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Updated: June 23, 2025
Look around you, inhabitants of America! and see of what characters the anti-federal junto are composed.—Are any of them men of that class, who, in the late war, made bare their arms and girded on the helmet in your defence?—few, very few indeed, of the antifederalists, are men of this character.
But their game was frustrated by George Clymer, who had sat in the Federal Convention, and now most unexpectedly moved that a state convention be called to consider the proposed form of government. Great was the wrath of the Antifederalists. Mr. Clymer was quite out of order, they said.
Those who supported the new Constitution were henceforth known as Federalists; those who were opposed to strengthening the bond between the states were called Antifederalists. It was fit that their name should have this merely negative significance, for their policy at this time was purely a policy of negation and obstruction.
When Melanchthon Smith deserted the Antifederalists on this point, the victory was won, and on the 26th of July, New York ratified the Constitution by the bare majority of 30 votes against 27. Rejoicings were now renewed throughout the country.
This clause at once confutes every assertion of the antifederalists respecting the new congress being able to secure to themselves all offices of power, profit and trust.
Along with Hamilton, New York sent two commonplace men, Robert Yates and John Lansing, who were extreme and obstinate Antifederalists; and the action of Hamilton, who was thus prevented from carrying the vote of his own state for any measure which he might propose, was in this way sadly embarrassed.
The earlier short-lived party furnished a great part of its material to the later one, but the attitude of the strict constructionists under the Constitution was very different from that of the Antifederalists.
When the state convention assembled at Poughkeepsie, on the 17th of June, more than two thirds of its members were avowed Antifederalists. At their head was the governor, George Clinton, hard-headed and resolute, the bitterest hater of the Constitution that could be found anywhere in the thirteen states.
On the 2d of January, 1788, the Constitution was ratified in Georgia without a word of dissent. One week later Connecticut ratified by a vote of 128 to 40, after a session of only five days. The hopes of the Antifederalists now rested upon Massachusetts, where the state convention assembled on the 9th of January, the same day on which that of Connecticut broke up.
He found the same fault with it that was found by many of the ablest and most patriotic men in the country, that it failed to include a bill of rights; but at the same time he declared that while he was not of the party of Federalists, he was much further from that of the Antifederalists. The Federal Convention he characterized as "an assembly of demi-gods."
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