Federalists, Anti-Federalists and the Constitution

The ratification of the US Constitution was an issue that essentially divided the thirteen colonies in two: on the one hand was the push by the Federalists for ratification. Their argument was that the thirteen colonies needed a centralized, federal government to ensure that the colonies themselves did not get into any trouble (either through in-fighting or through foreign wars). The Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, saw the Constitution as a gateway to the exact type of authoritarianism that the Revolutionaries had just opposed in the Revolutionary War. The Anti-Federalists wanted each individual state to mind its own affairs and, at best, for there to be a loose confederation among the states so that no one, single entity could assert itself over them all. This paper will examine the writings of the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in light of their historical context of the late 18th century to show how the two sides wished to organize the government. It will also explain the side that I myself would have favored.

According to the Federalist Papers, the type of government that the Federalists saw as being most advantageous to the Union was the one whose powers were described by the... This document laid out in detail what the federal government would be able to do -- and everything else would be what state governments could oversee. The purpose of this was to ensure that the federal government would guard against "factions and convulsions" among the individual states (Federalist No. 6, n.d.). Thus, the federal government envisioned by the Federalists was one that was strong and capable of overriding states' rights at important levels of power. Such a federal government would ensure that the states would not fight or become "entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths off European politics and wars" (Federalist No. 7, n.d.). In short, the federal government would be the real government overseeing all the smaller governments of the individual states.
And this is exactly what the Anti-Federalists objected to. They did not want a central, federal government overseeing the individual states because that amounted to the giving up of sovereignty to a small, powerful group at the federal level. The Anti-Federalists wanted each state to have their own government because this was more representative of the democratic Republican ideals -- localized, de-centralized authority -- power that was in the hands of…