Federalists and Anti-Federalists

Question

Who were the federalists? What was their core argument? Who were the anti-federalists? What was their core argument? What was the significance of their debate and how did the outcome shape American history

Answer 1

The Federalists and Anti-Federalists differed on many things.

The Federalists wanted a strong, centralized government. They also wanted less participation in that government, and they wanted those that did participate to be "better" members of society - this primarily meant white, upper class men. The Federalists, in fact, were the main authors of the Constitution. At the Constitutional Convention, everybody who attended to help write the Constitution fit the bill of who they believed could participate in government. Key thinkers included James Madison, who feared factions, and Alexander Hamilton, who wanted to be more involved in foreign affairs.

Madison feared factions immensely; he believed that people dividing up into groups based on their beliefs would be detrimental to society, because the majority faction would be able to gang up on the minority faction. In this time period, the majority faction that he feared most was poor people. He especially feared that poor people would take over government, and translated this into the writing of the Constitution (white men were not able to vote if they did not have enough wealth, women, people of color were not able to vote at all)

Hamilton advocated strongly for an "energetic" central government; he wanted to play a role in foreign affairs and the global economy. He wanted a strong government, military, and economy, and like Madison, believed that only the elite should be in power. He wanted the economy to focus on manufacturing, as opposed to agriculture (which is what a lot of Anti-Federalists wanted). As was said earlier, he believed the elite should be in power. He believed that the government should help out the wealthy, because then the wealthy would invest in the government, and make a stronger government, as well as adhere to class structures. Further, he knew that the root of power throughout history and various governments has always changed, but that the power is always rooted in the wealthy.

The Anti-Federalists wanted more participation in government than the Federalists. They also wanted individual states to be able to govern themselves, resulting in a weaker central government. The government set up by the Articles of Confederation had very limited powers - they could declare war, regulate the post office, and settle disputes between the states, among other things. But, the vast majority of decisions were left to the people. A key Anti-Federalist was Thomas Jefferson, who had a vision of an agrarian society, with a weaker, decentralized government.

Jefferson did not want Congress and the federal government to have more power than the states. He linked agriculture to a decentralized government, by connecting hard work and virtue. He believed that decentralization would lead to more self-government by the states, and allow states to make their own decisions. Like Hamilton and Madison, Jefferson also believed that there was an elite class, but he believed the elite class to be those who had been educated (it is important to note that while Jefferson seems to think that all are created equal, this is not necessarily what he does think. He cares far less about class status than Madison or Hamilton, but Jefferson owned many enslaved people, and was largely hypocritical in that sense). Jefferson believed that government would be stronger if it was closer to its followers - a closeness that is much easier to achieve when it is decentralized and focused at the state level, as opposed to it being concentrated at the federal level. This would also allow more people to directly participate in government, because they are more closely connected to it.

In summary, the main areas of disagreement between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists lies in where the power was distributed. The Federalists believed in the power being concentrated at the hands of the wealthy elite in a central government, while the Anti-Federalists believed in power being concentrated at a state level, with more accessibility for all.

The outcome of the debate was the Constitution. It was largely written by Federalists, particularly white, upper-class men. When looking at the powers that the states, and the federal government have, we see how the Federalists won these debates. One example is the Emancipation Proclamation - it applied to all states (even those which had temporarily seceded). The power to end slavery in all states was not left to the individual states, rather a decision by the Federal government. Another, more recent example, is the legalization of same-sex marriage. A Supreme Court case made same-sex marriage legal, and though several states had already legalized marriage, the court case made it legal throughout the country.