You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: The Antifederalists Were Eerily Prophetic
I suggest The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution 1781 - 1788 for your perusal. It's not precisely what you're looking for, but it does present a state-by-state breakdown of how the various Anti-Federalists argued their points and the deliberations within the different state governments over whether or not to adopt/ratify.
You might also look at Federalists and Antifederalists: The Debate Over The Ratification Of The Constitution which is more about the back-and-forth between the two sides on everything from property rights to the local vs. state vs. national economies and trade.
I hope those help! :)
Thanks, I'll check those out. I'm still surprised nobody seems to have put together what I am talking about. It shouldn't be THAT hard...
Believe it or not, it's harder than it seems like it should be thanks to the comparative lack of availability of Anti-Federalist materials when compared to, for example, publications like Hamilton's The Federalist Papers which have been compiled and sold for more than a century.
This short Wikipedia article about "The Complete Anti-Federalist" goes into some detail about how Herbert Storing went about compiling the single largest collection of Anti-Federalist writings. It took him over two decades' worth of combing through libraries, government files, and personal collections, and because there was so little information available to the public at large, most people were loathe to lend out anything from their personal collections of letters, flyers, pamphlets, and broadsheets.
In fact, Storing died before he finished his work, and it was left to one of his former students to actually complete the archives and see that they were printed. They were originally a seven-volume set of hardbound books, and they're stupid expensive on the second-hand market now.
Heh, yeah I just saw one for $950. Or the University of Chicago sells the pdf for a mere $426.
I just found this: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Federalist-Anti-Federalist-Papers/dp/1796293148/ which was published this year. Not sure how "complete" it really is at 439 pages though...