Posted on 07/12/2024 1:36:58 PM PDT by Jacquerie
Riot and mayhem welcomed the draft Constitution when it made the Philadelphia newspapers.
Advocates of the new plan held a majority in the Pennsylvania legislature, then in the last days of its regular session, and they attempted to ram through a statute calling for a ratification convention. To prevent a quorum, some of the Constitution’s opponents, the Anti-Federalists, made themselves scarce. The Assembly sent the sergeant-at-arms to seize enough absent members to establish a quorum, and forcibly kept them on the floor of the chamber.1
It is difficult today to comprehend the apprehension and enormity of the choices set before society in the 1776 – 1788 era.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the US did not have the attributes of nationhood. Among other features, nations have taxing powers, a common currency, and make commercial treaties. To correct these deficiencies and keep the Union, Federalists designed a less federal and more national government.
But, to many people in 1787 the shortcomings of the Articles did not justify the Constitution's mixed democratic/federal structure. Both sides recognized the fundamental feature of the Constitution; it was a government derived from the people rather than one expressly in the hands of the people. The Constitution squinted toward an aristocracy of the nation’s natural aristocrats, a government manned by the leading men of society. It wasn’t as if the Federalists had lost faith in the people; they simply believed a government too close to the people led to ambitious demagogues and dangerous factions.2
Is republican, liberty-preserving government possible across a large territory? Federalists thought it possible; Anti-Federalists were certain it wasn’t.
Anti-Federalists regarded the Constitution as a repudiation, if not betrayal, of the Revolution. Aristocratic government is typically not conducive to liberty. Where the Revolution transferred power from the few to the many, the Constitution, wrote Melancton Smith in Letters from the Federal Farmer, “is a transfer of power from the many to the few.” To the Federalists, the greatest dangers to liberty didn’t arise from society’s natural leaders, but instead from excessive participation of the people in government.3
The Constitution’s initial allotment of only sixty-five congressional seats, and the subsequent limitation of no more than one rep per 30,000, was proof enough to the Anti-Federalists of the denial of representation adequate to reflect the people’s true interests. To reflect the people’s interests, feelings, and opinions, congressional districts must be small, so small that instructions from constituents guided representatives, rather than the Framers’ intent for representatives to use their independent judgement.4
The Anti-Federalists were not alone in their estimate of representation and had a powerful ally. On their side were the writings of the very influential Charles de Montesquieu, who theorized that only small geographic areas with a citizenry of like-minded, if not homogenous people were suitable for republican government. James Winthrop of Massachusetts expressed a common belief when he said, “The idea of an uncompounded republic, on average one thousand miles in length, and eight hundred in breadth, and containing six millions . . . all reduced to the same standard of morals, of habits, and of laws, is in itself an absurdity, and contrary to the whole experience of mankind.”5
While the Federalists explained that their plan did indeed create a compounded republic in which Article I Section 8 left a vast reservoir of state-retained powers, the Anti-Federalists would have none of it. The new government would tax individuals and use the funds to keep standing armies. History, and not distant history, justified their fears. European armies defended monarchs against both external military threats and internal revolts. Where George III didn't dare impose martial law in England, Bostonian’s experience under his martial law was a recent bad memory.6
The power to tax and raise armies, combined with Montesquieu’s theory, convinced the Anti-Federalists that America’s vast expanse made it incompatible with republicanism and guaranteed tyranny.
Unfortunately for the Anti-Federalist cause, opposition to the Constitution was often haphazard and scattershot, which allowed ratification in several states by a whisker. For example, the leading Anti-Federalist of the era, Patrick Henry, raged against the Constitution’s opening, “We the People,” and every subsequent clause. Had the Anti-Federalists focused their opposition on the impossibility of real representation in a distant congress in a future national city, there was every chance of falling short of the requisite nine ratifying states.
The Anti-Federalists lacked all faith in the Constitutional institutions that presumed to speak for the people. The president, standing alone as commander-in-chief of the armed forces was unencumbered by an executive council, and had power over appointments not extended to most state executives. As opposed to the Articles of Confederation in which state delegates were term-limited, all constitutional offices, including the president, were eligible for repeated reelection. In this, they feared an eventual monarchy emboldened by a near-perpetual senate composed of a fixed and unchangeable body of men. They reacted to the combined powers of the President and Senate with horror.7
Together, the president and senate held all of the executive and two-thirds of the legislative powers, and jointly appointed all civil and military officers. Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee, another respected Anti-Federalist, asserted that the combined executive/senate authority was “a most formidable combination of power” that unbalanced the Constitution.
