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Comparing The Rhode Island Responses To The Kentucky And Virginia Resolutions

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In the early 19th century, the United States of America was still just a young nation trying to find its way. Two parties emerged as competitors for the people’s votes and the opportunity to enact their view of how the young government should be handled. On opposing sides were Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. The Federalist philosophy of Hamilton was less trusting of the common man and more valid for the time period given the state of the United States in the early 19th century than the Anti-Federalist views, divisive actions, and philosophy of a strict constitutional interpretation of Thomas Jefferson.
Alexander Hamilton authored a great many of The Federalist Papers of the late 18th century. Consequently, his views on many parts …show more content…

The view here is that the states would have the final say in anything the federal government says or does. In Document H, the Kentucky Resolutions, secretly written by Jefferson and Madison, articulate this in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions condemned the acts as unconstitutional and thought that the states should have the right to declare them as such and ignore them. Document I, the Rhode Island Responses to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolution, a Federalist approach is taken. This resolution, surprisingly, used a very literal interpretation of the Constitution to argue the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. It stated that giving states this right would be, “1st Blending together legislative and judicial powers. 2nd Hazarding an interruption of the peace of the states by civil discord, in case of a diversity of opinions among the state legislature. 3rd Submitting most important questions of law to less competent tribunals; and 4th An infraction of the Constitution of the United States, expressed in plain terms,” and therefore could not be allowed to happen according to the Constitution. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions shows the desperation of the Anti-Federalists to decentralize government. However, the powers they wished to give to the states were too extreme and these resolutions were rejected by nearly all other states in the

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