The Genius of America by Eric Lane Page B

it was to be located (the federal District of Columbia was not created until 1790), too distant to allow for their participation, at a time well before cars, trains, planes, telegraphs, telephones and e-mails.
    Beyond these broad thoughts, the Anti-Federalists had no unifying agenda. “They had no plan whatever,” noted Madison. “They looked no farther than to put a negative on the Constitution and return home.” Nor did they all have the same motives. The Federalist James Wilson caricatured an Anti-Federalist as a self-interested American “who either enjoys, or expects to enjoy, a place of profit under the present establishment.” For some that was surely true. But for many their motivation was as well intentioned as the Federalists. In general, opposition to the proposed Constitution represented a profound fear of its then unique centralization of power, a depersonalizing distancing of government from its citizens and the potential for abuse from both. It is an argument that has recurred repeatedly through American history. Even today Americans debate between Paine’s vision of simple government and Madison’s complex system of checks and balances.
    The goal for most opponents was to stop the proposed transfer of political power from the states to the new national government. They argued against the Constitution in general, as well as against many of its specific provisions. How could liberty be protected over such a large territory? Why was there no “bill of rights” to guard Americans from what the framers themselves had argued was the inevitable tyrannical nature of majorities? Why a single executive, and why make him commander in chief of the army and navy, too? Onward the objections rolled through the vice presidency, the possibility of a standing army, Congress’s power to alter the state’s power over congressional elections, the power of taxation, the small size of the House of Representatives (only sixty-five members for the entire nation of around three million people, not counting the half million or so slaves), the Senate’s power to confirm executive appointees and the requirement that the Senate consent to treaties. Some wanted a new convention, and some wanted to amend the proposed Constitution in various substantive ways. Some wanted amendments before ratification. Others were willing to support ratification if the Federalists promised to support postratification amendments.
    Dissenting delegates to Pennsylvania’s ratification convention captured broadly most of the Anti-Federalists’ concerns. “We dissent because it is the opinion of the most celebrated writers on government, and confirmed by uniform experience, that a very extensive territory cannot be governed on the principles of freedom, otherwise than by a confederation of republics” and because of “the omission of a Bill of Rights, ascertaining and fundamentally establishing those unalienable and personal rights of men, without the full, free, and secure enjoyment of which there can be no liberty, and over which it is not necessary for a good government to have the controul.”
    The odyssey of Patrick Henry from a supporter of a stronger national government to an opponent of the Constitution illustrates how events of the day influenced the views of many Americans on the question of ratification. Henry, the first and many-time governor of the State of Virginia, member of the Continental Congress and Virginia legislature, had, in early 1787, been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention but had refused his appointment. Although he had long favored a stronger national government, he was now in opposition. He “smelt a rat.” That rat was, in his mind, a “cabal” of northern states intent on dominating the South and denying southerners their freedom to pursue their own self-interests.
    The cabal for Henry had been exposed through a prospective