The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Debates and the Origins of the U.S. Bill of Rights

The ratification of the United States Constitution was not a seamless process; rather, it was marked by intense political debate and differing ideologies. Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, argued that a strong federal government was essential to preserve the newly formed republic and establish the United States' credibility abroad. On the opposing side, the Anti-Federalists, such as Patrick Henry and George Mason, feared that the Constitution would create a government distant from the American people and would fail to protect individual liberties. The conflicts between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists would critically shape the Constitution and create certain rights within that would protect personal freedom to this day. Those arguments would demonstrate how conflict between two opposing sides would be essential to America's founding.

Caleb M. Brown  explains.

Alexander Hamilton. Painting by John Trumbull.

The Federalists viewed the Articles of Confederation as weak, and through these weaknesses, they recognized the necessity of a strong federal government. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would pen the Federalist Papers. The Federalist Papers would articulate to the public the dangers of disunity and the need for a government that was capable of regulating commerce, maintaining defense, and ensuring public stability.[1] In Federalist No. 23, Hamilton emphasized that the nation's survival depended on a government with sufficient powers and the ability to respond to crises as they arose. In Federalist No. 10, Madison argued that a republic could better control factions than smaller state governments could.[2] The Federalists backed the claims by pointing to the Articles of Confederation's inability to raise revenue or to enforce treaties.

The Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, warned that the Constitution’s broad grants of power would take away liberties and empower rulers. In a speech at the Virginia Convention in 1788, Patrick Henry declared that the proposed government was “consolidated and not federal.” Henry saw that this posed a danger to state sovereignty and the rights of individual citizens.[3] Another Anti-Federalist, George Mason, refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked rights that protected specific freedoms, such as trial by jury and freedom of the press.[4] The Anti-Federalists feared that the executive branch would become too powerful, much like the monarch of England; the judiciary would be unaccountable, and Congress would overstep its authority.

Institutional questions

The debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists primarily centered on institutional questions. Anti-Federalists worried that a president would essentially become too much like a king. The Federalists countered this argument in Federalist No. 69 by stating that the presidency had far too many restraints to become like a monarch.[5]The debate over congressional authority would spark a serious discussion. Federalists defended the “necessary and proper” clause as essential, while the Anti-Federalists condemned it as a blank check for what would become overreach. Lacking protections for individual liberties would be the Anti-Federalists’ most significant argument. Hamilton sought to alleviate concerns by demonstrating that a president could face impeachment and be removed from office, unlike a monarch, thereby establishing a system of checks and balances. A president could also face punishment for violating the law, which was quite different from that of a monarch. Anti-Federalists such as “Brutus” warned in 1787 that the “necessary and proper” clause would allow Congress to extend its authority into almost every aspect of government, reducing the states to “mere corporations”.[6] These different perspectives detail why the Bill of Rights became necessary.

It would be the Bill of Rights that would eventually lead to a final compromise between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Several states, such as Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, would not agree to ratify the new Constitution until the Federalists agreed to add amendments that would safeguard individual liberties.[7] After recognizing the necessity of the Bill of Rights, Madison drafted the amendments that Congress passed in 1789. In 1791, the Bill of Rights was adopted, and protections such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press were included in the Constitution.[8] Historian David Epstein noted that the Anti-Federalists, though defeated in ratification, “triumphed in securing the Constitution’s most popular feature.”[9] The insistence on protection against government abuse at the federal level ensured that liberty would remain a top priority in the United States. Scholars have highlighted the significance that this moment in history also played. Gordon Wood argues that the debates surrounding the Bill of Rights were not simply about certain liberties but about defining the meaning of American republicanism itself.[10] Wood saw the adoption of the first ten amendments as reflecting a more profound anxiety about concentrated power and demonstrated how the early republic sought to balance order with freedom.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists debates reveal the nature of our contested American founding and highlight the different ideological tensions that would shape the United States Constitution. Federalists such as Hamilton, Madison, and Jay argued in support of a strong federal government, believing it was necessary to maintain national unity, provide for defense, and foster economic stability. They believed that without authority, the union of the states risked deterioration. Anti-Federalists, such as Henry and Mason, thought that a strong federal government would threaten both liberties and state sovereignty. Fear of a strong national government becoming tyrannical, the Anti-Federalists insisted that the rights of the people be protected. The debate between the two factions would directly influence the structure of the new Constitution and ultimately lead to the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Guaranteeing freedoms such as freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, as well as protections against specific government actions, the Bill of Rights led to a compromise between the Federalists' desire for a stronger federal government and the protections the Anti-Federalists sought.[11] Scholars have noted that this compromise details how the American constitutional system was born through negotiations and careful balancing of competing ideals.[12]

Furthermore, the inclusion of the Bill of Rights demonstrated that the American Constitution was designed to be adaptable and to utilize arguments to transform conflict into a lasting institutional principle. The legacy of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists continues to define the United States today. Our Constitution continues to endure.

