The Anti-Federalists opposed the ratification of the 1787 U.S. Constitution because they feared that the new national government would be too powerful and thus threaten individual liberties, given the absence of a bill of rights.
Their opposition was an important factor leading to the adoption of the First Amendment and the other nine amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
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The political split between Anti-Federalists and the Federalists began in the summer of 1787 when 55 delegates attended the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia to draw up a new plan of government to replace the government under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was created by the Second Continental Congress and ratified by the states in 1781. The delegates in 1787 had decided to draw up a new plan of government rather than simply revise the Articles.
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The Articles had created a confederal government, with a Congress with limited authority and states retaining primary sovereignty. The proposed new Constitution created a federal government in which national laws were supreme over state laws and in which the government could act directly upon individuals. Whereas the Articles had a single branch of government concentrated in a unicameral (one house) Congress in which each state had an equal vote, the new Constitution provided for three independent branches with a bicameral Congress in which one house was represented according to population.
New constitution was not prefaced with declaration of rights
The new constitution primarily attempted to protect liberties against this more powerful government through a system of separation of powers, federalism and other checks and balance. Although it contained some explicit prohibitions, such as those on the states in Article I, Section 9, and those on the states in Article I, Section 10, it was not, like many state counterparts, prefaced with a declaration or bill of rights such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights that George Mason had authored.
Whereas the Articles had required unanimous state legislative consent to amendments, the new constitution provided that it would go into effect when ratified by 9 or more of the 13 states. Moreover, it provided that such ratification would be conducted by special state conventions rather than by existing state legislatures. Once ratified, the document could be amended by a special convention called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the states or by amendments proposed by two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress, which were subsequently ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by specially called state conventions.
Some delegates thought changes to federalist government too radical
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From the outset of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, there were delegates who thought that these changes were too radical. Some delegates such as John Lansing Jr. and Robert Yates from New York and Luther Martin of Maryland, simply left the Convention, but even among those who stayed, three delegates (George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts of Massachusetts) decided not to sign.
Of these individuals, George Mason might have been the most important because, just a week before the Constitution was signed, Mason had proposed the addition of a bill of rights, which 10 of 10 states voting had rejected as unnecessary. One of the reasons that Mason had offered for adding such a bill was that “it would give great quiet to the people” (Farrand, 1966, II, 587).
When the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, supporters of the document, arguably seeking to minimize the differences between the proposed constitution and its predecessor, called themselves Federalists. Capitalizing on the fact that they were offering solutions to what they perceived to be the problems under the Articles, they further dubbed those who opposed ratification as Anti-Federalists.
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