Abstract

The American Anti-Federalists as objects of historical study have served in various capacities over the years since waging their historic battle over the ratification of the Constitution. Perhaps, given the conspicuous heterogeneity among Anti-Federalist thinkers, a case could be made for each different labels if taken in isolation and applied to different Anti-Federalists at different times during the debates. ;Counter-distinct to the work of "consensus historians" like Louis Hartz and Cecelia Kenyon who argue basically that American political thought is pervaded by an irrationally monolithic Lockean liberalism of private property, and individualism that either engulfs or marginalizes any other modes of political discourse or thought within the nation, this essay argues in a manner consistent with the work of Bellah and his associates that there exists in America a truncated or "second" language of political discourse, a language of community and shared public life better known as republicanism. Yet far from simple expansion or replication of their argument this essay seeks to ground it in a particular American historical context and set of political traditions. In turn it suggests that the American Anti-Federalists are the exemplars of that older, more communitarian mode of American political discourse and theory. ;Beginning with an interpretation of the thought of America's earliest English settlers, the Puritans of New England, this essay traces the development of new and modern forms of republican political community through its origination in Congregationalist covenant theology through the American Revolution, and the first American founding under the Articles of Confederation, to the Federalist rejection of that theorization, and finally to the Anti-Federalist defense and reiteration of that tradition in their oppositional writings on the new Constitution. It is my argument that Anti-Federalism as a mode of political discourse sought to preserve the republican spirit of the Revolution along with its localist, participatory, communitarian political culture and its corresponding construct of public happiness against what it saw as a hubraic, anti-republican nationalism being put forth by the Federalists and embodied in the Constitution