Anti-Federalists and the First Amendment:

The Antifederalists were the people who opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1787 and 1788. During the Revolutionary War, this group was called the federalists because they wanted to have a government based on a loose federation of the states rather than a centralized national government, the system favored by the Nationalists (Houghton Mifflin, n.d., p.1). However, during the debate about the Constitution, the Nationalists began calling themselves the Federalists, so the group who had previously used that name called themselves the Antifederalists.

All of the early forefathers were concerned about an appropriate balance between the states and the central government, as well as the best balance of power among the various branches of government. The Antifederalists thought that the proposed Constitution gave the president too much power. They did not want another monarch. They feared also that too much power in the central government would cause the states to simply wither away because the national leaders would have no connection to the local conditions and concerns. The Antifederalists feared tyranny.

The Antifederalists were about equal in number to the Federalists, but they were somewhat weaker (Houghton Mifflin, n.d., p.1). They were not strongly felt in the urban areas, an

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ring, 1981, p.64). They wanted no bigotry, pressure, or state religion. They also wanted the political and personal right of freedom of the press, so that no despot could ever overpower the thinking of the people. The Antifederalists felt so strongly on these points that they would not ratify the Constitution unless one of the first items of business was to draw up the amendments. The intent of the Antifederalists was to balance the power of the national government with the explicitly stated rights of individual freedom in the Bill of Rights. Many of the Federalists, persons who were more aristocratic in their nature and thinking, thought that those freedoms were implicitly understand, but the Antifederalists wanted them named. It is important to remember the historical backdrop of this tension. A smaller percentage of the population was educated and literate, and there was not instant mass communication as today. Under those constraints, freedom of expression, and especially of the press, was extremely necessary. It is interesting to note that there was an early provision for a religious test for officers in the U.S. government, and the Antifederalists saw some danger in this (Story, 1981, p.64). The Antifederalists saw
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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)