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Anti Federalists

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There were several reasons that the Anti-Federalists opposed the ratification of the Constitution. The most predominate reasons being are no defined state or citizens rights, the central government having too much power, non-accurate representation and slaves were not counted as part of the population. State rights are what the Anti-federalists wanted the most, since they believed that each state would be able to govern themselves as they see fit. They saw the federal government as something unnecessary, and that it would just reduce the amount of rights that each of the states could have. It took the Bill of Rights' tenth amendment, unlisted rights are subject to be defined by the states, to get most anti-federalists to come to an agreement on the Constitution. Citizens rights was another issue that Anti-federalists saw with the current constitution. There were no clear definitions of what a citizen could and could-not do, and that brought fear to the anti-federalist population who thought that all of their possessions, as well as their lifes, could be …show more content…

Having a small representation would almost make anything that the anti-federalists did in congress, as well as any form of government, meaningless as the federalist would be able to oppose it with their overwhelming majority. The federalists compromised the equal representation issue with the addition of a two-part congressional system with one house based on population and one house based on equal representation. Later in time, they reached the 3/5th compromise that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person so that the anti-federalist states populations could increase. Overall tensions and other unfair compromises can be thought to directly contribute to the Civil

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