In the table below, a selection of Anti-Federalist papers have been contrasted with their Federalist counterparts. Essays with titles such as "A Dangerous Plan of Benefit Only to The 'Aristocratick Combination '" and "New Constitution Creates a National Government Will Not Abate Foreign Influence Dangers of Civil War And Despotism" fill the collection, and reflect the strong feelings of the authors. Generally speaking they reflected the sentiments of the Anti-Federalists, which Akhil Reed Amar of the Yale Law School generalized as: a localist fear of a powerful central government, a belief in the necessity of direct citizen participation in democracy, and a distrust of wealthy merchants and industrialists. Ĭonsidering their number and diversity, it is difficult to summarize the contents of the Anti-Federalist papers. At seven volumes and including many pamphlets and other materials not previously published in a collection, this work is considered, by many, to be the authoritative compendium on the publications. The most frequently cited contemporary collection, The Complete Anti-Federalist, was compiled by Herbert Storing and Murray Dry of the University of Chicago and published in 1981. He "collected 85 of the most significant papers and arranged them in an order closely resembling that of the 85 Federalist Papers". The first major collection was compiled by Morton Borden, a professor at Columbia University, in 1965.
Until the mid-20th century, there was no united series of Anti-Federalist papers. Works by Patrick Henry and a variety of others are often included as well. Although there is no canonical list of anti-federalist authors, major authors include Cato (likely George Clinton), Brutus (likely either Melancton Smith, Robert Yates or perhaps John Williams), Centinel ( Samuel Bryan), and the Federal Farmer (either Melancton Smith, Richard Henry Lee, or Mercy Otis Warren ). The essays were the product of a vast number of authors, working individually rather than as a group. Thus, in contrast to the pro-Constitution advocates, there was no one book or collection of Anti-Federalist Papers at the time. Unlike the authors of The Federalist Papers, a group of three men working closely together, the authors of the Anti-Federalist papers were not engaged in an organized project. The Anti-Federalist papers were written over a number of years and by a variety of authors who utilized pen names to remain anonymous, and debates over authorship continue to this day. The Anti-Federalist was appearing in New York newspapers, under the pseudonym 'Brutus'." Structure and content The most widely known are "a series of sixteen essays published in the New York Journal from October 1787 through April 1788 during the same period. As with the Federalist papers, these essays were originally published in newspapers. The Anti-Federalist papers are a selection of the written arguments against the US Constitution by those known to posterity as the Anti-Federalists. The former supported a more powerful central government while the latter opposed it.ĭuring the lengthy and heated national debate following this convention, both groups wrote extensively in favor of their respective positions. Two main competing factions emerged, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Soon, however, the gathering shifted its focus to constructing a newer and more powerful Constitution for the fledgling country.
In 1787 a convention gathered in Philadelphia to attempt to amend it. Many early American politicians and thinkers believed that these issues were the result of the Articles of Confederation, the first governing document of the United States. The weak central government could not raise taxes to cover war debts and was largely unable to pass legislation. Patrick Henry, author of several of the Anti-Federalist papersįollowing its victory against the British in the Revolutionary War, the United States was plagued by a variety of internal problems.