Anti-Federalist opposition boiled down to fear of losing their liberty. The president and senate were too distant from the people. They scoffed at a hopelessly inadequate House of Representatives. At 1:30,000 it was a mere “shred or rag” of the people’s power and faced certain domination by the monarchal and aristocratic branches.8
“What have you been contending for these ten years past?” the Anti-Federalists asked. Liberty! What is liberty but the power of governing yourselves? If you adopt the Constitution, you give that power to men a thousand miles away.
The Constitution threatened liberty, that circle of freedom in which no free government can intrude. While the Anti-Federalists were aware of democratic excesses and the need for a more vigorous government, the Constitution went too far. It pulled too much power from the states and lodged it in an imperial city. In this isolated city, a part of no state, the Anti-Federalists expected the worst. There, they expected the nation’s criminals and rogues to gather and rule the republics and people like the Tsar and his nobles.
Despite losing the immediate argument, Anti-Federalist influence did not end in 1788. Their criticism of the lack of a bill of Rights led to the adoption of the first ten amendments soon after the new Constitution went into effect, and their general opposition to centralized power passed from generation to generation down to the present time. As opposed to today’s opinion poll and passion-driven congress, societal leaders of the founding/framing generation thought ahead into the future; they constantly considered the effect of contemporary decisions on future generations. And what the Anti-Federalists envisioned horrified them. Since truly representative government across a continent was absurd, the supposed safeguards of enumerated powers in Article I Section 8 were but a smokescreen to hide incipient despotism.9
We would do well to step back from contemporary politics and reflect on James Winthrop’s warning long ago. As modern domestic enemies promote conflict among factions distinct in wealth, race, gender, and sexual proclivities, while simultaneously enforcing nationwide intellectual conformity via repressive scotus decisions and punishment for “hate crimes,” society is lurching toward an authoritarian rule not compatible with liberty, but with a people at constant war amongst themselves.
I am reminded of what Lord Melbourne said:
“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”
.
“mixed democratic/federal structure” pure BS. THE STRUCTURE OF OUR GOVERNMENT IS REPRESENTATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. Not a trace of democracy. Auther is a dolt.
The 17th Amendment of 1913 transformed the US into a democratic republic.
Looters everywhere should be shot
The change was in 1913.
28th Ammendment: Senators shall be liable to recall either by referendum, or the Majority vote of the State Legeslature. Recalled Senators shall be have to rum in a Special Election
Well, the Framers considered granting the state legislatures the same power of recall they had over their delegates to the Confederation Congress.
The proposal was rejected because it meant a change of political majority in a state legislature would almost certainly result in recall of their previously appointed senators.
The US Congress was designed to not only represent the other member class of the republic, the states, it was also to be a stable, sober and deliberative body equal in wisdom to the best days of the republican Roman Senate.
Recall would upset senate stability.
I think the best remedy is to repeal the horrid 17th Amendment. Get the state legislatures involved once again in the appointment of judges, high officers of the US and treaties.
The Senate needs to be shook up.
Who is Auther?
Bookmark
1861.
The anti-Federalists predicted the civil war, and they got it almost precisely correct. They predict that the Militia of Pennsylvania could be marched into Virginia to quell their freedom and independence.
I think it was anti-federalist 21, but it's been a few years since I looked it up, so i'm not completely sure.
I have tried finding it again this past year, but it is hard to find the anti-federalist papers at all, because every search tries to force you to look at the Federalist papers, which are much more popular and much more cited.
Without the Constitution, America would have split up into waring scawabling states. I go with Jackson, Small Government Nationalism.
-PJ
Which is what happened when the Union split in 1776.
The only war we had with Canada was when *WE* invaded them and burned their capitol city during the war of 1812.
They marched down to Washington DC and returned the favor.
Have we fought with the Canadians since then?
Had the South just been allowed to leave peacefully, there likely would have never been more conflict between North and South.
They could not last very long.
Madison anticipated war among them.
Now, roll the dice.
Perhaps some states would rejoin Great Britain.
Great Britain would not abandon its forts in NY and the NW Territory.
Our dissolution would certainly invite foreign conquest.
Spain was weak but was it strong enough to colonize a demoralized people in the southwest? New Orleans was closed to American shipping.
The worst outcome of our dissolution would be the signal it sent to the rest of world: the American Revolution could not contain itself and produce a stable government that secured liberty. Absolute monarchs and assorted despots could rejoice.
So yes. Balkanization.
Wrong. Civil War after Civil War.
Wrong. Civil War after Civil War.
Would you say that the benefit of hindsight is that the continent is better off in the long run being home to one single constitutional nation? I can't blame the Anti-Federalists for not knowing just how far the western coast was and what that portended for the future nation.
-PJ
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