At Law and Liberty, Nathan Coleman (University of the Cumberlands, higher education and history): Remembering the Anti-Federalists Rightly (reviewing [somewhat favorably] Michael J. Faber, An Anti-Federalist Constitution: The Development of Dissent in the Ratification Debates [University Press of Kansas 2019]). From the introduction:
For most of American history, Anti-Federalists, those opponents of the Constitution, played the role of the loser. The attention received from scholars castigated them as “men of little faith,” arch-conservatives troubled by the rising democratic tide of American politics. Among the only credit they received came from their calls for a bill of rights. Beginning in the late 1970s, Anti-Federalist fortunes start to shift. The first glimpse of this change came with Herbert Storing’s collection of Anti-Federalist writings. Storing’s slim, but compelling, essay opening the collection, What the Anti-Federalist Were For, revealed how their opposition to the Constitution stemmed from serious philosophical concerns and differences with their Federalist counterparts, and not just obstructionism or pro-slavery partisanship. Saul Cornell’s The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in American History (1999) took Storing’s findings a step further by exploring the social background of Anti-Federalists, and, more importantly, tying their political thought and opposition to the American tradition of resisting centralized authority. Finally, in 2011, Pauline Maier’s Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution placed the Anti-Federalists (a term she avoids using) at the center of her story. For Maier the Federalists secured victory in the ratification conventions through political maneuvering rather than through the inherent force of their arguments. This made Anti-Federalists and their arguments once again relevant for scholars as anti-Federalist criticisms were not addressed forthrightly in the debates and thus not really vanquished.
Despite these shifting fortunes, there remained no single, comprehensive treatment of Anti-Federalists’ political thought. Michael J. Faber and his An Anti-Federalist Constitution: The Development of Dissent in the Ratification Debates has changed that. Building on the works of Storing, Cornell, Maier, as well as his earlier work on the Federalists, Faber argues that a combination of disorganization and tactical missteps forced the Anti-Federalists to transform their political thought from one aimed at broad opposition to working to secure changes to the Constitution.
And from further on:
Faber’s distillation of Anti-Federalist thought into three strands and his argument for their sectional distinctions creates interpretative problems. Despite offering scholars a shorthand for untangling the varied and often repetitive arguments made by the Constitution’s opponents, those three strands lack the clear delineation and sectional distinction Faber suggests. Too often, the distinctions appear forced. As a case in point, Faber quotes William Grayson saying that “In the first place I think liberty a thing of too much importance to be trusted on the ground of implication: it should rest on principles expressed in the clearest & most unequivocal manner.” Faber labels this passage as an expression of Rights Anti-Federalism, but since it deals explicitly with the ambiguous nature of Congressional power, he could just as easily have designated it as Power Anti-Federalism.
The same holds for his sectional differences. While Faber does eschew of Saul Cornell’s socio-economic explanations in favor of political reasons for the sectional distinction, nevertheless, the strands of thought and sectional distinctions he claims exists disappear in favor of a general exploration of Anti-Federalist positions. Faber even admits throughout that “these three strands did not remain separate” or that while New York Anti-Federalists adhered to Power Anti-Federalism, “there were Rights Anti-Federalist appeals” as well. One could go on, but Faber’s numerous admissions suggest that he strains too hard to find distinctions. A reason for these strained distinctions comes from the implicit suggestion that if a writer is talking about liberty, he must be a Rights Anti-Federalist; if state sovereignty it must be Power Anti-Federalism; and popular support means Democratic Anti-Federalism. This overlooks how Anti-Federalists feared consolidation above all other issues precisely because the loss of state sovereignty equated to the loss of both liberty and popular government.
These interpretative problems present themselves most clearly in Faber’s counter-factual account of what an Anti-Federalist Constitution would have looked like had they written the document. Guided by the framework of the Constitution, Faber’s imagined “Anti-Federalist Constitution” includes a “We the People of these Sovereign States” preamble, a declaration of political principles similar to Revolutionary state constitutions, and revisions to Congressional authority including the elimination of the power of taxation. Although Faber may have designed this counter-factual exercise as a teaching tool—he does not say—the entire section remains, at best, ancillary to his thesis. At worst, it further undermines the book’s contention for the various threads and sectional differences that constitute Anti-Federalist thought. For the Anti-Federalist Constitution to take shape as he believes it would have, the distinctive elements of their thought had to be less distinct and more fluid across sections than Faber claims.
If these interpretative problems are kept in mind, An Anti-Federalist Constitution is a work worth consulting. Faber does provide a new and convincing account that Anti-Federalists supported a bill of rights only after recognizing the failure of their general opposition. The discussion of Anti-Federalists’ general political thought, with its inclusion of lesser known writings, offers a deeper and more nuanced account of their political thought than any previous work.
And from Amazon, here is a description of Professor Faber's book:
What would an Anti-Federalist Constitution look like? Because we view the Constitution through the lens of the Federalists who came to control the narrative, we tend to forget those who opposed its ratification. And yet the Anti-Federalist arguments, so critical to an understanding of the Constitution's origins and meaning, resonate throughout American history. By reconstructing these arguments and tracing their development through the ratification debates, Michael J. Faber presents an alternative perspective on constitutional history. Telling, in a sense, the other side of the story of the Constitution, his book offers key insights into the ideas that helped to form the nation’s founding document and that continue to inform American politics and public life.
Faber identifies three distinct strands of political thought that eventually came together in a clear and coherent Anti-Federalism position: (1) the individual and the potential for governmental tyranny; (2) power, specifically the states as defenders of the people; and (3) democratic principles and popular sovereignty. After clarifying and elaborating these separate strands of thought and analyzing a well-known proponent of each, Faber goes on to tell the story of the resistance to the Constitution, focusing on ideas but also following and explaining events and strategies. Finally, he produces a “counterfactual” Anti-Federalist Constitution, summing up the Anti-Federalist position as it might have emerged had the opposition drafted the document.
How would such a constitution have worked in practice? A close consideration reveals the legacy of the Anti-Federalists in early American history, in the US Constitution and its role in the nation’s political life.
Posted at 6:31 AM