Compare And Contrast Federalist And Anti-Federalists Dbq

The United States struggled under the Articles of Confederation, able to declare war and foreign policy, but unable to collect revenue to sustain its actions. The Constitution was designed to give more power to the national government primarily by empowering it with the responsibilities of establishing and maintaining central banking and financial policies. The national government was able to ask for monies from the states, but was not able to enforce collections of those monies needed to sustain their actions. The thirteen states essentially had recently revolted against Britain and its heavy handed tactics of collecting revenue and were almost immediately being asked to ratify and accept changes that would allow the new government to enforce funding as well. Since most of the framers of the Constitution were considered prominent and financially secure, this left the farmers and trades persons of lower class and wealth with the impression of returning back to a heavy handed government

During the Revolutionary era, the birth of the U.S. Constitution gave way to the political divide between the two polarizing philosophies of Federalists and Anti-Federalists. After the economic pitfalls and decentralization the Articles of Confederation had left behind, action was taken to ameliorate its failures. With the creation of the Federalist party in by founder Alexander Hamilton, its members advocated for a stronger national government and defended the validity of the Constitution’s ratification. Contrarily, the Constitution was met with skepticism on behalf of the Anti-Federalists, who believed it would undermine state sovereignty and infringe upon their human rights. The two parties hailed from different socioeconomic backgrounds,

The Anti-Federalist thought that the central government would abuse power and neglect the rights of the people. The Anti-Federalist did not want a federal government; they wanted the states to be in charge of themselves. The Anti-Federalist believed that the Constitution would not protect the rights that individuals had. The Anti-Federalist feared that the central government would make the states not have a way to defend their rights. Anti-Federalist also did not want a republic.

Before Jefferson entered the presidential office he was a states rights supporter and when the tax on whiskey was placed he opposed it, saying “The first error was to admit it by the Constitution.” (Doc A). He didn’t like the constitution because of the fact that it would make central government stronger. When the alien act was passed he was opposed to it and said that the central government should only have a set of specific purposes and the leftover purposes should be left to the states individually. (Doc B) Determining the amount of time it takes to be a citizen, and the ability to jail people opposing the government was too much power to Jefferson. When he came into office he realized the necessity for more central power and took more matters into his own hands, he had become a loose constructionist.

Because of the war, the United States was deeply divided(punctuation) both geographically, between the North and the South, and by factions, between the Federalists and Republicans. Because of the conflicting interests across states, it was especially hard for the parties to stay organized and come to agreements. A temporary solution to this problem was when “Northerners and Southerners personally vowed to support the candidate from the other region (Freeman).” This meant that the Northern electors would vote for the candidate of their party from the South, and the South would do the same for the North, which would ensure that the votes were not cast with special state interests in mind. Another effect of the war was the execution of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts. These were put into place by the Adams Administration to and were “intended to crush the Democratic-Republican political opposition” by “prohibiting ‘scandalous and malicious’ writing or speaking against the United States government, the president, or either casa of Congress (Florence).” The Acts were obviously targeting Jefferson and his followers, who were outraged by these new limitations that they believed to be infringing on their first amendment rights to freedom of speech.

Other conflict that stemmed from the formation of the Constitution was the development of two different groups; the Federalists, those who supported the Constitution and the Antifederalists, those who did not support the Constitution. Federalists sought to reform the government system by implementing an executive power to act as a mediator for states so that no specific state had more power than the other and so that critical deeds can be executed without problem, such as collecting taxes. Anti-Federalists wanted to stray away from an authoritative power, fearing that a powerful and distant government would not serve for the interests and needs of the citizens. They also complained that the Constitution failed to guarantee individual liberties in

Their Voice The Enlightenment changed and challenged the way that people thought or acted during the Age of Absolutism. During the Age of Absolutism, the only things kings cared about was power and wealth. They had complete disregard for their subjects. In all six DBQ excerpts, the reader sees people either challenging the king or the King getting upset that people are starting to stand up for themselves instead of just taking his word as the gospel truth. The Enlightenment caused people to start questioning and thinking of different types of governments such as a democracy.

Even so, money is being spent effortlessly on the war, instead of helping the lower class which it was a promise the government didn’t keep. In the speech, he made sure to make that remark by saying, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” This was a declaration that should move people into believing that war isn’t an option in the country and by creating this illusion of people getting sent to fight with others in Vietnam for more money won’t help the country at

The Founding Fathers and the public felt that the constitution didn’t set up enough boundaries for the government, they felt that the government would assume too much power and take away the “Natural Rights” of the human. The Bill of Rights was set up to make sure the public felt safe and to make sure the government couldn’t abuse their power and turn it into a communist state or a dictatorship. America and our Founding Fathers based our Bill of Rights off the English Bill of Rights, so naturally there will be a lot of similarities between the two. Much like the Amendments in the English Bill of

The Americans faced taxes such as the Sugar Act, Stamp Act and Townshend Act due to Britain having to make up for the money they had lost to war. The people of America essentially felt that Britain was being unreasonable “for imposing taxes on us without our consent”. The taxes were passed by Parliament in which there were no American representation. This lead to Americans protesting the taxes that lacked representation and the Virginia House of Burgess stating that "the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them... is the only security against a burdensome taxation, and [is] the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom". The Stamp Act caused Americans to protest and refuse to buy or import British goods.