[On December 7th, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. So for the 235th anniversary of that historic moment, this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Constitutional contexts, leading up to a special weekend post on present issues and debates!]
On three
equally significant ways to frame the Constitution’s
opposition.
1)
Revolutionary Radicals: It’s no coincidence
that two of the most prominent Anti-Federalists (a label which, to be fair, was
imposed by the Constitution’s advocates and generally
rejected by the group themselves, but which I’ll use in this post
as a shorthand for the Constitution’s critics) were also two of the
Revolution’s most famous firebrands, Samuel
Adams and Patrick
Henry. The Revolution itself can be reductively but not inaccurately
divided into more radical and more conservative camps, as exemplified by Samuel and his second cousin John
Adams. Moreover, as illustrated by John’s
critique of the Boston Massacre’s participants, the proto-federalists
tended to be a bit more suspicious of populism, while radicals like Sam and
the Sons of Liberty encouraged and amplified popular passions.
Again, all those issues are more nuanced than these couple of sentences can
allow, but they do help explain how men like Adams and Patrick Henry ended up
in the Anti-Federalist camp.
2)
Advocates for Rights: Perhaps the single most
important Anti-Federalist text was George Mason’s Objections
to this Constitution of Government
(1787).
Mason’s objections were strong enough that he became one of three Constitutional
Convention delegates not to sign the final document, but he ironically
would eventually turn those objections into the impetus for drafting one of the
Constitution’s most famous sections, the Bill of Rights (about which I’ll write
more in Thursday’s post). An emphasis on individual rights had been part of the
American Revolution since its origins, as illustrated by another document of
Mason’s (and predecessor to the Bill of Rights), the 1776
Virginia Declaration of Rights. Thanks to Mason and other
Anti-Federalists, those emphases were carried forward into not just the debates
over the Constitution, but also its final, ratified form. (It’s also important
to note, as I’ll discuss Thursday as well, that Mason, like many of these
advocates for rights, was a
slave-owner.)
3)
Future Democratic-Republicans: Despite the
expressed desire on the part of many of the founding generation (George
Washington in particular) to avoid the creation of political parties,
the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate was certainly also an origin point for
the development of such parties in the U.S. Declaration author Thomas Jefferson
was not present at the Constitutional Convention, but he was definitely
in the Anti-Federalist camp, and would continue developing that
perspective during his conflicts
with Alexander Hamilton throughout Washington’s terms as President. That
arc culminated in Jefferson’s creation of the Democratic-Republican Party, in
the contested
and crucial presidential election of 1800, and in the origins of a two-party
system that (with many evolutions of course) has endured to this day. All of
which, like so much else, can and should be linked to the
Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates.
Next
Constitutional context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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