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Chapter IV - Federalists and Anti-Federalists
Federalists and Anti-Federalists
Franklin's call for unity fell on many deaf ears, especially those of Anti-Federalists who severely criticized the constitution. They consisted of two main groups: those who emphasized the potential threat to states' rights which a new centralized government embodied, and those like Mason and Gerry who greatly feared the dangers faced by individuals in a system without a bill of rights. From the Anti-Federalist perspective, the individual states rather than a national government should be the chief protectors of individual rights.
Who were these Anti-Federalists? Men from various levels of society made up this group, including political leaders such as Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee who had warned Americans a decade and a half earlier against the encroaching powers of a national government - namely, the British imperial system. In addition to radical political leaders, the group also included many small farmers who fiercely resented heavy taxation, whether by a state or a federal government. Anti-Federalists from New York insisted that a representative body composed principally of respectable independent farmers would be "the best possible security to liberty." Others warned that legislators in a national government would inevitably be chosen from the elite or "natural aristocracy," thus denying representation to both the middle class and the poor. Some also voiced another fear asserting, "In so small a number of representatives, there is a great danger from corruption."
In contrast to the apprehensive Anti-Federalists, the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison encouraged the expansion of a national government. In his famous "Federalist No. 10" essay, Madison challenged the common assumption that only small republics such as individual states could guarantee freedom from splinter groups attempting to form a dominant majority. Factions, he explained, could never be eliminated because they were "inevitable byproducts" of economic and social developments. He reasoned that a republic with a politically balanced federal government could work in a large and diverse country better than in a small republic. "Extend the sphere," he argued, "and you take in a great variety of parties and interests; you make less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens."
Unconvinced by the Federalists' rhetoric, the Anti-Federalists sharply focused on the Constitution's lack of a bill of rights and encouraged state delegations to reject the ratification process as illegal. Anti-Federalists believed that certain rights must be clearly protected before accepting the Constitution. Those rights were freedom of the press and freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, and guarantees against unreasonable search warrants, Jefferson from his diplomatic post in Paris, agreed, stating, "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse.
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