth practicality, whereas the tragedy of their Anti- federalist counterparts was their predisposition towards high-minded phil- osophical theorizing, what Boorstin called their intellectual "idolatry." 8 Perhaps most important, Cecelia Kenyon claimed that, along with their other faults, the Antifederalists were "men of little faith," elitist provincials who had no conception of the potential of the modern democratic stated Elaborating on the theme, writers like Clinton Rossiter argued that the most telling Antifederalist fault was the inability to foresee the future de- velopment of the nation, their lack of continental "vision." 10 Even very re- cently, a sympathetic observer such as Herbert Storing could claim that the Antifederalists were ambivalent about the future of the nation.

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  Territory, Democracy and Justice

  Federalism and Regionalism in Western Democracies

  • S. Greer(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  5 The Changing Politics of Federalism in the United States Paul E. Peterson Governmental design is an ancient question. For the Greeks, the question was whether citizens were best ruled by the one, the few or the many. For Hobbes, power needed to be centralized in the hands of a single sovereign so as to protect citizens from a “war of all against all.” For the writers of The Federalist Papers – Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay – power was best divided between central and lower tiers of government in order to check each from threatening the liberties of individuals. For US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, lower tiers of government should have the autonomy to become “laboratories of democracy.” Although federalism has its philosophical justifications, in practice the way in which federal systems are designed is usually a matter of the political interests to be served. Even the two principal writers of The Federalist Papers, Hamilton and Madison, entered into intense, bitter conflicts over the appropriate meaning of the US Constitution within a few short years after writing the lengthy treatise defending its provisions. Hamilton, a New Yorker appreciative of the wealth passing through that rapidly growing port city, wanted a strong central state in order to promote commerce and international trade. Madison, together with his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, worried more about both the tyran- nical power of a strong central government – and the northern speculators benefiting from centralized financial arrangements. Brandeis, too, had more than just a scientific interest in federalism when he called the American states “laboratories of democracy.” In New State Ice v. Liebmann (1932), Brandeis had specific social interests in mind when he dissented from the Supreme Court’s ruling that Oklahoma could not forbid the “manufacture, sale and distribution of ice” without a certificate of public convenience. The majority had found such regulation 92

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  State and Local Politics

  Institutions and Reform

  • Todd Donovan, Daniel Smith, Tracy Osborn, Christopher Mooney(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Federalism: State and Local Politics within a Federal System 45 rival sovereigns—the 13 states and Congress— were mounting. In May 1787, Congress called for a Constitutional Convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. Over that summer, delegates to the Constitutional Convention would decide to scrap the Articles, replacing them with a federal-ist system. In addition to restructuring the federal government’s institutional design, the proposed constitution would alter the relationship between the federal government and the states, having each share power and the representation of their respec-tive constituencies. 15 Federalists who supported the new constitu-tion argued in favor of a strong central government. But they made it clear that the central govern-ment’s authority would be checked by the separa-tion of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as well as through the division of sovereignty between the states and the federal government. 16 Writing in 1787 and 1789 under the pseudonym “Publius,” James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay authored a series of pam-phlets that collectively became known as the Feder-alist Papers. As part of a public relations campaign to generate popular support for the ratification of the Constitution, the authors claimed the new con-stitution would provide for internal checks and bal-ances in the fledgling nation and would structurally limit the supremacy of the national government by creating competitive (sometimes rival, sometimes cooperative) state governments.

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  The Promise of American Life

  Updated Edition

  • Herbert Croly(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  With all their differences, however, the Federalists and their opponents had certain common opinions and interests, and it was these common opinions and interests which prevented the split from becoming irremediable. The men of both parties were individualist in spirit, and they were chiefly interested in the great American task of improving their own condition in this world. They both wanted a government which would secure them freedom of action for this purpose. The difference between them was really less a difference of purpose than of the means whereby a purpose should be accomplished. The Federalists, representing as they did chiefly the people of wealth and education, demanded a government adequate to protect existing propertied rights; but they were not seeking any exceptional privileges—except those traditionally associated with the ownership of private property. The anti-Federalists, on the other hand, having less to protect and more to acquire, insisted rather upon being let alone than in being protected. They expressed themselves sometimes in such an extremely insubordinate manner as almost to threaten social disorder, but were very far from being fundamentally anti-social in interest or opinion. They were all by way of being property-owners, and they all expected to benefit by freedom from interference in the acquisition of wealth. It was this community of interest and point of view which prepared the way, not only for the adoption of the Constitution, but for the loyalty it subsequently inspired in the average American.

