Influenced by the widespread approval of the decision of Massachusetts to submit its state constitution of 1780 to the voters for ratification, the framers of the Constitution provided (Article VII) that their handiwork be ratified by special state conventions. This procedure gave the Constitution what Madison called “the highest source of authority”—the endorsement of the people, expressed through representatives chosen specifically to vote on it. The framers may also have been motivated by a desire to bypass the state legislatures, where many members might resent the reductions being made in state authority. This was not of central importance because the legislatures could have blocked ratification by refusing to call conventions. Only Rhode Island did so, and since the Constitution was to go into operation when nine states had approved it, Rhode Island’s stubbornness did no vital harm.
Such a complex and controversial document as the Constitution naturally excited argument throughout the country. Those who favored it called themselves Federalists, thereby avoiding the more accurate but politically unattractive label of Centralizers. Their opponents thus became the Antifederalists.
The Federalists tended to be substantial individuals, members of the professions, well-to-do, active in commercial affairs, and somewhat alarmed by the changes wrought by the Revolution. They were more interested, perhaps, in orderly and efficient government than in safeguarding the maximum freedom of individual choice.
The Antifederalists were more often small farmers, debtors, and persons to whom free choice was more important than power and who resented those who sought and held power. “Lawyers and men of learning and money men. . . expect to be the managers of the Const[itution], and get all the power and all the money into their own hands,” a Massachusetts Antifederalist complained. “Then they will swallow up all us little folks. . . just as the whale swallowed up Jonah.”
But many rich and worldly citizens opposed the Constitution, and many poor and obscure persons were for it. It seems likely that most did not support or oppose the new system for narrowly selfish reasons. The historian David Ramsay, who lived at the time when these groups were forming, was probably correct.
World History