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Bibliography

Brutus. “Essay I,” October 18, 1787. In “The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates.” Edited by Ralph Ketcham. New York: Signet Classics, 2003.

Epstein, David F. “The Anti-Federalists and the Bill of Rights.” “Journal of American History 63, no. 2 (1976)”: 233–249.

Hamilton, Alexander. “Federalist No. 23.” In “The Federalist Papers”. Edited by Clinton Rossiter. New York: Penguin Books, 1961.

 “Federalist No. 69.” In “The Federalist Papers.” Edited by Clinton Rossiter. New York: Penguin Books, 1961.

Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. “The Federalist Papers.” Edited by Clinton Rossiter. New York: Penguin Books, 1961.

Henry, Patrick. “Speech Against the Constitution.” Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788.

Levinson, Sanford. “Framing the Constitution: Federalists, Anti-Federalists, and the Bill of Rights.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

Madison, James. “Federalist No. 10.” In “The Federalist Papers.” Edited by Clinton Rossiter. New York: Penguin Books, 1961.

Mason, George. “Objections to the Constitution of Government of the United States of America.” 1787.

Rutland, Robert Allen. “The Birth of the Bill of Rights.” Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955.

United States Congress. “The Constitution of the United States”: A Transcription. National Archives. Last modified November 4, 2015. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights.

Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: “A History of the Early Republic,” 1789–1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

[1] Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Penguin Books, 1961).

[2] Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 23,” in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Penguin Books, 1961); James Madison, “Federalist No. 10,” in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Penguin Books, 1961).

[3] Patrick Henry, “Speech Against the Constitution,” Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788.

[4] George Mason, “Objections to the Constitution of Government of the United States of America,” 1787.

[5] Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 69,” in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Penguin Books, 1961)

[6] Brutus. “Essay I,” October 18, 1787. In The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates. Edited by Ralph Ketcham. New York: Signet Classics, 2003.

[7] Proceedings of the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention (1788); Proceedings of the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788).

[8] United States Congress, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription, National Archives, last modified November 4, 2015, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights

[9] David F. Epstein, “The Anti-Federalists and the Bill of Rights,” Journal of American History 63, no. 2 (1976): 233–249

[10] Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 59.

[11] Robert Allen Rutland, The Birth of the Bill of Rights (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 12–25.

[12] Sanford Levinson, Framing the Constitution: Federalists, Anti-Federalists, and the Bill of Rights (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 45–60.

John Quincy Adams and the fight for the Union

John Quincy Adams was not a Founding Father, but he was a ‘Founding Son’. Here, William Bodkin continues his series on the presidents of the USA. He looks at a fascinating tale of how John Quincy Adams fought to preserve the Union against “States’ rights” over 50 years after the end of the American Revolutionary War.

William's previous pieces have been on George Washington (link here), John Adams (link here), Thomas Jefferson (link here), James Madison (link here), and James Monroe (link here).

John Quincy Adams, 1858. Painting by G.P.A. Healy.

Even though he was not a member of America’s Founding generation, John Quincy Adams had much in common with the Founders.  We can even call him their first son. For example, like his father, John Adams, John Quincy Adams’ time as president was likely his least important contribution to the Republic.  John Quincy Adams’ life was a litany of service to the nation; Ambassador, Senator, Secretary of State, President, and then, finally, Congressman representing his home district in Massachusetts.[1]  It was during his time in Congress that the younger Adams secured the esteem that often eluded his family.  His debating skills earned him the nickname “The Old Man Eloquent” and he stood, during a time when the American Union was being gradually torn apart by slavery, as a reminder of the importance of unity in the United States.

1839 was a pivotal year in this regard.  Adams was nearing the height of his post-presidential influence, which culminated in his 1841 argument of the Amistad case before the Supreme Court, where he helped secure freedom for Africans who had been kidnapped in violation of international law and treaties to be sold as slaves.[2]  1839 helped lay the foundation for the successes to come.

In December 1839, a fight for control of the House of Representatives was resolved only when Adams himself agreed to preside over the chamber.  Following the 1838 election, two delegations from New Jersey presented themselves in the House, one Democrat (pro-slavery), one Whig (anti-slavery).  Control of the House, which was evenly split between the two parties, hinged on which New Jersey faction was seated.  In the absence of a Speaker, usually elected by the majority party, the Clerk of the House controlled debate and called for votes.  But the Clerk was a Democrat seeking to preserve his party’s rule.  He refused to do anything, and would not call votes, even to adjourn.  After five days of chaos, Adams, then a Whig, rose and made an impassioned plea directly to his fellow Congressman to override the Clerk, whom he thundered was in defiance of the will of the people and who was holding the whole Congress, ironically enough his employers, in contempt.  When someone asked who would “put the question” to a vote since the Clerk refused, Adams, in complete disregard for parliamentary procedure, declared that he would.