  It remains none the less true, however, that the division of interest and the controversy thereby provoked was sharp and brought about certain very unfortunate consequences. Inasmuch as the anti-Federalists were unruly democrats and were suspicious of any efficient political authority, the Federalists came, justly or unjustly, to identify both anti-Federalism and democracy with political disorder and social instability. They came, that is, to have much the same opinion of radical democracy as an English peer might have had at the time of the French Revolution; and this prejudice, which was unjust but not unnatural, was very influential in determining the character of the Federal Constitution. That instrument was framed, not as the expression of a democratic creed, but partly as a legal fortress against the possible errors and failings of democracy. The federalist point of view resembled that of the later constitutional liberals in France. The political ideal and benefit which they prized most highly was that of liberty, and the Constitution was framed chiefly for the purpose of securing liberty from any possible dangers. Popular liberty must be protected against possible administrative or executive tyranny by free representative institutions. Individual liberty must be protected against the action of an unjust majority by the strongest possible legal guarantees. And above all the general liberties of the community must not be endangered by any inefficiency of the government as a whole. The only method whereby these complicated and, in a measure, conflicting ends could be attained was by a system of checks and balances, which would make the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the government independent of one another, while at the same time endowing each department with all the essentials of efficient action within its own sphere. But such a method of political organization was calculated to thwart the popular will, just in so far as that will did not conform to what the Federalists believed to be the essentials of a stable political and social order. It was antagonistic to democracy as that word was then, and is still to a large extent, understood.

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  The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America, 1630–1789

  The Legacy for Contemporary Politics

  • Joshua Miller(Author)
  • 1991(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  Too often in our society, formal guarantees of equality in the public sphere are undermined by hierarchy and discrimi- nation in private life. ' The Federalists themselves have important lessons to teach citizens today. By carefully reading the Federalist writings and speeches we can better attain collective self-knowledge. The Federalist revolution was more than just a consolidation of the states, more than the creation and affirmation of the Constitu- tion. Rather, the Federalists induced a permanent, comforting confusion into American political thinking. The Federalists misled the citizenry into believing that large, distant govern- ment was compatible with genuinely popular rule. Thus, the hallmark of democracy came to be elections and the protection of individual rights, instead of the actual rule of the people through participation in governing. The large scale of the new nation created in 1789, along with the antidemocratic provi- sions of the Constitution, soon rendered popular sovereignty a fiction, a myth that legitimated the power of the national government. As Madison correctly asserted in Federalist no. 10, a people spread out over a vast area could not unite to challenge the power of the national government. The rhetoric of popular 6. I was once at a conference on early American politics where a government official patiently explained to me the problem with direct democracy: "It's like allowing children in a candy store to eat everything they see." I suggested that his analogy was inappropriate for adults. 7 . "On the Jewish Question," in Karl Marx: Early Writings, ed. T. Bottomore (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). 1-40; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America (New York: Basic Books, 1976). I 3 8 The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Early America sovereignty was employed by national leaders to undermine the reality of direct democracy, which up to that time had been embodied in political institutions and participatory practices.

