Who were the Federalists?

0:05[Music] so if we think about the the ratification debate it pits the supporters of the Constitution the Federalists against the opponents of the Constitution which we call today the Anti-Federalists it's worth asking you know who were the federalists who were the anti-federalists the Federalists include some real heavy weights when it comes to the American founding I mean we have you know the two most beloved Americans George Washington Benjamin Franklin we have some of the greatest political leaders and political thinkers of the time also Federalist people like James Madison Alexander Hamilton James Wilson Governor Morris John Dickinson John Jay just an amazing assortment of talent if we're thinking about the rank and file

0:46Federalists you know generally speaking you would say the Federalists tended to be better educated than the Anti-Federalists they're more likely to live in cities than the Anti-Federalists they're more likely to be lawyers and Merchants than say something like farmers and you know in the end the big question is why do the Federalists want this new constitution part of this Push by the Federalists is about National Security and safety and so in part what they're thinking about is we need a stronger national government in part to make sure that that national government can do things like raise and pay an army to protect us from threats from abroad so there's definitely a concern among the Federalists of making sure our nation is strong enough that we're not going

1:27to just get conquered by some European power coming over interestingly the Federalists were also concerned about America becoming a second Europe and so if we don't become a full Nation where we integrate all the states in a strong union what we're going to have is something like a bunch of independent nations and the thought was if you look to Europe what happens when you have a bunch of small independent nations you go to war all the time you have conflicts you can't really trade well with one another everything is defined by competition and conquest and in the end the Federalists are hoping for a union that can bring together the harmony of the states bring the states together have them work cooperatively on big National problems and to keep the peace to

2:08avoid war and so part of this vision is we want a national government that can do a lot of the things that we see European nations able to do but that we didn't think our national government under the Articles of Confederation did very well so these are things like the power to raise taxes the power to regulate commerce with other nations and between the states you know the power to shape the nation's foreign affairs and speak with one voice on the national stage the power to raise an army to keep us safe because in the end the Federalists they're not writing from a blank slate when they're on the one hand pushing for and creating the new constitution but also when they're deciding to defend the new constitution in this battle over ratification they're drawing

2:51on their own experiences prior to the crafting of the US Constitution one of these things was they wanted to make sure the national government uh didn't run to the same problems that Congress ran into during the American Revolution what we discovered in the American Revolution is if the national government can't force states to pay taxes you're not going to have enough money then to do things like pay your soldiers and make sure to maintain your military the other thing they learned was you know when we create our first framework of government before The Constitution the national government of the Articles Confederation uh the the Federalists concluded that that form of government created a national government that was too weak and so they

3:27wanted to create a stronger national government not an un not one of unlimited power not one that was going to swallow up the powers of the states one that was still going to be of limited powers but one that was granted more Powers than the national government had under the Articles of Confederation and the last big lesson they draw from is from the experience of crafting state constitutions before the US Constitution and so after we declare independence we end up creating a series of state constitutions to run our state governments what did we discover after we created these state constitutions did a pretty lousy job for the Federalists the big lesson of the state constitutions was that the state constitutions didn't get separation of powers and especially

4:08checks and balances right the idea being that the state constitutions granted too much power to the state legislatures not enough checking powers in the governors so the executive branch and the courts and so with the US Constitution they tried to create a better balance between the different branches of government so they could check the powers of one another