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Generally, Anti-federalists were more likely to be small farmers than lawyers and merchants and came from rural areas rather than the urban areas many federalists represented. [4] In their journey to protect the interests of rural areas and farmers, the Anti-Federalists believed: They believed the Constitution, as written, would be oppressive [5]
Starting on 25 September 1787 (eight days after the final draft of the US Constitution) and running through the early 1790s, these Anti-Federalists published a series of essays arguing against the ratification of the new Constitution. [1] They argued against the implementation of a stronger federal government without protections on certain rights.
Brutus was the pen name of an Anti-Federalist in a series of essays designed to encourage New Yorkers to reject the proposed Constitution. His essays are considered among the best of those written to oppose adoption of the proposed constitution. [1] They paralleled and confronted The Federalist Papers during the ratification fight over the ...
All the leaders of the new nation were committed to republicanism, and the doubts of the Anti-Federalists of 1788 were allayed with the passage of a Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution in 1791. [3] The first census enumerated a population of 3.9 million. Only 12 cities had populations of more than 5,000; most people ...
Melancton Smith (May 7, 1744 – July 29, 1798) was a merchant, lawyer and a New York delegate to the Continental Congress. [1] Praised for his intelligence, liberality, and reasonableness, [2] Smith had attained considerable respect in the State of New York by 1787 and he has been described by modern scholars as the most important Anti-Federalist theorist and spokesman.
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 first topic that Madison addresses is the differentiation between a republic and a democracy.. George Clinton, the Governor of New York and one of the foremost authors of the Anti-Federalist papers at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, cited Montesquieu, a political philosopher who authored "The Spirit of the Laws", [5] to support his argument.
The Federalists opposed it on grounds that a list would necessarily be incomplete but would be taken as explicit and exhaustive, thus enlarging the power of the federal government by implication. The Anti-Federalists persisted, and several state ratification conventions refused to ratify the Constitution without a more specific list of ...