Definition
Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution during the ratification debate of 1787 and 1788. Many were small farmers in the backcountry, and their voices included Patrick Henry, who led the opposition in Virginia, George Mason, who refused to sign the Constitution, the writer Mercy Otis Warren, and an anonymous New York essayist who wrote as Brutus. They feared that a distant, consolidated national government with the power to tax would swallow the states and threaten liberty, and Brutus argued, drawing on Montesquieu, that a free republic had to stay small. They also objected that the Constitution had no bill of rights, and although they lost the ratification fight, Congress sent amendments to the states in 1789 and the Bill of Rights took effect in 1791.
Why it matters on the AP exam
The Anti-Federalists represent the other side of the main debate in Period 3, how much power a national government should hold and how it should protect individual rights, and questions usually ask students to explain one of their arguments, such as the fear of consolidated power or the demand for a bill of rights. They lost on the structure of the government, but the Bill of Rights answered their demands for religious freedom, a free press and jury trials. Distrust of central power continued in the 1790s, when western farmers resisted a federal tax in the Whiskey Rebellion.
In the sources
“Who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states?”
Connections
- Federalists: the supporters of the Constitution who answered their objections
- Bill of Rights: the amendments that answered their main demand
- The Federalist Papers: Madison's Federalist No. 10 replied to Brutus's claim that a republic had to be small
- Whiskey Rebellion: western farmers again resisted a federal tax in 1794
Study it in context
Topic 3.8: The Constitutional Convention and Debates over Ratification Watch this part