Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Antifederalists: North Carolina's Other Founders

 During the 1788 North Carolina convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution, Anti-Federals passionately opposed the document's adoption. Image courtesy of Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries.

It is tempting to dismiss the Anti-Federalists, for the U.S. Constitution that they opposed is a sacred document to most modern Americans.  Under that Constitution, the United States grew rapidly in population, wealth, and territory to become, by the late twentieth century, the world’s only superpower.  Whatever its failings, no other political regime, by most conventional measures of accomplishment, has been more successful.

North Carolina’s Anti-Federalists have been too easily dismissed.  One Federalist described them as a “blind, stupid set that wish Damnation to their Country.”  They were among the most bitter of the bitter-enders, blocking ratification of the Constitution at the Hillsborough convention of July 1788, even after the document had been approved by eleven other states.  Not until November 1789, after George Washington had been president for seven months, did North Carolina finally join the Union.

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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 7, 2013 at 7:41 PM

    thanks much for this side of the story on the state's journey towards ratification. it fits well. and from barton college, too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brock TownsendMarch 7, 2013 at 7:58 PM

    Thank you. North Carolina, the forefathers of American libertarianism.:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMarch 7, 2013 at 10:59 PM

    Damn, I'm proud to be a Tarheel.

    ReplyDelete

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