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The Anti-Federalists debated with their Federalist colleagues, including Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, on the functional model and competencies of the planned federal government. The Anti-Federalists believed that almost all the executive power should be left to the country's authorities, while the Federalists wanted centralized ...
Generally speaking they reflected the sentiments of the Anti-Federalists, which Akhil Reed Amar of the Yale Law School generalized as: a localist fear of a powerful central government, a belief in the necessity of direct citizen participation in democracy, and a distrust of wealthy merchants and industrialists. [7]
The Massachusetts Compromise was a solution reached in a controversy between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the ratification of the United States Constitution.The compromise helped gather enough support for the Constitution to ensure its ratification and led to the adoption of the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.
The Federalists of this time were rivaled by the Anti-Federalists, who opposed the ratification of the Constitution and objected to creating a stronger central government. [14] The critiques of the Constitution raised by the Anti-Federalists influenced the creation of the Bill of Rights . [ 15 ]
The Anti-Federalist critique soon centered on the absence of a bill of rights, which Federalists in the ratifying conventions promised to provide. Washington and Madison had personally pledged to consider amendments, realizing that they would be necessary to reduce pressure for a second constitutional convention that might drastically alter and ...
The Anti-Federalists also objected to the new powerful central government, the loss of prestige for the states, and saw the Constitution as a potential threat to personal liberties. [7] During the ratification process, the Anti-Federalists presented a significant opposition in all but three states.
In the United States, federalism originally referred to belief in a stronger central government. When the U.S. Constitution was being drafted, the Federalist Party supported a stronger central government, while "Anti-Federalists" wanted a weaker central government. This is very different from the modern usage of "federalism" in Europe and the ...
Madison and Jefferson formed the Democratic-Republican Party from a combination of former Anti-Federalists and supporters of the Constitution who were dissatisfied with the Washington administration's policies. [141] Nationwide, Democratic-Republicans were strongest in the South, and many of party's leaders were wealthy Southern slaveowners.