Essay Database

Federalist or Anti-Federalist? It can be argued the Federalists were the first political party of the United States. With a simple goal, they wanted to unite the states and form a strong central government. The Articles of Confederation was the first attempt at this goal. But these articles were not effective. The next attempt was successful though. The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia effectively united the states. There were still some problems with these Articles created. …

…the national constitution, many delegates believed, would be redundant. The Anti-Federalists focused almost all of their energies on attacking the Constitution because it did not explicitly guarantee the rights of the people. With the fate of the Constitution in the balance, Madison and other Federalists agreed to a list of that would be proposed as a "bill of rights" after the first new Congress convened. This was enough to win the support of many Anti-Federalist.