THE FIGHT FOR RATIFICATION: FEDERALISTS VERSUS ANTIFEDERALISTS

The first hurdle the new Constitution faced was ratification by state conventions of delegates elected by the people of each state. This struggle for ratification thus encompassed 13 separate, state-level campaigns, each influenced by local as well as national considerations. Two major ideological groups faced off throughout the states, however, calling themselves Federalists and Antifederalists (Table 2.2).²³ The Federalists supported the Constitution and preferred a strong national government. The Antifederalists opposed the Constitution and preferred a decentralized federal government; they took their name in reaction to their better-organized opponents.

During the struggle over ratification, Americans argued about great political issues and ideals. How much power should the national government have? What safeguards were most likely to prevent the abuse of power? What institutional arrangements could best ensure adequate representation for all Americans? Which was worse: tyranny of the many or tyranny of the few?

In political life, of course, ideals—and values—are seldom completely divorced from interests. In 1787, divisions along economic, regional, and political lines influenced Americans’ attitudes toward these political questions. Many well-to-do merchants and planters favored a stronger central government with the capacity to protect property, promote commerce, and keep the more radical state legislatures in check. At the same time, many powerful state leaders feared that strengthening the national government would reduce their own influence and status. Each of these interests justified its position with an appeal to basic values.

Ideas can be important weapons in political warfare, and seeing how, by whom, and for what interests they are wielded can illuminate their implications. Once an idea has been articulated, however, it can take on a life of its own and have implications that transcend the narrow interest it was initially meant to serve. For instance, some opponents of the Constitution criticized the absence of a bill of rights in the initial document simply in hopes of blocking the entire Constitution’s ratification. Yet the Bill of Rights has proved for over two centuries to be a bulwark of civil liberty in the United States. As this example shows, truly great political ideas transcend the interests that initially set them forth.

TABLE 2.2 FEDERALISTS VERSUS ANTIFEDERALISTS
	FEDERALISTS	ANTIFEDERALISTS
Who were they?	Property owners, creditors, merchants	Small farmers, frontiersmen, debtors, shopkeepers
What did they believe?	Elites are best fit to govern and “excessive democracy” is dangerous	Government should be close to the people, and the concentration of power in the hands of the elites is dangerous
What system of government did they favor?	Strong national government insulated from the whims of public opinion with the power to pursue national goals	Retention of power by state governments and protection of individual rights
Who were their leaders?	Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, George Washington	Patrick Henry, George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, George Clinton

The first step in evaluating a political value involves understanding who promotes it and why. The second step involves understanding the full implications of the idea itself—implications that may go far beyond the interests that launched it. Whatever clashing interests may have guided them, the Federalists and the Antifederalists presented important alternative visions of America.

During the ratification struggle, thousands of essays, speeches, pamphlets, and letters circulated in support of and in opposition to the proposed Constitution. The best-known pieces supporting ratification were the 85 essays written under the name “Publius” by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in late 1787 and early 1788. The Federalist Papers, as they are known today, defended the principles of the Constitution and sought to dispel fears of a national authority. The Antifederalists published essays of their own, arguing that the new Constitution betrayed the Revolution and was a step toward monarchy. Among the best Antifederalist works were the essays written under the name “Brutus,” sometimes attributed to New York Supreme Court justice Robert Yates, that were published in the New York Journal at the same time the Federalist Papers appeared. The Antifederalist view also appeared in pamphlets and letters that may have been written by a former delegate to the Continental Congress, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, using the pen name “the Federal Farmer.” These essays highlighted the major differences between Federalists and Antifederalists.

Federalists appealed to basic principles of government in support of their nationalist vision. Antifederalists cited equally fundamental precepts to support their vision of a looser confederacy of small republics. The two sides engaged in what was almost certainly the first nationwide political campaign in the history of the world.

Representation

One major area of contention was the question of representation. The Antifederalists asserted that representatives must be “a true picture of the people, . . . [possessing] the knowledge of their circumstances and their wants.”²⁴ This could be achieved, argued the Antifederalists, only in small, relatively homogeneous republics such as the existing states. In their view, the size and extent of the entire nation precluded the construction of a truly representative form of government. Citizens without sufficient representation, in turn, would lack attachment to the national government and refuse to obey its laws. As a result, according to the Antifederalists, the remote federal government described by the Constitution would have to use force to secure popular compliance; the Federal Farmer asserted that its laws would be “in many cases disregarded, unless a multitude of officers and military force be continually kept in view, and employed to enforce the execution of the laws, and to make the government feared and respected.”²⁵

Federalists, for their part, saw no reason why representatives should be precisely like the people they represented. In their view, government must be representative of the people but must also have some autonomy from the people, capable of serving the long-term public interest even if doing so conflicted with public opinion. In more contemporary terms, Federalists sought representatives who were trustees, whereas Antifederalists sought delegates.

Federalists also dismissed the Antifederalists’ claim that the distance between representatives and constituents would lead to popular disaffection and compel the government to use force to secure obedience. Federalists replied that the system of representation they proposed was more likely to produce effective government, which, in turn, would inspire popular trust and confidence more effectively than simple social proximity would.

The Threat of Tyranny

A second important issue dividing Federalists and Antifederalists was the threat of tyranny: unjust rule by the group in power. Both opponents and defenders of the Constitution frequently affirmed their fear of tyrannical rule. Each side, however, had a different view of the most likely source of tyranny and hence thought differently about how best to forestall it.

