In retrospect, federalism and anti-federalism are a debate that never truly ended and still rage today. I even noted that when the US was trying to establish Iraq as a republic (for better or worse), they too had an unresolved federalism and anti-federalism debate.
Again, in retrospect, we can look back at what worked for our nation. But we should also imagine of what the historical retrospect for those men were. While they could hope that our national future was bright, they could also fear that our nation could horribly decay and plunge into chaos. The past is known, the future unknown.
And what happened shortly thereafter in the French revolution (1789-1799). Ten years of violent, anguished suffering, chaos and murder. In the mind of Hamilton, the *prospect* of this is what he feared. Maybe even today, what could be called the “Balkanization” of America.
Not a federal republic of cooperative states led by a small central government; but a bellicose group of small nations at each others’ throats, forming and dissolving blocs to militantly attack and defend each against the others.
Washington feared political parties with cause, for history is filled with terrible and destructive examples of factionalism.
For a central government to be worth anything, it must have some involuntary means of being funded, other than direct taxation of the individual states, which was forbidden in the constitution. This nightmarish problem caused us any number of problems.
Tariffs could be broken with smuggling, something even colonial Americans demonstrated masterfully against the strict British regime; taxes were difficult at best, Hamilton goading Washington into the Whiskey tax, close to unenforceable, with a hidden goal of establishing national control in the agrarian wilderness.
Also remember that the French and Indian War, followed shortly after by Pontiac’s rebellion (1754–1764), were vicious, no quarter bloodbaths, in which the colonial Americans had fought side by side with the British against the omnipresent threat of the Indians, which still remained after the revolution. And though it broke the northern tribes, the southern tribes remained unresolved as a threat until the time of Andrew Jackson.
In any event, do not be hasty in taking one side of the debate over the other. While today, and for the last century, the anti-federalism side has dominated the scene, this does not mean that the federalism side is the end all be all; just that it is needed to emerge to bring balance to the unresolved argument.
An unresolved argument works for me. A never ending intellectual rhubarb to keep all sides honest, to look for the best solutions at that time.