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To: justshutupandtakeit
Most of the Anti-federalist papers are just gibberish and clearly illustrate the second rate mentality of their writers compared with Hamilton, Madison and Jay.

That too is a falsehood. In their own day Richard Henry Lee's Federal Farmer essays recieved a far wider circulation and following than any of their federalist counterparts. That fact is noted by no less a source than Forrest McDonald, who edited the modern edition of the Federal Farmer essays. Only after the debate did they ever fall into neglect if for no other reason than that they were on the side that was opposite of ratification.

Also among the most far-sighted convention-era writings were the anti-federalist letters entitled Genuine Information by Luther Martin. Martin was one of the most brilliant delegates at the constitutional convention, though also one the most eccentric and inflamatory. The Genuine Information letters are extremely far-sighted in scope - well beyond the Federalist Papers ever went. They include one of the strongest attacks upon slavery of any founding father and theorize about a trend of growth and centralization in the national government. They also foresee, in detail greater than any other writer at the time, the civil war and how it will be played out politically. Martin predicted that a time would come when the national government would become engaged in a great war with some of the member states, during which those states would draw recourse in the sword and the revolution. In one of his letters he proposed a means of mitigating this possibility in the constitution by establishing a legal mechanism by which any conflict would be conducted, then warned that its absence would be nothing less than a bloody mess. Unfortunately his words were not heeded and a bloody mess is exactly what the country got in 1861.

772 posted on 09/06/2003 9:43:07 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: GOPcapitalist
Wide circulation is often nothing more than the appeal to the limited. Bad ideas, bad writings are frequently widely circulated. Nothing surprising about the anti-feds having wide circulations after all they controlled virtually all the State governments and local political machinery. It would be surprising if their ideas were NOT more widely circulated than those attacking the status quo.

If Luther Martin is the best you can come up with then my point is confirmed. Without his largely self-imposed disabilities Martin might well have been a great man but as it was he drank himself into a lesser status. How great a man COULD he have been? And even a GREATER lawyer than he was.

Even when a drunk is dead right he is not taken as seriously as less correct people who are cold sober. Martin, like most drunks, was obnoxious, quarrelsome and insufferable. He was a tragic figure. Wonder what led to that?
774 posted on 09/08/2003 7:16:39 AM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (America's Enemies foreign and domestic agree. Bush must be destroyed.)
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