From the Antifederalist perspective, the great danger was the tendency of all governments—including republican governments—to become increasingly “aristocratic,” with a few individuals in positions of authority gaining more and more power over the general citizenry. In essence, the few would use their power to tyrannize the many. For this reason, Antifederalists were sharply critical of features of the Constitution that divorced governmental institutions from direct responsibility to the people—institutions such as the Senate, the executive, and the federal judiciary.

The Federalists, too, recognized the threat of tyranny; they agreed that individuals could be opportunistic and self-interested. However, they believed that the danger associated with republican governments was not aristocracy but, instead, majority tyranny. The Federalists were concerned that a popular majority, “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens,” would endeavor to “trample on the rules of justice.”²⁶ From the Federalist perspective, it was precisely those features of the Constitution that the Antifederalists attacked as potential sources of tyranny that offered the best hope of averting oppression. The size and extent of the nation, for instance, were for the Federalists a bulwark against tyranny. In Madison’s famous formulation, reflecting the logic of the collective action principle,

The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.²⁷

The Federalists understood that temporary majorities could abuse their power in a democracy, and the Constitution reflects their misgivings. The indirect election of senators, the indirect election of the president, the insulation of the judicial branch from the people, the separation of powers, the president’s veto power, the bicameral design of Congress, and the system of federalism were all means to curb majority tyranny. These features suggest, following the institution principle, the framers’ awareness of the problems of majority rule and the need for institutional safeguards. Except for the indirect election of senators (which was changed in 1913), these aspects of the constitutional structure remain in place today.²⁸ In essence, the Federalists sought to place limits on collective action in order to protect liberty. We will return to this idea in Chapters 4 and 5.

To some extent, the Federalists and Antifederalists were influenced by different understandings of history. Federalists believed that colonial history, to say nothing of the history of ancient Greece, showed that mob rule often endangered republican governments. For the Antifederalists, by contrast, history revealed the dangers of aristocratic conspiracies against popular liberties. History matters, but it is always subject to interpretation.

Governmental Power

A third major difference between Federalists and Antifederalists was the issue of governmental power. Both groups agreed on the principle of limited government, but they differed on how best to limit governmental action.

Antifederalists favored limiting and enumerating the powers granted to the national government in relation to both the states and the people at large. To them, the powers given to the national government ought to be “confined to certain defined national objects.”²⁹ Otherwise, the national government would “swallow up all the power of the state governments.”³⁰ Antifederalists bitterly attacked the supremacy clause and the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution as unlimited and dangerous grants of power.³¹ They also demanded that a bill of rights be added to the Constitution to limit the government’s ability to exercise power over the citizenry.

Federalists favored the construction of a government that could defend the nation against foreign foes, guard against domestic strife and insurrection, promote commerce, and expand the nation’s economy. Hamilton pointed out that these goals could not be achieved without allowing the government to exercise broad powers. Federalists acknowledged, of course, that every power could be abused, but they argued that the way to prevent misuse of power was not by depriving government of the strength it needed to achieve national goals. Instead, they argued, abuses of power would be mitigated by the Constitution’s system of internal checks. As Madison put it,

The power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.³²

Because the Federalists’ wanted to avoid unwarranted limits on governmental power, they opposed a national bill of rights, which they saw as unnecessarily restrictive. For the Federalists, the issue was one of national versus state power, not substantive rights as such, and they feared that a bill of rights would weaken the federal government relative to the states.

The Federalists acknowledged that abuses of power remained possible, but they felt that the risk had to be taken because of the goals they wanted their government to achieve. “The very idea of power included a possibility of doing harm,” said the Federalist John Rutledge during South Carolina’s ratification debates. “If the gentleman would show the power that could do no harm,” Rutledge continued, “he would at once discover it to be a power that could do no good.”³³

tyranny: Oppressive government that employs the cruel and unjust use of power and authority.

An excellent analysis of the ratification campaigns based on a quantitative assessment of the campaigners’ own words—as found in campaign documents, pamphlets, tracts, public letters, and the eighteenth-century equivalent of op-ed pieces (such as the individual essays that make up the Federalist Papers)—is William H. Riker, The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution, ed. Randall L. Calvert, John Mueller, and Rick K. Wilson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
Return to reference 23
Melancton Smith, quoted in Herbert J. Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For: The Political Thought of the Opponents of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 17.Return to reference 24
Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 258.Return to reference 25
Rossiter, Federalist Papers, no. 10 (James Madison), p. 57.Return to reference 26
Rossiter, Federalist Papers, no. 10 (James Madison), p. 60.Return to reference 27
A classic development of this theme is found in James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962). For a review of the voting paradox and a case study of how it applies today, see Kenneth A. Shepsle, Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behavior, and Institutions, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2010), pp. 53–89.
Return to reference 28
Herbert J. Storing, The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 145–50.Return to reference 29
Storing, The Complete Anti-Federalist, pp. 145–50.Return to reference 30
Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 28.Return to reference 31
Rossiter, Federalist Papers, no. 51 (James Madison), p. 339.Return to reference 32
Quoted in Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 30.Return to reference 33

THE FIGHT FOR RATIFICATION: FEDERALISTS VERSUS ANTIFEDERALISTS

Representation

The Threat of Tyranny

Governmental Power

Glossary

Endnotes