In the fall of 1789, Congress approved twelve amendments and ten were ratified by the states in 1791. The issue was: Should the powers of the Federal government be limited by a specific enumeration of the rights held by individuals and smaller political units within the whole? The promise of its addition resulted in ratification by Virginia and New York. The issue of a bill of rights was the turning point. The national government would fail without New York and Virginia signing on, being powerful economic and political centers, and their ratification conventions were deadlocked. In June of 1788, New Hampshire was the ninth to approve the Constitution the success of the overall system remained far from secure. To avoid the problem of unanimous consent, something that hamstrung the execution of law under the Articles of Confederation, only nine states had to ratify the Constitution. Madison and Jefferson (Democratic-Republicans) by the late 1790’s came to think Hamilton and his Federalists had become a faction. While the Constitution does not mention political parties, the legacy of the Federalist –Antifederalist debate was the birth of the party system with the new Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties. Should America embrace commerce and the aristocracy or a democratic, agrarian way of life? The choice was between Jefferson and Hamilton’s competing visions of America. Shays’s Rebellion, an uprising of farmers from western Massachusetts demanding an end to what they perceived as the unjust economic policies and political corruption of the state legislature in Boston, had revealed the inability of the federal government to put down the insurgency. Under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government did not have the power to regulate interstate commerce, nor was it authorized to raise taxes. The debate between the Federalists and the Antifederalists reflected two competing visions of America in the 18 th Century. The Articles of Confederation and Constitutional Convention. Would America be a nation of bankers or a nation of farmers? The Antifederalist’s pressing objection was the absence of a list of individual rights, to limit the powers of the state. Antifederalists have been described as agrarian populists, who were worried that the Constitution would entrench the power of economic and political elites. Antifederalists, such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, argued that the Constitution would favor elites over the common people, weaken state governments and increase taxes. In another savvy choice, critics of the Constitution were dubbed “Antifederalists” by the Federalists, making it seem that challengers had little in the way of positive proposals and were simply naysayers. Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty-one of the essays, Madison, twenty-nine, and Jay, five. Together they wrote eighty-five essays which were collected and comprise The Federalist Papers. Federalists, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, took to the newspapers under a pseudonym Publius, to explain the Constitution and advocate its adoption by the states. The supporters of the Constitution took the moniker, “Federalists.” The choice was savvy, as federalism was understood to be in opposition to centralized power. State conventions, not legislatures, met in 1788 for this purpose. On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution, yet ratification by the states was necessary. (This includes both readers who believe that the original meaning of the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution have in a felicitous turn of phrase, been described as well read, well bred, and well fed. constitutional law needs to be familiar with the Federalist Papers. (Wikimedia Commons) Hamilton wrote the lion's share of the Federalist Papers.
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