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  The Cambridge Companion to The Federalist

  • Jack N. Rakove, Colleen A. Sheehan(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  He was also a skilled polemicist and practiced in the art of persuasion. 17 Jay’s talent and experience  ,  ,     converged in The Federalist to produce a powerful argument on behalf of Union, which for Jay (as for Hamilton) was synonymous with ratification. As suggested above, the equation of Union with adoption of the Constitution (and its rejection with disunion) was a shrewd rhetorical move that not only raised the stakes of the ratification contest to a referendum on the fate of popular government, but cast the Constitution’s opponents as de facto disunionists. If this move was peremptory and unfair, it had the advantage of putting the Anti- Federalists on the defensive. Conversely, by framing the question in zero-sum terms – the Constitution or Chaos – Hamilton placed the Federalists on the high moral ground of patriotic (and pragmatic) unionism. From this citadel, Jay would assail those unnamed “Politicians,” who in defiance of “the received and uncontradicted opinion . . . of the people of America . . . and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest Citizens,” now look “for safety and happiness . . . in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties” (Fed. 2, 8). It goes without saying that the opponents of the Constitution did not view its rejection as the occasion for disunion. Nor did leading Anti-Federalists advocate the formation of separate confederacies in lieu of its adoption. Virtually all Anti-Federalists were committed to an American Union and favored some type of reform that would strengthen the national government. Most simply objected to specific provisions in the Constitution and the absence of others, viz., a bill of rights. Their formal objections were expressed in proposed amendments to the Constitution that were submitted with several of the states’ articles of ratification.

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  The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism

  • Ann Ward(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  19 But as the typically narrow subject-matter of these cases indicates, the courts are not going to restore the sweeping restriction on Congress’s powers to those enumerated in the Constitution that would call into question such popular programs as Social Security, Medicare, or federal aid for housing and education. Any battles over the further expansion of federal authority into areas like primary and secondary education will have to be fought in the political rather than the judicial arena.

  Numerous economists as well as political theorists have made a persuasive case for the benefits of a system of competitive federalism, in which the states, if left with considerable discretion over public expenditures, taxation, and social policy, can increase the choices available to citizens, and try out experiments such as welfare reform, thus enhancing both individual freedom and public policy.20 Their argument furnishes additional ground for campaigning against further federal pre-emption in these areas. But when it comes to the judiciary, friends of federalism would accomplish more where it really matters, and have greater prospects for success (because they have potential popular majorities on their side) by battling against, rather than for, an activist judiciary. To ask the courts to step forward more actively to draw the limits of Congressional authority is inevitably to encourage judicial intervention in other areas where far more damage can be done, and has been done, to the moral foundations of self-government. Anyone who shares the concerns expressed by the Antifederalists and Tocqueville regarding political liberty and its preconditions should be far more concerned, today, with the transformation of federal jurisprudence into a vehicle for the establishment of moral libertarianism than with the expansion of Congressional power into domains formerly deemed local.

  References

  Ackerman, B. and J. Fishkin (2004), Deliberation Day (New Haven: Yale University Press).

  Barnett, R. (2004), Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

  Brand, D. (2007), Progressivism, the Brownlow Commission and the rise of the administrative state, in R.J. Pestritto and T. West (eds), 137–66.

  Burke, E. (1894), Reflections on the Revolution in France

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  Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy

  How Hamilton's Merchant Class Lost Out to the Agrarian South

  • Charles A. Beard(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Dover Publications

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER I

  THE FEDERALIST-REPUBLICAN ANTAGONISM AND THE CONFLICT OVER THE CONSTITUTION

  AN examination into the origins of Jeffersonian Democracy naturally opens with an inquiry whether there was any connection between that party and the large body of citizens who opposed the establishment of the Constitution of the United States. In the struggle over the adoption of that instrument, there appeared, it is well known, a sharp antagonism throughout almost the entire country. The views of competent contemporary observers and of modern students of the period are in accord on that point. Of this there can be no doubt. Chief Justice Marshall, a member of the Virginia ratifying convention and a Federalist of high standing, who combined with his unusual opportunities for personal observation his mastery of President Washington’s private correspondence, informs us that the parties to the conflict over the Constitution were in some states evenly balanced, that in many instances the majority in favor of the new system was so small that its intrinsic merits alone would not have carried the day, that in some of the adopting states a majority of the people were in the opposition, and that in all of them the new government was accepted with reluctance only because a dread of dismemberment of the union overcame hostility to the proposed fundamental law.1

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