A RALLYING POINT

Stirred by Adams’ speech, a Democratic member who was usually a bitter opponent of Adams, Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, proposed that the oldest member of Congress serve as temporary Speaker.  When he declined, Rhett then rallied Democrats and Whigs alike behind Adams.  As the chamber erupted in cheers, Adams was escorted to the dais to preside in the wholly manufactured role of “Chairman of the House of Representatives”, replacing the Clerk.  Adams filled the role for nearly two weeks until a compromise candidate for Speaker was settled on.[3] 

But while in December 1839 Adams was a rallying point for Democrat and Whig alike, in April of that year he used his status as Founding Son and former president to attack one of the Democrats’ favorite arguments supporting slavery, that of “states’ rights” over the federal government.  The occasion was an oration Adams delivered at the New York Historical Society celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the United Stated Constitution.[4]

Adams viewed “states’ rights” as an insult to the principles his father fought for in the Revolution.  Adams seized on the opportunity of the “Jubilee of the Constitution” to follow once more in his father’s footsteps. He strove to establish a unified theory of the American Founding, one based on the idea that sovereignty in the United States, i.e., supreme power and authority, rested not in “states’ rights” over the federal government, but in the power of the people over both the states and the federal government, each of which should be looked at warily as potential usurpers of the people’s power.

Adams based his argument in the Revolution itself, contending that the act of declaring Independence from Britain was one of all the people of the United States renouncing allegiance to the “British crown”, and seizing anew for themselves the “natural rights of mankind”.  Adams described it as the “whole people” declaring, “in their united condition,” that they were “free and independent.”[5]

Adams, like his father, believed that following the Declaration of Independence, the former colonies had, in truth, no government.[6]  The former colonists decided that the most practical course was to constitute themselves as independent states along their old colonial boundaries, and for the people of each state to draft their own state constitutions.  While this decision was correct, Adams believed that it led to the near fatal error of the new states, the decision to relax the Union that had fought and forged Independence into a “league of friendship” between “sovereign and independent states”[7], placing the states over the Union.  Adams argued that as a result of the Articles of Confederation, the “nation fell into atrophy” and the “[t]he Union languished to the point of death.”[8]

AN UNSETTLED DEBATE

Rebirth was needed, and it came, according to Adams, in the form of the new Constitution, with George Washington at its head.  Adams asserted that the Constitution was the perfect “complement” to the Declaration of Independence, as they were based on the same principles.   Adams believed that the Declaration and the Constitution were “parts of one consistent whole, founded upon one and the same theory of government.”  The theory was that the “people were the only legitimate source of power” and that “all just powers of government were derived from the consent of the governed” and not the consent of the states.  In Adams’ formulation, “We, the People” of the American Union had again come together, as surely as they had to throw off the despotic rule of George III, to throw off the Articles of Confederation.  Adams derided states’ rights as “grossly immoral,” and the “dishonest doctrine of despotic stare sovereignty.”  Those who advanced it were advocating a theory of government that stood in direct opposition to the principles of the Founding Era.[9]

John Quincy Adams took this fight personally.  It had been the life’s work of his family for two generations.  As history tells us, however, the lawyerly arguments of John Quincy Adams did not carry the day.  It took the near apocalyptic bloodshed of the Civil War to preserve the Union.  And even that did not end the debate over the idea that states’ rights were superior to the federal government.  The argument continues to this day,[10] with various “popular” movements making the case for states’ rights and secession from the Union.[11]  Governors from various states have asserted that their state can handle any American issue better than the federal government, from containing Ebola, to immigration, to health care.

But there seems to be one key difference between John Quincy Adams’ era and the present day, and that is in the apparent unwillingness of any major public figure to make the case for Union, and why the American Republic, for all its flaws, remains better, stronger, and more free together than it ever could broken into its constituent parts.  Indeed, there seems to be no one to argue on behalf of all the American people why the more perfect union they established must endure.

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1. “The Election of John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts” on http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1800-1850/The-election-of-John-Quincy-Adams-of-Massachusetts/

2. See, Teaching With Documents, the Amistad Case. (http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad/)

3. http://history.house.gov/Blog/Detail/15032404472

4. “The Jubilee of the Constitution.  A discourse delivered at the request of the New York Historical Society in the City of New York on Tuesday the 30th of April 1839, being the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington as President of the United States, on Thursday, the 30th of April, 1789” by John Quincy Adams, Published by Samuel Colman, Astor House, 1839. (“Jubilee”).

5. Jubilee, p.6

6. See, e.g., Ellis, Joseph, “American Summer,” Chapter 1, “Prudence Dictates” (Knopf 2013).

7. Jubilee at 10.

8. Jubilee at 11.

9. Jubilee, 40-42

10. See, “Angry with Washington, 1 in 4 Americans open to secession.” http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/19/us-usa-secession-exclusive-idUSKBN0HE19U20140919

11. See, “Americans for Independence…From America” (http://www.ozy.com/acumen/americans-for-independence-from-america/35354)